Since I've been receiving a large volume of emails related to the New Scientist piece on food waste I co-wrote with Michael Webber, I want to point readers to a book coming out shortly on the same topic called American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food (and What We Can Do About It) by Jonathan Bloom. While I haven't read this yet, Jonathan got in touch and it sounds like a very interesting book for the Fall! Here's the description at Amazon:
What Tom Vanderbilt did for traffic and Brian Wansink did for mindless eating, