When my wife was dying, we had no money. I picked up a night-shift job stocking shelves at a Safeway. Every shift, piles of food to be discarded was stacked up all over the back. We couldn't take any of it. Nor was any donated. It was just thrown away. The feeling of working an overnight shift with no sleep and an empty stomach, surrounded by food to be thrown out that you couldn't touch, can't be accurately described. It was a combination of shame and anger.
+Joseph Sperrazza The next time I think that I am having a shitty working day I will remember this post. Thank you for sharing. I hope your life has become less of a nightmare since then.
+Strangelic Things are better, thanks. I think I was always supportive of the less fortunate. My experience has made me more so. I'm fortunate to have a job these days that, as one part of it, allows me to hire and train a lot of people. It is very satisfying.
+Joseph Sperrazza Been there, man. :( The worst was knowing that the only reason you couldn't eat any of the garbage was because the boss thought you might throw it out specifically to eat it... which made no sense when we were already throwing away a dumpster full of food every goddamn night.
Ed Greshko we have someone like that in germany too.. theres even an video with english subtitles if u have an hour.. Its called "Volker pispers - History of USA and Terrorism". The effect of him is pretty close to John Oliver.. at least to me. I dont know if u have in english an special word for those kind of comedy... ins "Political kabaret" in germany...
BadBonsai Ja, das macht Kabaret jedes mal mit mir, speziell von Volker Pispers :D Ich weiß nie ob ich lachen oder weinen soll :D Praise satire as a mean of criticism in today's world. Never loose your critical thinking
@LastWeekTonight, You should do a show where you look back at all the issues you have raised and whether anything major has changed, for the good or bad!
a company started up called imperfect produce was started and it recently has expanded into other foods and is called imperfect foods an covers a lot more of the united states I would say around half geographicly it looks like some of the large areas that are not covered are areas that are less densly populated which makes since. in my area the food is collected from stores to food banks sorted by volenteers and redistributed they have a chart for how long after the date for each type product and a third of all food by wieght that goes out to families in need is from store donations for perspective 4% is from food drives. what is unfit for human consumption is feed gathered for pig farmers except meat which goes to a cat sanctuary. I live in oregon and we are not necessarly tipical of other places around the country and I am not even saying all counties have this type of set up
@@gettintherejanice6216 There is something where I live called "Ugly food" which sells cheap boxes of good but aesthetically displeasing food I kept meaning to look into it, but have not.
@@milascave2 Here is the thing, though. Produce comes perfect or less than perfect(ugly) The store prices it ALL THE SAME, not giving a lower price discount for the (ugly) food. So which are you going to choose? The undamaged food of course because you can buy it and stuff it in the fridge and forget about it for a week. If it is slightly damaged then you got to eat it that day because it is still perfectly edible. It just can't be stored(as easily) to eat later.[there are ways to do it that involves working in the kitchen to prep it] which means cutting out the bruise injury and then cutting the peach into slices and put in a bowl(or WORK)] If the damaged or ugly fruit was sold for cheaper IT WOULD BE SOLD.
I was dirt poor, worked at a mini mart, and used to take home salads and sandwiches that were to be thrown out. A coworker ratted me out to management, and the next day they started a community food donation program.
+Jeremy Xu Brilliant, John's best moment ever! this moment the Cannoli line of his show! He delivered it so well I almost blacked out from laughing... literally ROFL !!
SpyMonkey3D Didn't France recently add a section in their food markets with the less appealing looking (but perfectly usable) food at a reduced price to reduce waste?
Melanie Baker Yes, the association is called "Les gueules cassées" which could be translated as "the smashed faces / the ugly mugs" or something like that. (www.lesgueulescassees.org/ website in French)
SpyMonkey3D It should be like this everywhere in europe. At least it shouldn't be outlawed (like in my country as far as I know). If the logistics is a problem we could organise charities who collect and distribute. An even crazyer idea: the spoiled food should be used to produce biogas and compost.
In Germany, many cities have a "Tafel". That's an operation that collects food (that would otherwise be thrown away) from shops and restaurants and redistributes it to the poor. People who "qualify" (living on social security, small pension etc.) can register and once a week shop at the Tafel. One shopping bag full of food costs something like one Euro afaik. More should be done about food waste, but that is definitely a good step. And there were even some marketing campaigns by supermarkets for the imperfect fruit and veg. I believe that was done because of harvest shortages, but hopefully it raised awareness as well.
You mean in the way that this would never happen in a nation, that massively underepresents poor people before the law (not speaking of the law itself...)?
Well, aside from a supermodel eating the superburger (and so on) ! Which seems like something that wouldn't ever actually happen, if our ideas about supermodels are correct.
In Germany, many cities have a "Tafel". That's an operation that collects food (that would otherwise be thrown away) from shops and restaurants and redistributes it to the poor. People who "qualify" (living on social security, small pension etc.) can register and once a week shop at the Tafel. One shopping bag full of food costs something like one Euro afaik. More should be done about food waste, but that is definitely a good step. And there were even some marketing campaigns by supermarkets for the imperfect fruit and veg. I believe that was done because of harvest shortages, but hopefully it raised awareness as well.
Shit, if a "harvest shortage" means "we might have to resort to eating a small portion of the perfectly fine food we usually reject on a purely aesthethic basis", it's not a shortage. It's a rationalization of production.
Funny You brought that up behause the Tafel does not Receive its supplies from super markets or restaurants. Germany is actually facing quite the same Food waste Problems as other neo liberal countries. Regards from Berlin.
I grew up in a food-insecure household and knowing the amount of food the US wastes makes me genually angry. There were WEEKS where all we ate was beans because that was the cheapest thing we could afford, and things like milk and meat were luxuries that my sister and I could only get at school. Thankfully, were in a better living situation but stuff like this really nails home how much the US hates the poor for being poor and it isn't right.
tiesiog ba Say what these videos are hella informative. I do t watch the news much or read the paper as much. And Ive learned a good deal of things form these videos.
Here in the Netherlands we have something called "misfits" and it's basically fruit or vegetables that don't live up to the aesthetic standards, they're sold for a cheaper price in some supermarkets.
Ginger Jodie but still the large supermarket chains (in the Netherlands) throw away large portions of biologically produced vegetables, because they are obligated to sell them and people just don’t want them.
@@TheMrsannabel "Biologically produced vegetables" as opposed to.. magically conjured vegetables? And they throw them away "because they are obligated to sell them"?
dananskidolf hahaha maybe that’s a Dutch thing. No I meant with biologically produced without pesticides or GM. In the Netherlands it is mandatory for supermarkets to have a specific amount of those vegetables. But you can imagine that in discount stores people are not likely to buy them. So most of them are thrown away.
@@TheMrsannabelAhh I see.. It's rather odd to force availability of 'biological' products (English is organic which is no less confusing) people don't want.
Having been in poverty and experiencing food insecurity at least once, it does more than bring you to tears. It is traumatizing. Having gone through poverty brain twice, I now have a disordered relationship with food that I have to work on healing every day. I actually started binge eating out of fear that there wouldn’t be enough food. Now that I have food (and we haven’t had food insecurity in four years), I am desperate to hoard it and eat as much as I can. It causes body image issues and hoarding tendencies. Food insecurity has long-term ramifications and having access to whole unprocessed foods during food insecurity is vital to preventing this. But as a country, no one cares.
I've watched a bunch of these now. Isn't it a little alarming to find out some of the most cutting journalism in the country comes from a foreign comedian, and not a serious news channel?
+tSp289 What's even more alarming is how screwed humanity is. Really depressing watching human beings screw over one another just to accumulate what I'm sure will just be an increasing number at a bank. There is no moral excuse that can allow some people to just keep on accumulating money to the point that anymore of it renders absolutely useless while other people, who just happen to be unfortunate, work all day long and yet are still not able to afford their daily necessities. Feels like we've reached a point of no return.
+Luay Sulaiman Absolutely true. We need a system of flowing money, i.e. a system where money automatically loses value over time (like the Austrian town "Wörgl" did). Those are fees that can't be avoided, because you either pay them or your bills become entirely worthless. Therefore it would be wise to transfer various other taxes into that fee. This way, money would become a mere tool for exchanging goods and services again. Hoarding can be done with gold, silver, houses, stocks or whatever, but money must stay on the market, because if nobody can pay each other, then unemployment rises even though it shouldn't need to.
HardcoreSolo Well, in my experience that's what most people believe when I tell them about flowing money for the first time, but inflation is entirely different, because it is important where the money flows to. Inflation flows money to the banks, because they are the ones who keep creating money out of thin air, increasing the total amount of money existing, thus causing inflation. Flowing money flows to the government directly as taxes, who can then reinvest it. The total amount of money remains unchanged. Inflation and flowing money are completely different. The former destroys people, the latter prevents unnecessary unemployment. All countries who are in debt have a problem with people hoarding money. And I don't mean honest workers who put their well-earned pennies to the side for when they might need it,
HardcoreSolo Flowing money was a pretty direct translation from a German term This is flowing money: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demurrage_(currency) Hoarding = Saving up WAY more than you're ever going to need. Politicians waste money because if they don't then they get bribed, blackmailed or killed. And the people have to pay the debts the politicians were forced made. Banks loan money to the government and take interest for it, so it's the banks who control the government and not the other way round. But that's an entirely different story.
I volunteer at a food bank. Here's a brief guide how long food is good AFTER its sell by date. Non acid canned veggies: 5 years, acid veggies (like tomatoes) 2 years. Pasta, 2 years. Canned meats 5 years. Cereal 18 months. Soup 2 years (tomato based 18 months).
This is the basis of websites like Approved Food, which sells food past its Best Before. The food tastes just as good, it hasn't poisoned us yet, and it's cheaper than buying it in shops
When I saw those peaches it pained me so much. After the last hurricane here there were so many oranges, lemons/limes and avocados fallen from their trees. Neighbors who didn't want the fruits allowed others to collect them. They weren't "perfect" looking either.
I’d much prefer they go to people who are in need of food, that’s clearly the best option in this case, but one thing they didn’t consider is leaving the peaches on the ground at least puts those nutrients and water resources back into the soil, which will beneift the trees and local fauna rather than having a grocery store throw it into a dumpster and sending it to a landfill.
Something to keep in mind, most fruit on a tree (especially with stone fruit) will not all ripen on the same day, at the same time. Stone fruit may ripen on a single tree over the course of 2-3 weeks from earliest piece of fruit to last piece of fruit. This gives growers a 10ish day window with optimal fruit maturity. It is costly to send labor through the field and is usually only profitable for 1-2 pickings in that 10-day window. Because of that, growers attempt to pick at the optimal times when the most fruit can be harvested and make it to market. This means the earliest ripening fruit is too ripe to process and must be discarded if it hasn't already fallen naturally from the tree.
My aunt and Uncle in India live in a farmhouse outside the city's limits. They have monkeys visiting in the summers. Before, these monkeys would swarm the neighbouring farms and destroy plantations there. The angry farm owners used to shoot and maim these monkeys with the help of air gun pellets. So, my Uncle started to buy fruits and vegetables that were overripe or dented slightly here and there (which don't fly off their shelves at all) from the city market's vendors (for a very discounted price) and used that leftover farm produce to feed the monkeys. Today, they have a whole army of monkeys that still visit their area but only now, they know where food is available and hence, there is a peaceful coexistence of both of our species there.
Ever since I started feeding the crows néxt to my tomatoes and cucumbers and strawberries, they've left them alone. Even better, after +/- 3-4 years of this, I've taught them how to trade sticks, feathers and screws for the (little bits of old) bread. Last year, one crow/jackdaw brought me a screw with two bolts on it, to trade for the cornflakes. I've kept it, together with the nerfgun-bullet that he brought after that.
@@docdexter5660 Haha, you can try the same, I bet they'll eventually start bringing you stuff. Just always place your bread in the same place and take (whatever it is they bring in return, eventually) into your house. You can always throw it away in the bin if it's gross, but it teaches them that there's a trade going on. There's a girl on RUclips that had a whole box full of stuff, she had a huge amount of crows that brought her stuff. And someone in the comments (below her video) mentioned that his crows, after so many years of being fed scraps, have started caring for the humans. One day he had a breakdown and appareantely crows flew to his brother (who was practically his neighbour) and knocked on the window with their beaks. I've also noticed that my jackdaws get restless if I feel sick, but if I make an audiable noise or yell; 'I'm fine! Go away!' they're convinced I'm not dead and they leave. ÓH and I once met a very young jackdaw in the city (my city is tiiiiiiny, I was 3 minutes away from my house) and after I greeted it, it sat nearby on a pole and 'waited' for a treat. I could stand very nearby and gave it some bits of biscuit I had in my bag. It flew away, came back for some more treats (absolutely not shy, but very scared if another human walked past) and that evening (in summer) it went to my roof-gutter, (the exact same one, I know for sure, the little one) and after eating some of the bread, it placed itself in the big waterfilled vase and bathed for an hour or two. The window was open, so I heard him splashing and the 'ticking' of his nails against the vase. Next day there was; 'Kaa-h- Kaa-h' because the rest was upset the (bath)water was all over the place and there was nothing left to drink. xD I've drawn the little jackdaw, floating around in the vase. I only heard him and saw his shadow, but I can imagine how he was happily bobbing in the luke-warm water, enjoying the sight over the city and all the little lights.
To be fair, that's the fault of organizations like Green Peace that go to nations struggling to provide food for their citizens, like Zimbabwe, and telling those governments that the food donations they're about to get are evil mutant GMOs that will give them the gay cancer and that they should turn the food down and starve to death instead.
This show has turned out to be one of my “fact checking” sources. The research is top notch and the host is an intelligent and articulate person, thanks John👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
@@Deimos2k5 Use by dates is silly. Cans where invented to preserve food, and they do that very well. And as long they do not bulge you can be rather sure they are still edible. You sometimes even have use by dates on waterbottles.
I remember this episode well, because my housemates at the time were "dumpster-divers" - people who make use of the perfectly fine "unsaleable" food left out by supermarkets - and it helped me be okay with eating the meals they cooked.
@@Poldovico Depending on the fruit, an otherwise non-edible part could now be easily ripp-offable, or the edible parts more accessible. Variation is the spice of life.
As a p/t dumpster diver, I pulled out a sh!tload of quality bell peppers one time. I roasted them all and made a killer roasted pepper in olive oil dish that I then put over the sh!tloads of sourdough bread they threw out in the same dumpster. It was divine and FREE!
You know, even if that food is not looking aestheticaly great, it still could be used in different food products, just make some stupid jam or beer out of it, or put it in other products...
EB DA GAMER Well, here in Europe is plenty of beers with different flavours, we called them radlers. The original beer was with lemon, however I`ve drunk maybe dozen of other different fruit flavours. Last year I`ve drunk some Belgian or Netherland beer with cherry flavour which was strong as fuck, but delicious too... Besides, there are still poor people, even in west, and I bet that those people could use some state provided food help, these people do not to tend to be picky about how their peach is going to look like. It`s just mind bogling when you read all that crazy shit about how much hungry people do live on this planet and how much of food is wasted on yearly period, meanwhile in war-torn conflict zones are missing basic supplies from food to clothes and drugs... but who cares, I guess ?
Yes, she bit behind it, conveniently covering her teeth. Opening your mouth wide enough to bite a gigantic burger, would make your mouth look like a hyena's.
I've learned more about history, economics and science watching this show and Adam Ruins Everything than I ever did in pubic school. Makes me wonder why public school is even necessary.
When will anyone actually ever use algebra or trigonometry unless they're teaching it to daydreaming kids?? If you have a good answer for this, please, PLEASE tell me
Prime Minister Fluffy Rose I agree with you, but you also need to know what you want to do at that point, which some people don't until even after high school.
My boyfriend and I struggle to eat. And when you work at a food place and the management tells you to throw away all the extra food at the end of the night, it really sucks.
in iran we either recycle the food(turn into chiken food or cow food) or we give it to the people in need there is close to nothin called food waste in IRAN
@@BriAngel476 So on the one hand, the US is wasting that much food. On the other hand, it's making minimum wage employees do the roundaboout equivalent of dumpster diving just to eat. All the while having a massive obesity problem. The American fucking Dream.
Hey John, Would you consider doing an episode that is just a follow-up to a bunch of your major issues over the last couple years? Have any of the issues you've covered had significant improvements since your coverage?
Man!... I used to work in a baseball stadium (cleaning up the stands after games late at night) I nearly cried a tear every time I picked up a full, untouched, meal off the ground to pitch it in the garbage bag I hauled away. -- A bunch of spoiled upper /middle class folks who simply did not care about the food they wasted nor the big dollars they spent for it! I pouted every night knowing that -- Somewhere across America there was someone who would probably fight to have that meal for themselves just to survive! :'(
So the House passed a bill that was a positive thing. Then the Senate gutted the bill, renamed it, didn't change the number and then passed it.That's congress for ya.
It is the same thing that allowed the Afordable Care Act to get through the house. why is it even possible? because senators like circumventing constitutional protections.
Right? Me and my fiancee both work full time with a baby on the way. Not poor enough to get foodstamps and not rich enough to rent an apartment with more than one bedroom. and every single person i work with is in the same situation. Except the dude who owns the company. Its pathetic.
It's actually less simple than that. Poor people, particularly children, tend to have higher obesity rates. This is because healthy food is expensive. You can get fast food meal for 3-5$, but to get an actual meal it costs 5-10$ per person. Poor parents are also more likely to have to spend more time out of the house, for various reasons but mostly work, which makes it a lot easier to pick up a quick meal. What tips the odds possibly the most is that children like tasty drinks. In order to fill this need parents often buy cheap soda instead of juice, or milk. All this together actually makes poor people more likely to be obese, and starving. Not exactly a happy message.
John Oliver's show and all the people who work on it are amazing. I laugh and cry and yell and feel despair and hope all in one episode. I pray we all do better, sooner rather than later.
Please consider doing more than praying to a metaphysical entity to solve this problem; it is not working. I am hungry and have to struggle for food. Thank you for your prayers.
I grew up in the Netherlands. My dad still cleans the peanutbutter-jar out with a bit of bread on a fork. A combination of having lived without a lot of food and the natural cheapness that comes with being born in the Netherlands. Either way, I feel ashamed when I throw something away, even when it has gone mouldy and hás to be thrown out, like yoghurt.
@@Widdekuu91 if it grows mouldy i throw it out without shame, and make a mental note of buying less next time(waste is waste). but overall i try not to let any food go to waste. there are people on earth who dont have enough food. and every fruit i buy, is one fruit that nobody else will be able to eat, so i better make sure it's not in vain.
"hold on John, what if I'm an asshole who couldn't give a shit about America's hungry families or the long term viability of life on earth"Mr. Trump thank you for watchingI died laughing there
I live close to the best grocery store in America IMO (Wegmans) and the amount of food they throw out from their hot bar every night (Gourmet indian, Chinese, American etc) is astounding. I actually asked the manager once why don't they have a homeless shelter pick it up and they said they did not want to get sued if someone got sick. I think they just dont want to be bothered
john yungbluth It's not really. They probably think they will but they won't because they're covered by the emerson act. Which states "(1) LIABILITY OF PERSON OR GLEANER.-A person or gleaner shall not be subject to civil or criminal liability arising from the nature, age, packaging, or condition of apparently wholesome food or an apparently fit grocery product that the person or gleaner donates in good faith to a nonprofit organization for ultimate distribution to needy individuals."
Having lived in a homeless shelter I can say we heard that same excuse (If we give it to you we can be sued)by many an organization. Quick Trip did donate a truck load of sandwiches to the homeless shelters but they were one of the few that would donate food. Groups that feed the homeless on the streets also often admit to being afraid they'd be sued (groups tell these folks they can be sued for giving food to the homeless). I have hear stores say they throw it away out of the same fear (and I have met dumpster divers who will gladly claim that same food as they know it is perfectly good). Harvesters used to get the food that was left over after Kansas City Chiefs games but one person supposedly got sick and suddenly Harvesters stopped picking up the food (all of it was already cooked and consisted of hamburgers, hot dogs, foot long hot dogs and brats with the occasional chicken tenders tossed in. No fries, no popcorn, no buns unless they asked for them). All the food was taken immediately to their nearby warehouse and frozen that night. Nowadays not even stadium workers are allowed to take the food home, it all goes into the trash (well, Kauffman Stadium, home of the KC Royals is a bit looser on employees taking stuff home). Bartle Hall (part of the KC Convention Center) also throws away a lot of food from their concession stands. I am disgusted at how much food is thrown away especially knowing that many of those same workers could use that food.
To be fair, for some things I understand that it has to be thrown. I remember seeing a news story where apple juice got contaminated because the fruit used was picked from the ground and got exposed to animal feces (I think specifically deer feces), so for some products you have to be careful. Similarly, there's a makeup store which destroys returned products if it's been used before throwing it out, because the customer who returned it has used it, however makeup isn't a necessity and the stores should improve their return policy so customers don't buy something knowing they can return it if they use it and don't like it. However for items that can be sold to customers but weren't and won't last for the next day should 100% be donated or let employees take it
What may be considered not acceptable visually as far as fruits and vegetables are concerned can be made into frozen fruits and vegetable. Once they are cleaned and cut up, if they taste good, what they looked like prior makes no difference. Soups can be made from a lot of the vegetables, etc. To just let it sit and rot is a sin. In addition, there are a lot of poor in the world who would love to get this food. There must be a way to make things better for everyone.
Very wise woman, your mom. Waste is a shame and to be avoided as much as possible. Also, I have found that not buying too much at at a time helps. If one has too much and does not get around to using it while it is in good shape, then one can freeze a lot of stuff and use it in soups, vegetable and fruit blends, stews, etc. I have kale, watermelon, bananas and other fruits and veg in bags to use.
I feel that is a great idea and they could get volunteers to sort things out in order for that to happen. In particular, seniors who need to be doing something and being of service is healthy, people who run soup kitchens, various churches might have folks interested in doing this type of thing. There are resources, if one bothers to really look. Once the stores had an organized way to get it done and the volunteers to do the work, it would run automatically without the store having to invest much time. It could be a win/win for everyone. Just a thought. Hugs.
Ok let's go with ur plan: but what would be the incentives for volunteers (cuz not enough ppl care enough or there are better volunteer options)? I say when this becomes effective to also add scholarships for volunteering in this effort. To get America to care about volunteering, the job has to be moral, easy, and rewarding. Rewarding shouldn't be part of volunteering but it is, especially for teenagers. That's my two cents.
Jessie SX Exactly, it's a win-win for everyone! The colleges get to see if their applicants are hard working and care about the world they live in, and the students are rewarded with Education that will determine their entire life! Also the markets like you said would look like the good guys, and that creates more incentive to volunteer there! Thnx for agreeing with me!
Duncan Eigg i think it's a 'false fear' that people wouldn't contribute to volunteer work... i think the volunteer infrastructure is just so shoddy that people contribute energy through being coerced which brings the wrong people then they aren't really encouraged or challenged while they're there so the process wilters if a self-sustaining process could be put in place i think it would take out a lot of middle-man overhead, that is really what government should be (defeats the point if you get paid too much) : www.volunteermatch.org/ is a good site for volunteer work
AnalKarl der vierte In NYC almost everyone knew what a stupid clown he was/is going back to the 80s. His name was/is synonymous with dumbass there. So, it has been cool (normal) to dis him for a long while.
My household after seeing this 5 years ago made efforts to cut back on food waste. It has saved us money and we eat healthier. We should acquire unsold food to go to charity as some sort of tax break.
Watching this and thinking about our Indian households. Food doesn't go waste here. Indian moms won't buy and cook more food than needed and if for some reason they cook more than consumed, they will make you eat leftovers till eternity or till they are over -Whichever happens first :D
alienkishorekumar Your comment raises the issues of storage and distribution logistics in food supply and food security. That is usually ignored by the policy decision makers because it questions that use of technology, chemicals, and modified bio-organisms to increase supply, which seems to be the preferred solution of western (particularly USA based) bio-chemical corporations that have political and economic clout. Another issue, but certainly not the only other one, is corporate enforced expansion of mono-culture foods for export or non-food agricultural products which ends up eliminating land that had previously been available for growing crops for local consumption. Especially in poorer countries that have land and good climate, the result of expanded mono-culture for export is typically increased agricultural output AND less food available for consumption by the country's own population.
megha sharma Yes, but a home's environmental concern means nothing when you are paying several folds more for the same thing due to stagnation and bad practices of storage? Do you want to be so stupid in ignoring such critical issues? If yes, then don't mind my comment. I'm just pointing out the reality.
@@peterrose5373 that really annoys me. Sometimes my grandma will put something back on a shelf it wasn't from and I have to take it to where it was from. She doesn't do it with food items but it still annoys me.
@@lisahenry20 More than being annoying, it invites cross contamination, and I *THINK that food safety regs say you have to throw it out then, even if there's no visible evidence of dripping.
Marush Denchev You are right every country needs a john oliver! Too bad that in a lot of countries they are not allowed to defame or talk bad about certain organizations or governments in those countries.
Retail CEOs: It's too dangerous to donate this food to starving people. Also retail CEOs: No you can't have a mask while serving hundreds of people during a global pandemic, that would be silly!
Remember the meat packing employees in the early days of the pandemic who were forced to stay on the job despite the plants being super spreaders? Be sure to watch John's video about the meat packing industry. Boycott meat!
A pretty good summary of the problem. However, Mr. Oliver should have mentioned what is arguably food waste's single largest contributor, agricultural subsidies that encourage the overproduction of commodity crops.
@@lazyhomebody1356 define farmer. I am pretty sure there are only specific types of farming and crops that are subsidized. corn and soy beans would be commodity crops they are so over produced that corn is excessivly over fed to cows making them toxic because on the bottom line and other corn is turned into frankin foods it is ultered into hundreds of food products then listed at ten or 15 items on a food list and is creating an imbalance in food health if who you are talking about is the farmers that monocrop acres and acres use pesticides and chemical fertilizers and use combines that is a different farmer than who I call a farmer they are both farmers but it is slightly misleading to use the same tittle or people running factory farming of animals
@@gettintherejanice6216 Agea ago, I wrote a long paper on soybean subsidies (?). I meant farmer as crop grower. I Texas, we would call the other cattlemen.
theScholarlyWalrus Haha, yes we have Cheerios! It's an American brand, and it's manufactured in New York, iirc. Cheerios has been around forever-quick Google search says 1941.
I live in Sweden, and over here I've noticed that some brands have changed the labels from "Best used before" to "Best used before, but often good after".
i'm still amazed how it was legal to change a bill that was made specifically to incentivise businesses donate food into something relating to border control and Israeli relations. seems like they could pass a lot of shit under the guise of good intentions. like "here's a bill that we advertise as being good for consumers, producers and investors. once it passes, we're just going to change the ever living shit out of this so we can invade Cuba" or some shit.
Yeah isn't the point that both congress and senate have to agree to pass a bill? If the senate can change the content after congress agreed without them agreeing to the changes then it defeats the point.
I was personally less interested in the legality of such, and more with which absolute nutjob thought that this particular bill about FOOD DONATIONS was the candidate to get emptied out and filled back up with border control. Because those two things correlate PERFECTLY
@@stoontechguy If the Senate changes the content of a bill in any way, large or small, then the House of Representatives has to approve the bill again. That's what happened here, too!
I admit I get most of my news information from John Oliver. He pulls no punches and breaks things down. I understand more of what's going on and it's entertaining.
We are getting higher quality, far more in-depth news along with some laughs from Oliver. Other "news" more like op/ed outlets might as well pack their bags.
I've been drinking milk WAAAYYY past the "sell by" date for years. Not once have I had a problem. If it smells bad or is chunky, I don't drink it. People think I'm crazy that I trust my nose more than some stamp on the carton that's half worn off by the time it reaches the supermarket's shelves. As Toucan Sam used to say: "Follow Your Nose!"
That was a very good segment. Though my fave, well most grateful one, was the one he did recently on transgender issues and rights. He nailed it all in his own special fashion.
Leonard Sultana Check out this, www.allthingsgym.com/bypass-youtubes-video-is-not-available-in-your-country/ It might point you in the direction to let you view it. Hopefully. It's a good segment. Otherwise, google up free vpn to view US content. Granted, the free ones track you but you are only using it for this. Barring all that... Well, if you are using a desktop machine or laptop you can check kickass torrents -kat.cr/ Or ye olde pirate bay (though rumors are since the raid earlier this year that the FBI is running the show.) I normally do not condone torrenting things, but sometimes it's the only way sadly. Bonnie Burton Please delete this torrenting stuff if it's against your posting rules. You won't hurt my feelings, I understand such things. If you do so I shan't ever again post such info or recommendations. Heck, on an anime group on FB that I run I don't let anyone post direct torrent links. If someone is motivated they can find it themselves. I love anime and try every venue I can to legally stream it rather than torrent it. Or if it has an awesome rep and is out on DVD I take the plunge and buy it. Sidebar: I hate geographical restrictions. In this day and age they really are short sighted.
In my country, the supermarkets just peels and chops those not aesthetically pleasing fruits and package them into bite-sized pieces for a fraction of its original worth. If they do that, I bought what I can, put it in a freezer and blend it to make a perfectly natural smoothie. In fact, I bought most of what the store had yesterday. I can now make apple and mango smoothies twice a day.
As was mentioned in the video, they have to hire more people to chop up said fruit,buy packaging blah blah its not beneficial to a company who's only goal is to make money.
Aldrich Allen Barcenas in my country, that diced fresh fruit and veggies usually sold as "salad". If I'm lazy, I just grab that "salad", a mineral water, a sandwich or fried chicken, sit in a park and eat that. Total cost? 50% less than eat in McDonalds.
Dar How Most of the big stores have a lot of staff. Most of them don't do much besides cleaning and assisting customers (which often customers here can manage themselves). In down times, they chop fruits and vegetables.
My parents were Senior Gleaners in the 80s. They picked up discarded produce in the fields after the harvest was finished and donated the food to food banks.
This segment was released in 2015 and I've watched it 20+ times since. This year, I got a job at a grocery store and holy hell, a TON of product is wasted. I quit my job and never want to work in that industry again. Shelves have to be full to keep customers buying, but food doesn't sell fast enough to justify filling shelves with highly perishable items (bakery items). Corporate won't allow us to discount product so it can be sold and eaten. We donate some, but local shelters don't have the ability to pick up perishables and it's a lot of labor to organize it.
here's me, responding to a 10 month old comment on a 4 year old video. Regardless. Here in Denmark, there was the same issue with stores throwing out bakery items every evening because "the next day it needs to be fresh" But it wasn't actually solved by a law passing, for a healthy change of pace. Chain-stores began to making the bread and cakes 50% off past 7 pm. Usually there isn't that much left and due to that discount, it typically gets sold fast. But its damn nice as a student to get bread n cake I can stretch for a whole week at half price.
I work for a grocery chain and we do the same thing (discarding and baking fresh daily), except we have representatives from a local church who come to pick up those “defective” items every morning. We also have a food bank that sends a truck to pick up approved perishable donations twice a week, with the rest unfortunately being disposed of at the store. Non-perishable “damages” are sent back to our distribution centers, and I honestly have no idea what happens from there, though I’d like to. I’m sure some things are salvaged (e.g. repackaging/relabeling otherwise undamaged product), but in the case of, say, a dented can of vegetables, where the risk of botulism is a concern, I’m not sure what they at the DC would do with it besides sending it to a landfill.
I'm so sad that this is still relevant today... the US government is obviously not going to do anything. I'm going to see if there's anything I can do in my local community.
***** It's a lot harder to eat like a vegetarian king if you're homeless due to lack of kitchen access. When I went to biweekly freegan gatherings, I didn't meet homeless people, but I met a lot of people who hate waste and don't want to pay for things you can get for free.
When i worked for panera in college, any baked item that wasnt sold was packed up and given to various organizations that help the hungry. Each org had their own night to come pick it up. It was a small way they gave back and reduced a lot of food waste. Thats the only food company ive ever worked for or heard of that does something like that
Buy a juicer, it's so easy to throw almost outdated produce into it and slug it down. My city collects food waste every week, they make soil out of it and sell it low cost to landscapers etc. Our food waste stays in town to foster more plant life and scenery :)
"Almost outdated produce"? Even outdated food is often still perfectly fine to eat, so taking food that's _not even_ reached that limit yet and using it as soil is kinda making me feel uneasy. Food is _way_ too precious to use it the same way we use literal bullshit. Although I'll definitely agree that using it that way is at least better than throwing it away with no use for it whatsoever, but that's not a particularly high bar...
No !!!!! That’s not the answer ! You begin by educating yourselves and your children not to buy more than you can eat and not to serve more than you can eat either. Have a weekly check of all your groceries and perishable foods and before their expiry dates, pile up your car and go and donate it to families who can use it. Why don’t people grow up, for God’s sakes ???? “buy a juicer” !!!!!?!??!
This immediately reminded me of that bit from "1984" where the book-within-a-book, "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism", pointed out that superstates (such as the US) will regularly and knowingly destroy large percentages of their surplus to intentionally create scarcity.
@@oncoucharrest5910 I was kidding with the original poster because the name of the author of that book, in Orwell's book 1984, is Emanuel Goldstein, which is the original posters user name.
WTF was with that conversation at 3:39? "It brings you to tears." "Yeah." "Why?" Are you serious? What do you mean "Why?" Is there really something that vague and confusing about a mother crying about not being able to feed her kids?
@@jdjxn Zero sympathy here. Her priorities are all fucked up. It shows people who can barely put food on the table keep having kids..... she has money for mc donalds and that giant drink.. A box of pasta and some sauce is $1.50 Seriously.. unless that is water no kid should have a soda that goddamn big. Diabeetus
@@spaghetti9845 When I saw that, I immediately knew there were going to be assholes like you out there to spot it. Have you considered that the interview crew might have bought the kids lunch in return for the favor of this woman putting her extreme vulnerability on television for all to see?
I once had some business dealings with a 5 star hotels and daily they would throw out carts of beautiful expensive cakes that they couldn't sell. A cleaner (low income) there once told me that he couldn't stand the waste and brought home a couple of cakes himself, it was perfectly fine and absolutely delicious. The next day he received a notice from management saying that if he did it again, he would he terminated. When he questioned about it, they said that the cakes were already *one day old* and could cause someone to be sick, they simply don't want to be sued.
I work in my college dining hall and whenever I get a dish washing shift I am shocked by how much people throw away. Like last time I was there at the end of my shift I was cleaning a tray that had a hamburger, three cookies, a unopened package of poptarts, and an apple. Besides the poptarts all of that food had like one or two bites taken out of it. I am always confused on why people would spend so much money on this food to literally only eat a bite out of it and then just throw it away. And that is just one example that isn't even that extreme with me getting that much stuff uneaten commonly enough where I am now for the most part getting used to it. I'm just thankful the college dining hall has a compost so at least something comes out of the food in the end but it is so unfortunate that people spend so much and care so little.
I am shocked that students in your college don't clean their trays and dishes themself. In my country everyone takes their tray to a dedicated place where you throw what you havent eaten to one garbage bin, napkins and stuff go to other bin, you put plates on a stack of plates and trays on a stack of trays. When the table is full someone from the kitchen comes and takes everything in the washing rome where they put it in washing machine and clean it. And this place is usually located so that servers can see you when you go clean your tray and you get a subconcious feeling that they Will see you throwing away a lot of food n.d you simply eat more of it. Belive it or not but they remember when you trow away a lot of food and next time they serve you, they say something like: "You better eat all this time." It is not a problem if you can't eat it because you got a big portion or you simply aren't hungry but it is wrong to say:"That mashed potato tastes like it is artificially made so I will not eat it". Cooks actually make it from potatoes and it is disrespectful to them if it is not eaten.
agreed, so many families just have leftovers that sit in the fridge and rot. why have that much excess, when one of your neighbors may even struggle with food?
I cant afford to buy food that i don't eat so you're right,I don't have any knowledge of the situation.And it's 'make love to' not 'fuck' don't be so crude.:3 *****
I don't get why people would throw away packages and packages of spinach, lettuce, broccoli and _kale_. _Kale_? Dude, isn't that _expensive_ like hell? Why buy it if you're not gonna eat it?
+Heart of the Stars It is mostly restaurants and grocery stores that throw away food, not individual consumers. Of course you can still blame the consumers, because they are the ones who forced all the absurdly overprotective health laws upon the restaurants & grocery stores that thus force them to throw away so much perfectly good food. For example, in Florida, those sandwiches you see at 7-11? One day shelf life. If someone doesn't buy them within 24 hours of being put on the shelf they go in the dumpster. Having worked at a 7-11 as a teenager, I can say with certainty that well over 90% of them get tossed out because of this. Do they really go bad after only one day? Of course not - I used to dump them into boxes and took them straight to the homeless shelter. They toss them out because the laws, written in fear & completely ignorant to any actual science, make them do it.
+Heart of the Stars It's also because people buy to much at once and then have to throw it away, when it actually turns bad. I myself bought two pounds of carrots last week, but they started to mold before I could eat them all.
Rock Golem Some places have already tried that but it always meets with political resistance. Poor people lower property values. Low property values reduce tax revenues. That's why both parties routinely try to ban services for the poor and are constantly trying to dump their homeless population into their neighbors' yards. All politicians love gentrification as much as they hate the poor. At best they might pretend to care for a photo op during an election cycle, but I assure you that if they had their way everyone in America below the poverty line would end up in gas chambers. They see the poor as vermin, not people, and certainly never as citizens with rights.
I work at Panera Bread and every night we donate our breads, bagels and bakery items to various local charities in each area, we also donate food to different organizations.
Brandon Collazos Yeah, but the reason he gave later on saving money wouldn't work on Trump, since Trump is. and I quote, "really rich". Regardless, the joke was priceless.
My job at a grocery store is painful because of how much expired crap I throw away. At least at my grocery store we give food waste to pig farmers to feed the pigs. I guess they get killed and sold in my same store and then get thrown away too.
+alecdgreat I don't know about where he is, but in most stores in Australia, it is "policy" to throw out the items which are past their shelf/expiry date. Technically you aren't allowed to take that home but some managers will make exceptions using their own discretion.
Our local food pantry takes donations of shelf stable expired foods and cases that are crushed etc. They also take venison and fish from hunters and farmers who have them professionally prepared at a local butcher along with salsa and jellies etc that are locally canned by those who have farmer's market certifications. Our Walmart and local grocery donate the not pretty but not yet spoiled produce as well (but in my understanding, this isn't a corporate WalMart policy??) ..... There's nothing wrong with the food and it benefits SOOOOOOO many people, including my family. I feel privileged to live in a very small town that is so community focused.
in puerto rico(at least within my family and now that i live appart, my neighbours also do it) we have a sort of tradition/custom.....whenever you harvest something, you ALWAYS give some to everyone else. last time i picked like 4 breadfrutis. i gave one to my parents, one to a relative and one to a neighbour. not sold. given. when i harvest a bunch of bananas i cut it in part and distribute it among relatives and friends. and they do the same for me. so we all always eat fresh fruit and vegetable. we do the same with seeds as well. if you find a really nice plant, when you have enough seeds you give(not sold, but given) some to everyone, so they can also grow whatever it is you're growing.
@@scoobertmcruppert2915 Ahh yes, America. Where being poor is punishable by death. "What's that patient? You have a tumor but your health insurance won't cover it? ..Get..out..."
@@cgore4 it is best to be compassionate and NOT have hungrier people. in a fair system there's no reason for anyone to be hungry. capitalism only feeds the rich. the poor are fed by socialist policies like welfare.
@@Silhouex i appreciate the sentiment. but i suspect he was joking by the way he capitalized "communist". it seems like he was mocking the people who defend the savage form of capitalism they practice in usa.
We are such gluttons. WHy can't we send >/="#2" fruits and veggies to canning/freezing companies? No one would ever know what it would look like once it's cut up/peeled... (I honestly thought that was the case anyway)...
because those fruit are already too cheap. in other poorer countries no crops are wasted, B or C grade crops would at least be sold for use as ingredient on livestock fodder
There's still an abundance of produce being grown. With the strict standards put in place, a lot of it ends up in landfill. Only a handful of crops where looks aren't a major concern are fully utilised. Even with canning/freezing processes, there are specific standards. In some countries, the amount of produce grown exceeds the amount that livestock can consume. Want to send it to poorer countries? It's phenomenally expensive. That waste produce immediately gains value and may be worth up to ten times the value of the "perfect" produce, from the cost of shipping alone. End of the day, blame the consumer for refusing perfectly fine food that's not "perfect". And blame all your favourite media sources for demanding for you to use "perfect" produce or your food will look and taste like absolute shit.
In India the best grade products are sent to USA and Europe and we Indians eat the grade 2 food which has same taste and noone cares about how it looks.
I grew up in Florida. Any orange with a black spot of any size is automatically a juice orange. People want a perfectly orange orange when they they buy one even though they don't eat the skin. If there is the slightest cold weather an entire crop can go to juicers who buy these "imperfect" oranges for for 30% of what a store display quality orange sells for. It can be a major loss for the farmer.
Britain has started to try to combat this, we're slowly starting to get there. France has already gone and outlawed un-needed foodwaste. More needs to be done.
As much as I'm sure it's still a problem in most of the developed world, I'm glad to hear things are being done to at least try to improve the situation. Someone has to try in order for there to be a chance at success. That said, I also hope that people don't lose focus of the importance of the matter. We definitely don't need more methane accumulating in the atmosphere while people go hungry in a country with a huge food surplus...
Thank you John i used your video as one of the references in my final Capstone Project on Data Analytics of food banks. 💯. Crazy how all this information is still relevant today.
There's a store near where I live that buys overstock from nearby stores and resells for just a fraction of the price. Its actually pretty cool how much they're trying to help.
When I started in the food industry, I went first to Chef's school and then to Baking school. We cooked and baked for the students at a college in Washington state. When we sold all the food to the students at a greatly reduced rate, any food left over was given free of charge to nursing homes and people that could not afford to buy grocery's. Maybe this could happen with all the food that is being tossed in this story.
I used to work at Starbucks, and my manager there told me we couldn't take home the expired food at the end of the night because if we were allowed to then employees would start telling customers we were out instead of selling the food so that we would have some left to take home. Maybe if these mega corporations paid a living wage they wouldn't have to worry about their employees hiding food to take home at the ends of their shifts.
It should be mandatory for grocery stores to donate edible food that they'd throw out. A bruised banana might not sell to a rich soccer mom, but a starving family would be incredibly grateful for it. A lot of food is tossed out while still being perfectly safe to eat!
Did you not watch the video? Donating food costs the company money. It has to be boxed, stored and transported, which costs money. Companies aren't charities, they have a bottom line and need to make a profit. State laws need to be changed and tax credits given so that it benefits the company to donate. Making things mandatory solves nothing.
It wouldn't cost any money to allow starving people to come to your back door at noon on Thursdays to carry away the box of bananas that your clerk is about to drop into the dumpster 20 feet away...in fact that teenager who is making minimum wage would probably enjoy the idea of not having to walk that far anyway.
Companies did this. Then the people claimed the food made them sick and sued, for millions of dollars. Now it's against policy because greedy people saw an opportunity
There's an event every week that my grandmother goes to where someone takes food that's about to expire from a bunch of grocery stores that they donate to them and gives it out to people who need it. So at least that's being done in our community.
I’ll never forget the moment I saw four perfectly cooked pizzas thrown away at a food court. Like I know they’ve been on display for most of the day but to be honest, most of us eat leftover/left out food anyways. It’s not doing anyone any favors to discard them as if they have no value.
They show her put her mouth on it, but there's no proof she ever ate any of it. I'm assuming of course you're talking about the serious thyroid, hormone and digestive issues she'd develop, rather than weight gain.
Fulgencio Pritchett No, she's probably holding a burger - commercials typically use food artistry to make the product look good... from the side the camera is seeing it. The other side of the burger looks horrible of course and the techniques used to make it look pretty for the camera also make it near inedible and potentially hazardous (not to mention it likely has a toothpick or something inside it for support). So she put the burger near her mouth for the commercial - then tossed it in a landfill with everything else mentioned in the above video.
@@WeBreakItAllDownRightHereI've been at firms with great coverage but there are lots of US workers who have bad coverage. This has been happening for decades.
the problem is so much city-living people being afraid of eating less than perfect aestetically fruits, defined as such by the most corporate-greed-funded organizations. I love farmers markets, traditional markets where peasants just come and sell their stuff...and I buy fruits with bruises and all sorts of different shapes and sizes because they're healthier than any of those "aestetically perfect" shit in the hypermarkets. Once I bought a few kilos of cherries and I found out at home almost every single one of them had worms inside..white little buddies. I still ate alot of them because they were too delicious to pass on. I didn't go back to sue the seller and shit like that. Neither did I got cancer from it. Protein is protein.
True story: when I was in college, the dining facility I worked in could not give uneaten food to the Catholic church across the street which ran a soup kitchen for the homeless. It was a university policy born out of fear of lawyers. It is possible some doors were occasionally left unlocked when the kitchen was open.
About 10 years ago, my job actually sold “ugly fruit” that typically wouldn’t be sold on store shelves because they didn’t meet standards set by other grocers. These fruits and veggies had some deformalities that would freak folks out and other retailers wouldn’t put out because of this. I still bought the ugly fruit. They sadly did away with it. They also used to donate food close to the expiration date too up until a spiteful customer told corporate on us.
mauszx It`s no more a problem. Peak generation was at early 2000 - now there are less babies born then before. Not every country have this problem. And whats the point of talking about overpopulation? There are no solutions. My country is going extinct and we need imigrants or minimum of 3 children.
Reinis Miks from what I have read overpopulation it is still a big problem, also yes some countries don't have enough young people but that is because there are more old people, so some countries need young people to sustain the old ones.
mauszx There is a really good documentary about overpopulation hosted kinda like TED style and this guy is one of top guns when it comes to global population statsitics, and numbers are showing that yes, population will still grow but mostly just in Afrika. Overpopulation is kind like stretched thing, because during 19th century people in Europe were thinking that it is overpopulated already, and it would be catastrophic to have more people. Well, turns out they were not right.
Reinis Miks There are documentary and studies that said the contrary, while Europe is slowing down on birth rate the whole America continent, Africa and Asia is growing crazy. There is a cientist that recently said that even if there was a bomb that killed 1 billion people, it will still be an overpopulation problem. Not that anyone would do that, but just think how the world works, and how many people need to eat. We don't have enough chicken and water to survive 100 more years. This is why bill gates is creating water made from shit, but it's nice to have different views.
As an American, I can say that, that Carl's Jr's Most American Thick Burger is fucking gross to look it, let alone eat and don't get me wrong I like Carl's Jr.
Any burger from Carl's Jr. lately is fucking disgusting to look at haha. That business is going downhill, and even the supermodels won't be able to save it.
The most ridiculous thing where I live is that you can actually find better looking products in the dumpster than on sale. I don't know if it's just laziness of employees or what but the number of times I saw molded food on discounts or even still on regular sale is just baffling. I go dumpster diving every week and I will never not be amazed in a negative way by how much great, fresh food ends up there.
When my wife was dying, we had no money. I picked up a night-shift job stocking shelves at a Safeway. Every shift, piles of food to be discarded was stacked up all over the back. We couldn't take any of it. Nor was any donated. It was just thrown away.
The feeling of working an overnight shift with no sleep and an empty stomach, surrounded by food to be thrown out that you couldn't touch, can't be accurately described. It was a combination of shame and anger.
+Joseph Sperrazza The next time I think that I am having a shitty working day I will remember this post.
Thank you for sharing. I hope your life has become less of a nightmare since then.
Lel
+Joseph Sperrazza that's terrible
+Strangelic Things are better, thanks. I think I was always supportive of the less fortunate. My experience has made me more so. I'm fortunate to have a job these days that, as one part of it, allows me to hire and train a lot of people. It is very satisfying.
+Joseph Sperrazza
Been there, man. :( The worst was knowing that the only reason you couldn't eat any of the garbage was because the boss thought you might throw it out specifically to eat it... which made no sense when we were already throwing away a dumpster full of food every goddamn night.
John Oliver, the only comedian that can make me laugh and leave me depressed at the same time.
Ed Greshko That's the best kind of comedy!
Ed Greshko we have someone like that in germany too.. theres even an video with english subtitles if u have an hour.. Its called "Volker pispers - History of USA and Terrorism". The effect of him is pretty close to John Oliver.. at least to me. I dont know if u have in english an special word for those kind of comedy... ins "Political kabaret" in germany...
Ed Greshko Try some Doug Stanhope
BadBonsai Ja, das macht Kabaret jedes mal mit mir, speziell von Volker Pispers :D
Ich weiß nie ob ich lachen oder weinen soll :D
Praise satire as a mean of criticism in today's world. Never loose your critical thinking
BadBonsai and Livid Imp , thanks I'll give them a try!
@LastWeekTonight, You should do a show where you look back at all the issues you have raised and whether anything major has changed, for the good or bad!
For the record, the small business food donation credit was made permanent a few months after this aired as a part of Pub. L. 114-113
a company started up called imperfect produce was started and it recently has expanded into other foods and is called imperfect foods an covers a lot more of the united states I would say around half geographicly it looks like some of the large areas that are not covered are areas that are less densly populated which makes since. in my area the food is collected from stores to food banks sorted by volenteers and redistributed they have a chart for how long after the date for each type product and a third of all food by wieght that goes out to families in need is from store donations for perspective 4% is from food drives. what is unfit for human consumption is feed gathered for pig farmers except meat which goes to a cat sanctuary. I live in oregon and we are not necessarly tipical of other places around the country and I am not even saying all counties have this type of set up
@@gettintherejanice6216 There is something where I live called "Ugly food" which sells cheap boxes of good but aesthetically displeasing food I kept meaning to look into it, but have not.
Alex Blom yes I want to watch that please
@@milascave2 Here is the thing, though. Produce comes perfect or less than perfect(ugly) The store prices it ALL THE SAME, not giving a lower price discount for the (ugly) food. So which are you going to choose? The undamaged food of course because you can buy it and stuff it in the fridge and forget about it for a week. If it is slightly damaged then you got to eat it that day because it is still perfectly edible. It just can't be stored(as easily) to eat later.[there are ways to do it that involves working in the kitchen to prep it] which means cutting out the bruise injury and then cutting the peach into slices and put in a bowl(or WORK)] If the damaged or ugly fruit was sold for cheaper IT WOULD BE SOLD.
I was dirt poor, worked at a mini mart, and used to take home salads and sandwiches that were to be thrown out. A coworker ratted me out to management, and the next day they started a community food donation program.
Hi I’m doing research on food waste can I use your comment as a verbal citation? And could you tell me what organizations you donated the food too?
I wish all stores were like that at IGA the manager chases homeless dumpster divers with a rake. Some people just hate the poor.
That coworker sounds evil, but that mini mart sounds nice.
I’m glad it was a happy ending! I was about to get pissed that you got fired or something
"Mr Trump, thank you for taking the time to watch this show tonight"
I fucking died right there
+Jeremy Xu
Brilliant, John's best moment ever! this moment the Cannoli line of his show!
He delivered it so well I almost blacked out from laughing... literally ROFL !!
I did too ! Trump is suck a joke
I wonder if anyone would ever post his reaction to watching this. It would get views from EVERYONE!!!
+Kyle Stubbs probably, but he gets too damn much attention already!!!
Here in France, Supermarkets are now obliged to give unsold food to charity.
SpyMonkey3D Didn't France recently add a section in their food markets with the less appealing looking (but perfectly usable) food at a reduced price to reduce waste?
Melanie Baker i dont know about france but in UKRAINE they did that ages ago
Melanie Baker Yes, the association is called "Les gueules cassées" which could be translated as "the smashed faces / the ugly mugs" or something like that. (www.lesgueulescassees.org/ website in French)
SpyMonkey3D I didn't know that, I just checked and yes you're right! It's making me so happy. To say they just bleach'ed the food..
SpyMonkey3D It should be like this everywhere in europe. At least it shouldn't be outlawed (like in my country as far as I know). If the logistics is a problem we could organise charities who collect and distribute. An even crazyer idea: the spoiled food should be used to produce biogas and compost.
The amount of research that goes into his program is amazing.
@kie arnab goswami
That is British satire. They know their shit. Look at Black Mirror too. Yes, it is a graphic and sometimes ridiculous show, but it makes sense.
@@hadesdrums4634 I really don't like the Brits.
But damn do they do comedy right. Especially burning and criticizing the yanks.
As serious journalism should do.
In Germany, many cities have a "Tafel". That's an operation that collects food (that would otherwise be thrown away) from shops and restaurants and redistributes it to the poor. People who "qualify" (living on social security, small pension etc.) can register and once a week shop at the Tafel. One shopping bag full of food costs something like one Euro afaik. More should be done about food waste, but that is definitely a good step. And there were even some marketing campaigns by supermarkets for the imperfect fruit and veg. I believe that was done because of harvest shortages, but hopefully it raised awareness as well.
“Getting sued by high powered lawyers representing the hungry” this is that most American thing ever
You mean in the way that this would never happen in a nation, that massively underepresents poor people before the law (not speaking of the law itself...)?
Well, aside from a supermodel eating the superburger (and so on) ! Which seems like something that wouldn't ever actually happen, if our ideas about supermodels are correct.
I love John Oliver's videos but each one throws me into a crisis and makes me feel like I need to dedicate my life's work to solving that issue 😅
I know, right?!
Couldn't have described the feeling better myself haha
I'm already planning my presidency campaign for 2024 (the first election year I can legally be elected president.)
I mean, we probably should, but holy shit he's throwing so many issues at us XD WHICH ONE DO WE FOCUS ON
lol good luck
In Germany, many cities have a "Tafel". That's an operation that collects food (that would otherwise be thrown away) from shops and restaurants and redistributes it to the poor. People who "qualify" (living on social security, small pension etc.) can register and once a week shop at the Tafel. One shopping bag full of food costs something like one Euro afaik. More should be done about food waste, but that is definitely a good step. And there were even some marketing campaigns by supermarkets for the imperfect fruit and veg. I believe that was done because of harvest shortages, but hopefully it raised awareness as well.
Shit, if a "harvest shortage" means "we might have to resort to eating a small portion of the perfectly fine food we usually reject on a purely aesthethic basis", it's not a shortage. It's a rationalization of production.
Amazing, the world must learn from you Germans.
More ? 1. shut down sick Common Agricultural Policy or turn it down from 911 to somewhere around 5, for starters ...
Funny You brought that up behause the Tafel does not Receive its supplies from super markets or restaurants. Germany is actually facing quite the same Food waste Problems as other neo liberal countries. Regards from Berlin.
@@amanpadamsey1705 That happened once. It didn't end well for Germany's allies.
ALL HAIL JOHN OLIVER AND HIS INCREDIBLE SINGING ABILITY!
Kerry Wichterich Also his spider fingers
Brandon Joseph We already hailed his spider fingers. Now hail his majestic voice damn it.
Kerry Wichterich We definitely need to have more veggies in our diets, especially things like that spinach that was there in the first place!
Kerry Wichterich And his raccoon imitation
Crazy Luigi dame
I grew up in a food-insecure household and knowing the amount of food the US wastes makes me genually angry. There were WEEKS where all we ate was beans because that was the cheapest thing we could afford, and things like milk and meat were luxuries that my sister and I could only get at school. Thankfully, were in a better living situation but stuff like this really nails home how much the US hates the poor for being poor and it isn't right.
Who else is on a John Oliver/Last Week Tonight binge watching spree? These videos are very informative.
Ashani Francis I am
how my 2016 summer went
I just sit at work and let the playlist go on. I just need to listen to it. very informative.
actually its not that informative. but its super funny and it actually tells truth and touches real problems which is nice.
tiesiog ba Say what these videos are hella informative. I do t watch the news much or read the paper as much. And Ive learned a good deal of things form these videos.
Here in the Netherlands we have something called "misfits" and it's basically fruit or vegetables that don't live up to the aesthetic standards, they're sold for a cheaper price in some supermarkets.
Ginger Jodie but still the large supermarket chains (in the Netherlands) throw away large portions of biologically produced vegetables, because they are obligated to sell them and people just don’t want them.
@@TheMrsannabel "Biologically produced vegetables" as opposed to.. magically conjured vegetables? And they throw them away "because they are obligated to sell them"?
dananskidolf hahaha maybe that’s a Dutch thing. No I meant with biologically produced without pesticides or GM. In the Netherlands it is mandatory for supermarkets to have a specific amount of those vegetables. But you can imagine that in discount stores people are not likely to buy them. So most of them are thrown away.
@@TheMrsannabelAhh I see.. It's rather odd to force availability of 'biological' products (English is organic which is no less confusing) people don't want.
Shut up chris
This british man is gonna fix america.
Top 3 list of things I never thought I would say.
Los Blancos they need to fix their own problems lol.
Los Blancos That's cute. I don't think you know how resistant to fixing we are. None, America is going down and we're taking all of you with us.
Livid Imp going down ?
The US has the world's biggest and most profitable economy.
Los Blancos he is a US citizen.
SANIC Lol if only that was true.
Having been in poverty and experiencing food insecurity at least once, it does more than bring you to tears. It is traumatizing. Having gone through poverty brain twice, I now have a disordered relationship with food that I have to work on healing every day. I actually started binge eating out of fear that there wouldn’t be enough food. Now that I have food (and we haven’t had food insecurity in four years), I am desperate to hoard it and eat as much as I can. It causes body image issues and hoarding tendencies. Food insecurity has long-term ramifications and having access to whole unprocessed foods during food insecurity is vital to preventing this. But as a country, no one cares.
I've watched a bunch of these now. Isn't it a little alarming to find out some of the most cutting journalism in the country comes from a foreign comedian, and not a serious news channel?
+tSp289 What's even more alarming is how screwed humanity is. Really depressing watching human beings screw over one another just to accumulate what I'm sure will just be an increasing number at a bank. There is no moral excuse that can allow some people to just keep on accumulating money to the point that anymore of it renders absolutely useless while other people, who just happen to be unfortunate, work all day long and yet are still not able to afford their daily necessities. Feels like we've reached a point of no return.
+Luay Sulaiman
Absolutely true. We need a system of flowing money, i.e. a system where money automatically loses value over time (like the Austrian town "Wörgl" did). Those are fees that can't be avoided, because you either pay them or your bills become entirely worthless. Therefore it would be wise to transfer various other taxes into that fee.
This way, money would become a mere tool for exchanging goods and services again. Hoarding can be done with gold, silver, houses, stocks or whatever, but money must stay on the market, because if nobody can pay each other, then unemployment rises even though it shouldn't need to.
HardcoreSolo
Well, in my experience that's what most people believe when I tell them about flowing money for the first time, but inflation is entirely different, because it is important where the money flows to.
Inflation flows money to the banks, because they are the ones who keep creating money out of thin air, increasing the total amount of money existing, thus causing inflation.
Flowing money flows to the government directly as taxes, who can then reinvest it. The total amount of money remains unchanged.
Inflation and flowing money are completely different. The former destroys people, the latter prevents unnecessary unemployment.
All countries who are in debt have a problem with people hoarding money. And I don't mean honest workers who put their well-earned pennies to the side for when they might need it,
HardcoreSolo
Flowing money was a pretty direct translation from a German term
This is flowing money: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demurrage_(currency)
Hoarding = Saving up WAY more than you're ever going to need.
Politicians waste money because if they don't then they get bribed, blackmailed or killed. And the people have to pay the debts the politicians were forced made. Banks loan money to the government and take interest for it, so it's the banks who control the government and not the other way round. But that's an entirely different story.
It always takes someone different to see through the Bullshit just like some immigrants stay off debt
I volunteer at a food bank. Here's a brief guide how long food is good AFTER its sell by date. Non acid canned veggies: 5 years, acid veggies (like tomatoes) 2 years. Pasta, 2 years. Canned meats 5 years. Cereal 18 months. Soup 2 years (tomato based 18 months).
Thank you
This is the basis of websites like Approved Food, which sells food past its Best Before. The food tastes just as good, it hasn't poisoned us yet, and it's cheaper than buying it in shops
I'm takin' a pic of this! You are a life saver.
I regularly eat my groceries way after the sell by date, cause I'm cheap, and I haven't gotten sick yet!
ahh.. so that means ricks crew were eating seriously old soup...
I love this man soo much
noooooooooooooooooo i wanna hump him too
noooooooooooooooooo Hes too good. Only one to hold a candle to Jon Stewart
noooooooooooooooooo ok
noooooooooooooooooo He's not gay so you'll never get to feel his penis inside of you.
zak15557 I'm a female hun :)
When I saw those peaches it pained me so much. After the last hurricane here there were so many oranges, lemons/limes and avocados fallen from their trees. Neighbors who didn't want the fruits allowed others to collect them. They weren't "perfect" looking either.
I’d much prefer they go to people who are in need of food, that’s clearly the best option in this case, but one thing they didn’t consider is leaving the peaches on the ground at least puts those nutrients and water resources back into the soil, which will beneift the trees and local fauna rather than having a grocery store throw it into a dumpster and sending it to a landfill.
Something to keep in mind, most fruit on a tree (especially with stone fruit) will not all ripen on the same day, at the same time. Stone fruit may ripen on a single tree over the course of 2-3 weeks from earliest piece of fruit to last piece of fruit. This gives growers a 10ish day window with optimal fruit maturity. It is costly to send labor through the field and is usually only profitable for 1-2 pickings in that 10-day window. Because of that, growers attempt to pick at the optimal times when the most fruit can be harvested and make it to market. This means the earliest ripening fruit is too ripe to process and must be discarded if it hasn't already fallen naturally from the tree.
My aunt and Uncle in India live in a farmhouse outside the city's limits. They have monkeys visiting in the summers. Before, these monkeys would swarm the neighbouring farms and destroy plantations there. The angry farm owners used to shoot and maim these monkeys with the help of air gun pellets. So, my Uncle started to buy fruits and vegetables that were overripe or dented slightly here and there (which don't fly off their shelves at all) from the city market's vendors (for a very discounted price) and used that leftover farm produce to feed the monkeys. Today, they have a whole army of monkeys that still visit their area but only now, they know where food is available and hence, there is a peaceful coexistence of both of our species there.
This was a pretty cool story, thanks.
That is how you win at life
Ever since I started feeding the crows néxt to my tomatoes and cucumbers and strawberries, they've left them alone.
Even better, after +/- 3-4 years of this, I've taught them how to trade sticks, feathers and screws for the (little bits of old) bread. Last year, one crow/jackdaw brought me a screw with two bolts on it, to trade for the cornflakes. I've kept it, together with the nerfgun-bullet that he brought after that.
Widdekuu91 brooo I wanna have a symbiotic relationship with wild crows you makin me jealous
@@docdexter5660
Haha, you can try the same, I bet they'll eventually start bringing you stuff. Just always place your bread in the same place and take (whatever it is they bring in return, eventually) into your house. You can always throw it away in the bin if it's gross, but it teaches them that there's a trade going on.
There's a girl on RUclips that had a whole box full of stuff, she had a huge amount of crows that brought her stuff.
And someone in the comments (below her video) mentioned that his crows, after so many years of being fed scraps, have started caring for the humans.
One day he had a breakdown and appareantely crows flew to his brother (who was practically his neighbour) and knocked on the window with their beaks.
I've also noticed that my jackdaws get restless if I feel sick, but if I make an audiable noise or yell; 'I'm fine! Go away!' they're convinced I'm not dead and they leave.
ÓH and I once met a very young jackdaw in the city (my city is tiiiiiiny, I was 3 minutes away from my house) and after I greeted it, it sat nearby on a pole and 'waited' for a treat.
I could stand very nearby and gave it some bits of biscuit I had in my bag.
It flew away, came back for some more treats (absolutely not shy, but very scared if another human walked past) and that evening (in summer) it went to my roof-gutter, (the exact same one, I know for sure, the little one) and after eating some of the bread, it placed itself in the big waterfilled vase and bathed for an hour or two.
The window was open, so I heard him splashing and the 'ticking' of his nails against the vase. Next day there was; 'Kaa-h- Kaa-h' because the rest was upset the (bath)water was all over the place and there was nothing left to drink. xD
I've drawn the little jackdaw, floating around in the vase. I only heard him and saw his shadow, but I can imagine how he was happily bobbing in the luke-warm water, enjoying the sight over the city and all the little lights.
For millennia, humanity struggle to produce enough food for basic survival. Now we waste so much we can fill stadiums. Dang.
And yet people still struggle for food.
To be fair, that's the fault of organizations like Green Peace that go to nations struggling to provide food for their citizens, like Zimbabwe, and telling those governments that the food donations they're about to get are evil mutant GMOs that will give them the gay cancer and that they should turn the food down and starve to death instead.
Go back to watching CNN fake news
and yet, there are millions dying from hunger every year :) f*ck the system
This show has turned out to be one of my “fact checking” sources. The research is top notch and the host is an intelligent and articulate person, thanks John👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
You'd be wrong to think every statement in this show is accurate tho.
@@anjayl Yeah, it's still satire.
He conflates use by and sell by dates. You should definitely not ignore the former
@@anjayl Point out the inaccuracies and link sources that prove it please, I'd love to see it.
@@Deimos2k5
Use by dates is silly. Cans where invented to preserve food, and they do that very well. And as long they do not bulge you can be rather sure they are still edible.
You sometimes even have use by dates on waterbottles.
I remember this episode well, because my housemates at the time were "dumpster-divers" - people who make use of the perfectly fine "unsaleable" food left out by supermarkets - and it helped me be okay with eating the meals they cooked.
Ugly fruit is great for cobbler, pie, flavored homemade ice cream, or anything other than just eating it whole in its natural state.
It's also great for eating it whole in its natural state! It's not any worse, it's just ugly!
@@Poldovico
Depending on the fruit, an otherwise non-edible part could now be easily ripp-offable, or the edible parts more accessible. Variation is the spice of life.
Dana Evans you know or you could just eat it.
As a p/t dumpster diver, I pulled out a sh!tload of quality bell peppers one time. I roasted them all and made a killer roasted pepper in olive oil dish that I then put over the sh!tloads of sourdough bread they threw out in the same dumpster. It was divine and FREE!
@@DMills-un1tl and urs too
the only thing I have to say is, WOW.
Anil Nair I concur.
knidrew The crazy thing is, people fight wars over food :(
Anil Nair I hate to say it but I do throw out a ton of food I live by myself and dairy products just dont lost very long
***** everything is In bulk in this country it seems
mattmopar440 Same here. I think I will make more of an effort to reduce waste.
You know, even if that food is not looking aestheticaly great, it still could be used in different food products, just make some stupid jam or beer out of it, or put it in other products...
They do that with some things.
But they need to do more.
I'd drink it.
EB DA GAMER Well, here in Europe is plenty of beers with different flavours, we called them radlers. The original beer was with lemon, however I`ve drunk maybe dozen of other different fruit flavours. Last year I`ve drunk some Belgian or Netherland beer with cherry flavour which was strong as fuck, but delicious too... Besides, there are still poor people, even in west, and I bet that those people could use some state provided food help, these people do not to tend to be picky about how their peach is going to look like. It`s just mind bogling when you read all that crazy shit about how much hungry people do live on this planet and how much of food is wasted on yearly period, meanwhile in war-torn conflict zones are missing basic supplies from food to clothes and drugs... but who cares, I guess ?
The government don't care the big corporations don't care it's all about the money. Tibor Nemcok
I just love how the burger was so big that they very badly CGI'd the model "eating" it. Look closely...like what she did was impossible.
Yes, she bit behind it, conveniently covering her teeth. Opening your mouth wide enough to bite a gigantic burger, would make your mouth look like a hyena's.
I had to see it again. Too true!
that's terrifying lol
Absurdly CGI'ed...horrific...
If school had been like this show, I think I would have learned something.
I've learned more about history, economics and science watching this show and Adam Ruins Everything than I ever did in pubic school. Makes me wonder why public school is even necessary.
So true. I know the calculus I had to learn and pass has helped me in life so many times..................
When will anyone actually ever use algebra or trigonometry unless they're teaching it to daydreaming kids??
If you have a good answer for this, please, PLEASE tell me
Prime Minister Fluffy Rose I agree with you, but you also need to know what you want to do at that point, which some people don't until even after high school.
there r some teachers that make school entertaining depending on the subject
My boyfriend and I struggle to eat. And when you work at a food place and the management tells you to throw away all the extra food at the end of the night, it really sucks.
I hope you are in a better situation now
in iran we either recycle the food(turn into chiken food or cow food) or we give it to the people in need
there is close to nothin called food waste in IRAN
At least you and your boyfriend has sex. Who cares about food, right? Fuck you.
i would just eat when no one else was looking. find out which managers cared and which didnt. strategic eating got me through that shit mcds job
@@BriAngel476 So on the one hand, the US is wasting that much food. On the other hand, it's making minimum wage employees do the roundaboout equivalent of dumpster diving just to eat. All the while having a massive obesity problem.
The American fucking Dream.
Hey John,
Would you consider doing an episode that is just a follow-up to a bunch of your major issues over the last couple years? Have any of the issues you've covered had significant improvements since your coverage?
Captain_Nerdrage I would also like follow up stories.
It would be amazing if something good happens.
I would vote for this, wish I could ask him personally
Me too.
google "The John Oliver Effect"
Not really much change
my mom grew up poor, so it was instilled into me from a young age to not waste any food, no matter what. i'm glad to see john covering it
My folks grew up during the Depression.
They taught me the same thing.
Me 3 auntie taught me this. I never lost this.
Man!... I used to work in a baseball stadium (cleaning up the stands after games late at night) I nearly cried a tear every time I picked up a full, untouched, meal off the ground to pitch it in the garbage bag I hauled away. -- A bunch of spoiled upper /middle class folks who simply did not care about the food they wasted nor the big dollars they spent for it! I pouted every night knowing that -- Somewhere across America there was someone who would probably fight to have that meal for themselves just to survive! :'(
So the House passed a bill that was a positive thing. Then the Senate gutted the bill, renamed it, didn't change the number and then passed it.That's congress for ya.
Broken system
THIS is the most key thing of this clip actually. The system is fucking retarded if anything like this is even possible.
Again, HOW THE HECK WAS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE?
It is the same thing that allowed the Afordable Care Act to get through the house. why is it even possible? because senators like circumventing constitutional protections.
Yeah, because fuck the disabled, those too poor to afford insurance and those with pre-existing conditions, am I right?
America, where you're either obese or starving.
This is America. There is no in between.
that's reflects the wealth gap. you're either really rich or really poor.
that's reflects the wealth gap. you're either really rich or really poor.
Right? Me and my fiancee both work full time with a baby on the way. Not poor enough to get foodstamps and not rich enough to rent an apartment with more than one bedroom. and every single person i work with is in the same situation. Except the dude who owns the company. Its pathetic.
It's actually less simple than that. Poor people, particularly children, tend to have higher obesity rates. This is because healthy food is expensive. You can get fast food meal for 3-5$, but to get an actual meal it costs 5-10$ per person. Poor parents are also more likely to have to spend more time out of the house, for various reasons but mostly work, which makes it a lot easier to pick up a quick meal. What tips the odds possibly the most is that children like tasty drinks. In order to fill this need parents often buy cheap soda instead of juice, or milk. All this together actually makes poor people more likely to be obese, and starving.
Not exactly a happy message.
John Oliver's show and all the people who work on it are amazing. I laugh and cry and yell and feel despair and hope all in one episode.
I pray we all do better, sooner rather than later.
Please consider doing more than praying to a metaphysical entity to solve this problem; it is not working. I am hungry and have to struggle for food. Thank you for your prayers.
I grew up in Iowa in the 1950s. Both of my parents grew up during the Depression. There was zero food waste in my house then. Nor now.
I grew up in the Netherlands. My dad still cleans the peanutbutter-jar out with a bit of bread on a fork.
A combination of having lived without a lot of food and the natural cheapness that comes with being born in the Netherlands.
Either way, I feel ashamed when I throw something away, even when it has gone mouldy and hás to be thrown out, like yoghurt.
@@Widdekuu91
if it grows mouldy i throw it out without shame, and make a mental note of buying less next time(waste is waste).
but overall i try not to let any food go to waste.
there are people on earth who dont have enough food.
and every fruit i buy, is one fruit that nobody else will be able to eat, so i better make sure it's not in vain.
I live in Canada and we eat reasonably sized food portions to avoid gorging and food waste.
For people who grew up in the hard ship of recession and saw immense suffering would know the pain of naming their kid Geoff. Instead of jeff
Yeah don’t buy that.
"hold on John, what if I'm an asshole who couldn't give a shit about America's hungry families or the long term viability of life on earth"Mr. Trump thank you for watchingI died laughing there
+Kevin De Souza I went "Oh shiiiiiiiiiiiiit :O :D :O :D"
+Kevin De Souza I bet one of the dislikes is trump himself X3
+Kevin De Souza It is probably the funniest quote from the sketch...
this was in 2015 even before the race. now it's 2017 and... he's president which makes it so ironic
It was like everybody knew what Trump was before even he was candidate...but elected him anyway, because woman.
I live close to the best grocery store in America IMO (Wegmans) and the amount of food they throw out from their hot bar every night (Gourmet indian, Chinese, American etc) is astounding. I actually asked the manager once why don't they have a homeless shelter pick it up and they said they did not want to get sued if someone got sick. I think they just dont want to be bothered
Mbandi Music no, its actually so they don't get sued.
john yungbluth Or it could be because donating to food banks is pretty expensive, like John said at the end of the video.
john yungbluth It's not really. They probably think they will but they won't because they're covered by the emerson act. Which states "(1) LIABILITY OF PERSON OR GLEANER.-A person or gleaner
shall not be subject to civil or criminal liability arising from
the nature, age, packaging, or condition of apparently wholesome
food or an apparently fit grocery product that the person
or gleaner donates in good faith to a nonprofit organization
for ultimate distribution to needy individuals."
john yungbluth You don't get sued if you give to charity. Didn't you watch the video?
Mbandi Music The employees take some of the food home, but most of it goes to the garbage bin.
Having lived in a homeless shelter I can say we heard that same excuse (If we give it to you we can be sued)by many an organization. Quick Trip did donate a truck load of sandwiches to the homeless shelters but they were one of the few that would donate food. Groups that feed the homeless on the streets also often admit to being afraid they'd be sued (groups tell these folks they can be sued for giving food to the homeless).
I have hear stores say they throw it away out of the same fear (and I have met dumpster divers who will gladly claim that same food as they know it is perfectly good).
Harvesters used to get the food that was left over after Kansas City Chiefs games but one person supposedly got sick and suddenly Harvesters stopped picking up the food (all of it was already cooked and consisted of hamburgers, hot dogs, foot long hot dogs and brats with the occasional chicken tenders tossed in. No fries, no popcorn, no buns unless they asked for them). All the food was taken immediately to their nearby warehouse and frozen that night.
Nowadays not even stadium workers are allowed to take the food home, it all goes into the trash (well, Kauffman Stadium, home of the KC Royals is a bit looser on employees taking stuff home).
Bartle Hall (part of the KC Convention Center) also throws away a lot of food from their concession stands.
I am disgusted at how much food is thrown away especially knowing that many of those same workers could use that food.
To be fair, for some things I understand that it has to be thrown. I remember seeing a news story where apple juice got contaminated because the fruit used was picked from the ground and got exposed to animal feces (I think specifically deer feces), so for some products you have to be careful. Similarly, there's a makeup store which destroys returned products if it's been used before throwing it out, because the customer who returned it has used it, however makeup isn't a necessity and the stores should improve their return policy so customers don't buy something knowing they can return it if they use it and don't like it.
However for items that can be sold to customers but weren't and won't last for the next day should 100% be donated or let employees take it
Then thank a lawyer for the problem
What may be considered not acceptable visually as far as fruits and vegetables are concerned can be made into frozen fruits and vegetable. Once they are cleaned and cut up, if they taste good, what they looked like prior makes no difference. Soups can be made from a lot of the vegetables, etc. To just let it sit and rot is a sin. In addition, there are a lot of poor in the world who would love to get this food. There must be a way to make things better for everyone.
Very wise woman, your mom. Waste is a shame and to be avoided as much as possible. Also, I have found that not buying too much at at a time helps. If one has too much and does not get around to using it while it is in good shape, then one can freeze a lot of stuff and use it in soups, vegetable and fruit blends, stews, etc. I have kale, watermelon, bananas and other fruits and veg in bags to use.
I feel that is a great idea and they could get volunteers to sort things out in order for that to happen. In particular, seniors who need to be doing something and being of service is healthy, people who run soup kitchens, various churches might have folks interested in doing this type of thing. There are resources, if one bothers to really look.
Once the stores had an organized way to get it done and the volunteers to do the work, it would run automatically without the store having to invest much time. It could be a win/win for everyone.
Just a thought. Hugs.
Ok let's go with ur plan: but what would be the incentives for volunteers (cuz not enough ppl care enough or there are better volunteer options)? I say when this becomes effective to also add scholarships for volunteering in this effort. To get America to care about volunteering, the job has to be moral, easy, and rewarding. Rewarding shouldn't be part of volunteering but it is, especially for teenagers. That's my two cents.
Jessie SX Exactly, it's a win-win for everyone! The colleges get to see if their applicants are hard working and care about the world they live in, and the students are rewarded with Education that will determine their entire life! Also the markets like you said would look like the good guys, and that creates more incentive to volunteer there! Thnx for agreeing with me!
Duncan Eigg i think it's a 'false fear' that people wouldn't contribute to volunteer work... i think the volunteer infrastructure is just so shoddy that people contribute energy through being coerced which brings the wrong people then they aren't really encouraged or challenged while they're there so the process wilters
if a self-sustaining process could be put in place i think it would take out a lot of middle-man overhead, that is really what government should be (defeats the point if you get paid too much) : www.volunteermatch.org/ is a good site for volunteer work
"Dog balls are delicious"
~John Oliver
Ew
+Joey Scoggins According to my 3 boys, this is true.
I'd like your comment but you have a perfect 100 likes so ya
Now you have 105 likes.
I hope you never experience poverty.
Wait... this video is from 2015... Trump wasn't even running for president back then. J.O. dissed that guy before it was cool.
AnalKarl der vierte In NYC almost everyone knew what a stupid clown he was/is going back to the 80s. His name was/is synonymous with dumbass there. So, it has been cool (normal) to dis him for a long while.
Nope, Trump had announced his running a month before. :/
Lol this guy thinks American campaigns DON'T start a year before they actually start!
You know we are already discussing 2020 candidates and it’s early 2019. 2015 was that year for 2016s election.
New Yorkers always make fun of trump and always have
My household after seeing this 5 years ago made efforts to cut back on food waste. It has saved us money and we eat healthier. We should acquire unsold food to go to charity as some sort of tax break.
Watching this and thinking about our Indian households. Food doesn't go waste here. Indian moms won't buy and cook more food than needed and if for some reason they cook more than consumed, they will make you eat leftovers till eternity or till they are over -Whichever happens first :D
You are painfully wrong. India does have bad waste and food management, instead of households it's the storage areas where the food goes to waste.
alienkishorekumar Your comment raises the issues of storage and distribution logistics in food supply and food security. That is usually ignored by the policy decision makers because it questions that use of technology, chemicals, and modified bio-organisms to increase supply, which seems to be the preferred solution of western (particularly USA based) bio-chemical corporations that have political and economic clout. Another issue, but certainly not the only other one, is corporate enforced expansion of mono-culture foods for export or non-food agricultural products which ends up eliminating land that had previously been available for growing crops for local consumption. Especially in poorer countries that have land and good climate, the result of expanded mono-culture for export is typically increased agricultural output AND less food available for consumption by the country's own population.
alienkishorekumar for God's sake, READ WHAT I WROTE!
megha sharma
Yes, but a home's environmental concern means nothing when you are paying several folds more for the same thing due to stagnation and bad practices of storage? Do you want to be so stupid in ignoring such critical issues?
If yes, then don't mind my comment. I'm just pointing out the reality.
megha sharma As it should be! I feel the same way, I get so angry when people in my family refuse to eat leftovers!
That broccoli looked beautiful ....WTH? Why was it in the landfill? :(
Capitalism and its notions perceived by the public that if something isn't "pristine" you shouldn't pay for it, just throw it out
probably past it's best before date.
Some jackass put it in the cold room underneath the shelf with the raw meat.
@@peterrose5373 that really annoys me. Sometimes my grandma will put something back on a shelf it wasn't from and I have to take it to where it was from. She doesn't do it with food items but it still annoys me.
@@lisahenry20 More than being annoying, it invites cross contamination, and I *THINK that food safety regs say you have to throw it out then, even if there's no visible evidence of dripping.
This guy! My country needs a guy like this to open the nation eyes!
Marush Denchev You are right every country needs a john oliver! Too bad that in a lot of countries they are not allowed to defame or talk bad about certain organizations or governments in those countries.
He's like the English John Stewart!
***** oh right, he's one of THOSE Jon's, okay
Marush Denchev Every country needs a john oliver
N0 Shrapnel Nay, Jon Steward pushes an agenda, Oliver pushes facts. Only guy who can make comedy about a single topic for half an hour.
Retail CEOs: It's too dangerous to donate this food to starving people.
Also retail CEOs: No you can't have a mask while serving hundreds of people during a global pandemic, that would be silly!
It's not the retail CEOs, it's the insurance companies that don't allow it to be given away.
Remember the meat packing employees in the early days of the pandemic who were forced to stay on the job despite the plants being super spreaders? Be sure to watch John's video about the meat packing industry. Boycott meat!
A pretty good summary of the problem. However, Mr. Oliver should have mentioned what is arguably food waste's single largest contributor, agricultural subsidies that encourage the overproduction of commodity crops.
C
True! But look at it from the farmers' point of view
@@lazyhomebody1356 define farmer. I am pretty sure there are only specific types of farming and crops that are subsidized. corn and soy beans would be commodity crops they are so over produced that corn is excessivly over fed to cows making them toxic because on the bottom line and other corn is turned into frankin foods it is ultered into hundreds of food products then listed at ten or 15 items on a food list and is creating an imbalance in food health if who you are talking about is the farmers that monocrop acres and acres use pesticides and chemical fertilizers and use combines that is a different farmer than who I call a farmer they are both farmers but it is slightly misleading to use the same tittle or people running factory farming of animals
@@gettintherejanice6216 Agea ago, I wrote a long paper on soybean subsidies (?). I meant farmer as crop grower. I Texas, we would call the other cattlemen.
@@gettintherejanice6216 I nominate this guy for the longest run-on sentence in history!
Wait did we all just glaze over the fact that there hiding international policy in food tax bills
One word, Republicans.
Once your politicians start pulling sh*t like that, I think it's time to acknowledge that you're being ruled by the sith empire.
As a Canadian I was shocked to find out how many different types of captain crunch there are...We only have one.
theDENIMMAN cptn crunch of the month club
Do they have Cheerios in the states? Because we have too many goddamn varieties of Cheerios here in Canada
theScholarlyWalrus Haha, yes we have Cheerios! It's an American brand, and it's manufactured in New York, iirc. Cheerios has been around forever-quick Google search says 1941.
theScholarlyWalrus yup, frosted cheerios 4 lyf
theDENIMMAN I'm from the U.S., and my town must not have many types since I only recognized a few of the types.
I live in Sweden, and over here I've noticed that some brands have changed the labels from "Best used before" to "Best used before, but often good after".
Nice
Many in Norway have started doing the same.
i'm still amazed how it was legal to change a bill that was made specifically to incentivise businesses donate food into something relating to border control and Israeli relations.
seems like they could pass a lot of shit under the guise of good intentions. like "here's a bill that we advertise as being good for consumers, producers and investors. once it passes, we're just going to change the ever living shit out of this so we can invade Cuba" or some shit.
Yeah isn't the point that both congress and senate have to agree to pass a bill? If the senate can change the content after congress agreed without them agreeing to the changes then it defeats the point.
Yeah I’d like to see an episode investigating that, that sounds so wrong...
I was personally less interested in the legality of such, and more with which absolute nutjob thought that this particular bill about FOOD DONATIONS was the candidate to get emptied out and filled back up with border control. Because those two things correlate PERFECTLY
cynicysem wan't be the answer to imperial mechanisem it goes like back to the start.
@@stoontechguy If the Senate changes the content of a bill in any way, large or small, then the House of Representatives has to approve the bill again. That's what happened here, too!
Watching John make fun of Donald Trump before the shitshow that is the 2016 election gives me life.
Better make fun of President Orangeface now while its still legal to do so.
I admit I get most of my news information from John Oliver. He pulls no punches and breaks things down. I understand more of what's going on and it's entertaining.
We are getting higher quality, far more in-depth news along with some laughs from Oliver. Other "news" more like op/ed outlets might as well pack their bags.
You should get most news from written sources.
@@CIARUNSITE
See JO: Journalism
Secular Talk is better. John Oliver just did a Venezuela propaganda piece, debunked by "Empire Files".
RS Johnson John is great but all your news?
I've been drinking milk WAAAYYY past the "sell by" date for years. Not once have I had a problem. If it smells bad or is chunky, I don't drink it. People think I'm crazy that I trust my nose more than some stamp on the carton that's half worn off by the time it reaches the supermarket's shelves. As Toucan Sam used to say: "Follow Your Nose!"
Thats what I always say....open it up...if it smells funny...toss it!
Ohhh good for you! Your trophy is in the mail
Baka... milk can rot without it becoming stinky-dinky or chunky.
(Not to defend the false early expiry dates, of course)
I make 🧀 instead.
Don't forget we have eyes and a brain too. We don't all have to think INSIDE the box, now do we?... Ehehe
I was going to make a joke about sodium in our food but
Na
Nice one!
AJ King It was already thrown away though.
J Lal I'm pretty salty I didn't come up with that one myself.
J Lal You're a horrible person.
J Lal I think a joke like that would make people salt-y NYUKNYUKNYUK
For the love of God, SOMEONE PLEASE make an animated GIF of John Oliver doing his raccoon impression!
That was a very good segment. Though my fave, well most grateful one, was the one he did recently on transgender issues and rights. He nailed it all in his own special fashion.
or his Depardieu impression ;)
"The uploaded has not made this video available in your country."
Bloody knew it. Screw you, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver A pox on your houses.
Leonard Sultana Check out this, www.allthingsgym.com/bypass-youtubes-video-is-not-available-in-your-country/
It might point you in the direction to let you view it. Hopefully. It's a good segment. Otherwise, google up free vpn to view US content. Granted, the free ones track you but you are only using it for this.
Barring all that... Well, if you are using a desktop machine or laptop you can check kickass torrents -kat.cr/
Or ye olde pirate bay (though rumors are since the raid earlier this year that the FBI is running the show.)
I normally do not condone torrenting things, but sometimes it's the only way sadly.
Bonnie Burton Please delete this torrenting stuff if it's against your posting rules. You won't hurt my feelings, I understand such things. If you do so I shan't ever again post such info or recommendations. Heck, on an anime group on FB that I run I don't let anyone post direct torrent links. If someone is motivated they can find it themselves.
I love anime and try every venue I can to legally stream it rather than torrent it. Or if it has an awesome rep and is out on DVD I take the plunge and buy it.
Sidebar: I hate geographical restrictions. In this day and age they really are short sighted.
John Oliver for President.
If Cruz is eligible, surely to Reagan John is too,
In my country, the supermarkets just peels and chops those not aesthetically pleasing fruits and package them into bite-sized pieces for a fraction of its original worth. If they do that, I bought what I can, put it in a freezer and blend it to make a perfectly natural smoothie.
In fact, I bought most of what the store had yesterday. I can now make apple and mango smoothies twice a day.
As was mentioned in the video, they have to hire more people to chop up said fruit,buy packaging blah blah its not beneficial to a company who's only goal is to make money.
Dar How The video says they have to do that to donate it. If they sell it, they can make it viable.
Aldrich Allen Barcenas in my country, that diced fresh fruit and veggies usually sold as "salad". If I'm lazy, I just grab that "salad", a mineral water, a sandwich or fried chicken, sit in a park and eat that. Total cost? 50% less than eat in McDonalds.
Aldrich Allen Barcenas also unsold "salad" was sold to their (supermarket) worker with discount or as part as their food allowance.
Dar How Most of the big stores have a lot of staff. Most of them don't do much besides cleaning and assisting customers (which often customers here can manage themselves). In down times, they chop fruits and vegetables.
My parents were Senior Gleaners in the 80s. They picked up discarded produce in the fields after the harvest was finished and donated the food to food banks.
Gleaning should be promoted n welcomed more on all sides
This segment was released in 2015 and I've watched it 20+ times since. This year, I got a job at a grocery store and holy hell, a TON of product is wasted. I quit my job and never want to work in that industry again. Shelves have to be full to keep customers buying, but food doesn't sell fast enough to justify filling shelves with highly perishable items (bakery items). Corporate won't allow us to discount product so it can be sold and eaten. We donate some, but local shelters don't have the ability to pick up perishables and it's a lot of labor to organize it.
here's me, responding to a 10 month old comment on a 4 year old video.
Regardless. Here in Denmark, there was the same issue with stores throwing out bakery items every evening because "the next day it needs to be fresh"
But it wasn't actually solved by a law passing, for a healthy change of pace. Chain-stores began to making the bread and cakes 50% off past 7 pm. Usually there isn't that much left and due to that discount, it typically gets sold fast. But its damn nice as a student to get bread n cake I can stretch for a whole week at half price.
I work for a grocery chain and we do the same thing (discarding and baking fresh daily), except we have representatives from a local church who come to pick up those “defective” items every morning. We also have a food bank that sends a truck to pick up approved perishable donations twice a week, with the rest unfortunately being disposed of at the store. Non-perishable “damages” are sent back to our distribution centers, and I honestly have no idea what happens from there, though I’d like to. I’m sure some things are salvaged (e.g. repackaging/relabeling otherwise undamaged product), but in the case of, say, a dented can of vegetables, where the risk of botulism is a concern, I’m not sure what they at the DC would do with it besides sending it to a landfill.
I'm so sad that this is still relevant today... the US government is obviously not going to do anything. I'm going to see if there's anything I can do in my local community.
This is why so many middle-class people in NYC dumpster-dive.
I honestly don't understand why people like to live in New York so much
Randy Williams
Freegans--THAT'S the term I was looking for!
+Bobby Ferg The suburbs aren't so bad.
Suburbs $
do people out there actually eat out of the trash?
I eat exclusively from Walmart Dumpsters. I eat like a vegatarian king.
***** It's a lot harder to eat like a vegetarian king if you're homeless due to lack of kitchen access. When I went to biweekly freegan gatherings, I didn't meet homeless people, but I met a lot of people who hate waste and don't want to pay for things you can get for free.
***** library bruh
***** he is not homeless there are people who dumpster dive for food because you can get perfectly good food in a dumster look it up
samoanj Still seems beyond sketchy to me...
Oh, damn. Proof of point right there.
+Xipo86 Why so judgmental?
When i worked for panera in college, any baked item that wasnt sold was packed up and given to various organizations that help the hungry. Each org had their own night to come pick it up. It was a small way they gave back and reduced a lot of food waste. Thats the only food company ive ever worked for or heard of that does something like that
My kingdom hall had that.
Buy a juicer, it's so easy to throw almost outdated produce into it and slug it down. My city collects food waste every week, they make soil out of it and sell it low cost to landscapers etc. Our food waste stays in town to foster more plant life and scenery :)
***** Portland Oregon
Admiralty86 i ❤❤❤ oregon
"Almost outdated produce"? Even outdated food is often still perfectly fine to eat, so taking food that's _not even_ reached that limit yet and using it as soil is kinda making me feel uneasy. Food is _way_ too precious to use it the same way we use literal bullshit.
Although I'll definitely agree that using it that way is at least better than throwing it away with no use for it whatsoever, but that's not a particularly high bar...
Admiralty86 bravo to yr town my friend. u get to held your head high. i wanna move there 😊
No !!!!! That’s not the answer ! You begin by educating yourselves and your children not to buy more than you can eat and not to serve more than you can eat either. Have a weekly check of all your groceries and perishable foods and before their expiry dates, pile up your car and go and donate it to families who can use it.
Why don’t people grow up, for God’s sakes ???? “buy a juicer” !!!!!?!??!
This immediately reminded me of that bit from "1984" where the book-within-a-book, "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism", pointed out that superstates (such as the US) will regularly and knowingly destroy large percentages of their surplus to intentionally create scarcity.
"The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism" and who is the author?
Fernando Delgado are you being sarcastic? If not, 1984 was referring to a movie so the book he is talking about is fictional.
@@oncoucharrest5910 I was kidding with the original poster because the name of the author of that book, in Orwell's book 1984, is Emanuel Goldstein, which is the original posters user name.
Fernando Delgado oh ok lol, you never know now :)
O'Brian: "I wrote that book"
WTF was with that conversation at 3:39?
"It brings you to tears."
"Yeah."
"Why?"
Are you serious? What do you mean "Why?" Is there really something that vague and confusing about a mother crying about not being able to feed her kids?
That's how an interview works. No assumptions.
It also accents important points (ie, the emotional impact of their dire situation). It's a good thing to ask.
@@jdjxn Zero sympathy here. Her priorities are all fucked up. It shows people who can barely put food on the table keep having kids..... she has money for mc donalds and that giant drink.. A box of pasta and some sauce is $1.50 Seriously.. unless that is water no kid should have a soda that goddamn big. Diabeetus
@@spaghetti9845 Holy assumptions, Batman, stuff like this makes me wish Hell was a real place. You deserve your own apartment there.
@@spaghetti9845 When I saw that, I immediately knew there were going to be assholes like you out there to spot it. Have you considered that the interview crew might have bought the kids lunch in return for the favor of this woman putting her extreme vulnerability on television for all to see?
I once had some business dealings with a 5 star hotels and daily they would throw out carts of beautiful expensive cakes that they couldn't sell.
A cleaner (low income) there once told me that he couldn't stand the waste and brought home a couple of cakes himself, it was perfectly fine and absolutely delicious.
The next day he received a notice from management saying that if he did it again, he would he terminated.
When he questioned about it, they said that the cakes were already *one day old* and could cause someone to be sick, they simply don't want to be sued.
I work in my college dining hall and whenever I get a dish washing shift I am shocked by how much people throw away. Like last time I was there at the end of my shift I was cleaning a tray that had a hamburger, three cookies, a unopened package of poptarts, and an apple. Besides the poptarts all of that food had like one or two bites taken out of it. I am always confused on why people would spend so much money on this food to literally only eat a bite out of it and then just throw it away. And that is just one example that isn't even that extreme with me getting that much stuff uneaten commonly enough where I am now for the most part getting used to it.
I'm just thankful the college dining hall has a compost so at least something comes out of the food in the end but it is so unfortunate that people spend so much and care so little.
because food in dining halls is often times pre portioned. many people would take less if they could.
I am shocked that students in your college don't clean their trays and dishes themself. In my country everyone takes their tray to a dedicated place where you throw what you havent eaten to one garbage bin, napkins and stuff go to other bin, you put plates on a stack of plates and trays on a stack of trays. When the table is full someone from the kitchen comes and takes everything in the washing rome where they put it in washing machine and clean it. And this place is usually located so that servers can see you when you go clean your tray and you get a subconcious feeling that they Will see you throwing away a lot of food n.d you simply eat more of it. Belive it or not but they remember when you trow away a lot of food and next time they serve you, they say something like: "You better eat all this time." It is not a problem if you can't eat it because you got a big portion or you simply aren't hungry but it is wrong to say:"That mashed potato tastes like it is artificially made so I will not eat it". Cooks actually make it from potatoes and it is disrespectful to them if it is not eaten.
Households that end up wasting 1/3 of their food should put 1/3 of their weekly shop in the food donation bin before they even leave the supermarket
agreed, so many families just have leftovers that sit in the fridge and rot. why have that much excess, when one of your neighbors may even struggle with food?
I'm not criticizing,I'm just suggesting a possible solution.
I cant afford to buy food that i don't eat so you're right,I don't have any knowledge of the situation.And it's 'make love to' not 'fuck' don't be so crude.:3 *****
+Mikurunrun I keep running into your comments on John Oliver videos, Miku! I've become quite a fan of this guy because of you
Speedy Dog Speedy! glad you enjoy his vids \o/
I don't get why people would throw away packages and packages of spinach, lettuce, broccoli and _kale_. _Kale_? Dude, isn't that _expensive_ like hell? Why buy it if you're not gonna eat it?
+Heart of the Stars It is mostly restaurants and grocery stores that throw away food, not individual consumers. Of course you can still blame the consumers, because they are the ones who forced all the absurdly overprotective health laws upon the restaurants & grocery stores that thus force them to throw away so much perfectly good food.
For example, in Florida, those sandwiches you see at 7-11? One day shelf life. If someone doesn't buy them within 24 hours of being put on the shelf they go in the dumpster. Having worked at a 7-11 as a teenager, I can say with certainty that well over 90% of them get tossed out because of this. Do they really go bad after only one day? Of course not - I used to dump them into boxes and took them straight to the homeless shelter. They toss them out because the laws, written in fear & completely ignorant to any actual science, make them do it.
+Heart of the Stars I mean like, silver kayle is pretty expensive. Kappa
+Heart of the Stars It's also because people buy to much at once and then have to throw it away, when it actually turns bad. I myself bought two pounds of carrots last week, but they started to mold before I could eat them all.
Rock Golem
Some places have already tried that but it always meets with political resistance. Poor people lower property values. Low property values reduce tax revenues. That's why both parties routinely try to ban services for the poor and are constantly trying to dump their homeless population into their neighbors' yards. All politicians love gentrification as much as they hate the poor. At best they might pretend to care for a photo op during an election cycle, but I assure you that if they had their way everyone in America below the poverty line would end up in gas chambers. They see the poor as vermin, not people, and certainly never as citizens with rights.
I tend to but a bag, forget I have it, get another, forget that one and but another, and then find the first bag all rotted...
I work at Panera Bread and every night we donate our breads, bagels and bakery items to various local charities in each area, we also donate food to different organizations.
Yep bread is different than produce
That trump joke was deadly
Brandon Collazos yeah and there was water in mouth at that point.
#feelthebern #berniesanders2016
The friendly tone and casual way he name-dropped Trump was FLAWLESS.
Brandon Collazos Reckt
Brandon Collazos Yeah, but the reason he gave later on saving money wouldn't work on Trump, since Trump is. and I quote, "really rich". Regardless, the joke was priceless.
My job at a grocery store is painful because of how much expired crap I throw away. At least at my grocery store we give food waste to pig farmers to feed the pigs. I guess they get killed and sold in my same store and then get thrown away too.
+CHase Gensler
Do the pigs end up eating the unusable pig meat? Or do they feed that to a different animal?
+carultch does it matter? a pig will eat just about anything
MrAwsomenoob Still, it is unintentional cannibalism.
+CHase Gensler Do you get to bring expired shit that ur gonna throw away home?
+alecdgreat I don't know about where he is, but in most stores in Australia, it is "policy" to throw out the items which are past their shelf/expiry date. Technically you aren't allowed to take that home but some managers will make exceptions using their own discretion.
Our local food pantry takes donations of shelf stable expired foods and cases that are crushed etc. They also take venison and fish from hunters and farmers who have them professionally prepared at a local butcher along with salsa and jellies etc that are locally canned by those who have farmer's market certifications. Our Walmart and local grocery donate the not pretty but not yet spoiled produce as well (but in my understanding, this isn't a corporate WalMart policy??) ..... There's nothing wrong with the food and it benefits SOOOOOOO many people, including my family. I feel privileged to live in a very small town that is so community focused.
Everyone: "Guys, we gotta donate food to feed the hungry!"
USA: "lol can't hear you over the sound of my c a p i t a l i s m"
in puerto rico(at least within my family and now that i live appart, my neighbours also do it) we have a sort of tradition/custom.....whenever you harvest something, you ALWAYS give some to everyone else.
last time i picked like 4 breadfrutis. i gave one to my parents, one to a relative and one to a neighbour. not sold. given.
when i harvest a bunch of bananas i cut it in part and distribute it among relatives and friends.
and they do the same for me. so we all always eat fresh fruit and vegetable.
we do the same with seeds as well. if you find a really nice plant, when you have enough seeds you give(not sold, but given) some to everyone, so they can also grow whatever it is you're growing.
@@sabin97 COmMUnIsT!!! Not in my Merica brother!
@@scoobertmcruppert2915 Ahh yes, America. Where being poor is punishable by death.
"What's that patient? You have a tumor but your health insurance won't cover it? ..Get..out..."
@@cgore4
it is best to be compassionate and NOT have hungrier people. in a fair system there's no reason for anyone to be hungry.
capitalism only feeds the rich.
the poor are fed by socialist policies like welfare.
@@Silhouex i appreciate the sentiment.
but i suspect he was joking by the way he capitalized "communist". it seems like he was mocking the people who defend the savage form of capitalism they practice in usa.
"Food or as plants and animals call it, the Afterlife." - John Oliver (2015)
We are such gluttons. WHy can't we send >/="#2" fruits and veggies to canning/freezing companies? No one would ever know what it would look like once it's cut up/peeled... (I honestly thought that was the case anyway)...
because those fruit are already too cheap. in other poorer countries no crops are wasted, B or C grade crops would at least be sold for use as ingredient on livestock fodder
There's still an abundance of produce being grown. With the strict standards put in place, a lot of it ends up in landfill. Only a handful of crops where looks aren't a major concern are fully utilised. Even with canning/freezing processes, there are specific standards. In some countries, the amount of produce grown exceeds the amount that livestock can consume.
Want to send it to poorer countries? It's phenomenally expensive. That waste produce immediately gains value and may be worth up to ten times the value of the "perfect" produce, from the cost of shipping alone.
End of the day, blame the consumer for refusing perfectly fine food that's not "perfect". And blame all your favourite media sources for demanding for you to use "perfect" produce or your food will look and taste like absolute shit.
Mainly because it costs people/companies more rather than just throwing it away
In India the best grade products are sent to USA and Europe and we Indians eat the grade 2 food which has same taste and noone cares about how it looks.
I grew up in Florida. Any orange with a black spot of any size is automatically a juice orange. People want a perfectly orange orange when they they buy one even though they don't eat the skin. If there is the slightest cold weather an entire crop can go to juicers who buy these "imperfect" oranges for for 30% of what a store display quality orange sells for. It can be a major loss for the farmer.
Britain has started to try to combat this, we're slowly starting to get there. France has already gone and outlawed un-needed foodwaste. More needs to be done.
As much as I'm sure it's still a problem in most of the developed world, I'm glad to hear things are being done to at least try to improve the situation. Someone has to try in order for there to be a chance at success. That said, I also hope that people don't lose focus of the importance of the matter. We definitely don't need more methane accumulating in the atmosphere while people go hungry in a country with a huge food surplus...
Thank you John i used your video as one of the references in my final Capstone Project on Data Analytics of food banks. 💯. Crazy how all this information is still relevant today.
There's a store near where I live that buys overstock from nearby stores and resells for just a fraction of the price. Its actually pretty cool how much they're trying to help.
When I started in the food industry, I went first to Chef's school and then to Baking school. We cooked and baked for the students at a college in Washington state. When we sold all the food to the students at a greatly reduced rate, any food left over was given free of charge to nursing homes and people that could not afford to buy grocery's. Maybe this could happen with all the food that is being tossed in this story.
When I first started working in the food industry, my grocery bill went down 80% because I was taking so much food home from the restaurant.
"Just stop it Tyler. I'm not under 'awwest', YOU'RE under 'awwest'!" JO is my spirit animal 😆
I used to work at Starbucks, and my manager there told me we couldn't take home the expired food at the end of the night because if we were allowed to then employees would start telling customers we were out instead of selling the food so that we would have some left to take home. Maybe if these mega corporations paid a living wage they wouldn't have to worry about their employees hiding food to take home at the ends of their shifts.
It should be mandatory for grocery stores to donate edible food that they'd throw out. A bruised banana might not sell to a rich soccer mom, but a starving family would be incredibly grateful for it. A lot of food is tossed out while still being perfectly safe to eat!
Did you not watch the video? Donating food costs the company money. It has to be boxed, stored and transported, which costs money. Companies aren't charities, they have a bottom line and need to make a profit. State laws need to be changed and tax credits given so that it benefits the company to donate. Making things mandatory solves nothing.
Well that's an idea for non-profit.
They'd rather chuck out the bruised banana and then have that starving family arrested when they go back later to fetch it from the bin.
It wouldn't cost any money to allow starving people to come to your back door at noon on Thursdays to carry away the box of bananas that your clerk is about to drop into the dumpster 20 feet away...in fact that teenager who is making minimum wage would probably enjoy the idea of not having to walk that far anyway.
Companies did this. Then the people claimed the food made them sick and sued, for millions of dollars. Now it's against policy because greedy people saw an opportunity
There's an event every week that my grandmother goes to where someone takes food that's about to expire from a bunch of grocery stores that they donate to them and gives it out to people who need it. So at least that's being done in our community.
I’ll never forget the moment I saw four perfectly cooked pizzas thrown away at a food court. Like I know they’ve been on display for most of the day but to be honest, most of us eat leftover/left out food anyways. It’s not doing anyone any favors to discard them as if they have no value.
“I give you, the new Confederate flag” Ha! It never gets old!
He hit the nail on the head with that one!
He's more informative than mostly all the news networks! Amazing show.
If that model eats enough of those burgers she won't be a model any more.
she might be like me. i don't know her but if she was born skinny she could eat 5 and not gain any body mass.
They show her put her mouth on it, but there's no proof she ever ate any of it.
I'm assuming of course you're talking about the serious thyroid, hormone and digestive issues she'd develop, rather than weight gain.
Fulgencio Pritchett No, she's probably holding a burger - commercials typically use food artistry to make the product look good... from the side the camera is seeing it. The other side of the burger looks horrible of course and the techniques used to make it look pretty for the camera also make it near inedible and potentially hazardous (not to mention it likely has a toothpick or something inside it for support).
So she put the burger near her mouth for the commercial - then tossed it in a landfill with everything else mentioned in the above video.
greenghost2008 Relax, that's the only thing she ate this week.
greenghost2008 Relax, if any of it goes down, she'll make sure it comes back up, quick.
the Hardee's ad was so American it gave me a small stroke
CloudyRobin900 that stroke actually woke me up to finish my beer
@Storm Reaper VII Funny, but my job gives me amazing coverage. Just don't be a jobless bum
@@WeBreakItAllDownRightHereI've been at firms with great coverage but there are lots of US workers who have bad coverage. This has been happening for decades.
"[...] to no longer worrying about getting sued by high powered lawyers representing the hungry"
Made me crack up lol
Everyone should learn about this issue. 😔
13:16 and there's the problem inherent in your entire nation's way of thinking. "why do anything if i can't make a profit"
well, a business is meant to make a profit. anything else is not business its charity
the problem is so much city-living people being afraid of eating less than perfect aestetically fruits, defined as such by the most corporate-greed-funded organizations. I love farmers markets, traditional markets where peasants just come and sell their stuff...and I buy fruits with bruises and all sorts of different shapes and sizes because they're healthier than any of those "aestetically perfect" shit in the hypermarkets.
Once I bought a few kilos of cherries and I found out at home almost every single one of them had worms inside..white little buddies. I still ate alot of them because they were too delicious to pass on. I didn't go back to sue the seller and shit like that. Neither did I got cancer from it. Protein is protein.
+Andromedan Council I honestly get a little scared by the aesthetically perfect fruits and veggies.
That's the inherent problem with all capitalistic counties.
Grimm Warden no, that's the inherent problem of people. Capitalism just works on it.
True story: when I was in college, the dining facility I worked in could not give uneaten food to the Catholic church across the street which ran a soup kitchen for the homeless. It was a university policy born out of fear of lawyers.
It is possible some doors were occasionally left unlocked when the kitchen was open.
About 10 years ago, my job actually sold “ugly fruit” that typically wouldn’t be sold on store shelves because they didn’t meet standards set by other grocers. These fruits and veggies had some deformalities that would freak folks out and other retailers wouldn’t put out because of this. I still bought the ugly fruit. They sadly did away with it. They also used to donate food close to the expiration date too up until a spiteful customer told corporate on us.
Is this show ever going to talk about overpopulation?
mauszx It`s no more a problem. Peak generation was at early 2000 - now there are less babies born then before. Not every country have this problem. And whats the point of talking about overpopulation? There are no solutions. My country is going extinct and we need imigrants or minimum of 3 children.
Reinis Miks
from what I have read overpopulation it is still a big problem, also yes some countries don't have enough young people but that is because there are more old people, so some countries need young people to sustain the old ones.
mauszx
There is a really good documentary about overpopulation hosted kinda like TED style and this guy is one of top guns when it comes to global population statsitics, and numbers are showing that yes, population will still grow but mostly just in Afrika. Overpopulation is kind like stretched thing, because during 19th century people in Europe were thinking that it is overpopulated already, and it would be catastrophic to have more people. Well, turns out they were not right.
Reinis Miks
There are documentary and studies that said the contrary, while Europe is slowing down on birth rate the whole America continent, Africa and Asia is growing crazy. There is a cientist that recently said that even if there was a bomb that killed 1 billion people, it will still be an overpopulation problem. Not that anyone would do that, but just think how the world works, and how many people need to eat. We don't have enough chicken and water to survive 100 more years. This is why bill gates is creating water made from shit, but it's nice to have different views.
mauszx Dont Panic or Overpopulated was the documentary name, made by bbc. Check it out - very interesting one and has some humor to it
Does this country do anything right?
+Ashley Casey I used to think so. But now? Yeaaaaahhhh... not so much.
***** explain what we do right and you'll earn your point
+Ashley Casey no one hates a country like the U.S
+Ashley Casey
Yes. You.............. no
+Jonathan Herrera
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
you made my day :D :D :D :D :D :D
As an American, I can say that, that Carl's Jr's Most American Thick Burger is fucking gross to look it, let alone eat and don't get me wrong I like Carl's Jr.
Any burger from Carl's Jr. lately is fucking disgusting to look at haha. That business is going downhill, and even the supermodels won't be able to save it.
Heart attack on a bun.
Marcel Robinson In the middle east they have burgers cooked into the crust, it's a pizza slice with a burger on the end of it.
Marcel Robinson When I first saw it on TV, the first thing I said was,"What the fuck is that monstrosity?!" LOL
Fuck yeah
The most ridiculous thing where I live is that you can actually find better looking products in the dumpster than on sale. I don't know if it's just laziness of employees or what but the number of times I saw molded food on discounts or even still on regular sale is just baffling. I go dumpster diving every week and I will never not be amazed in a negative way by how much great, fresh food ends up there.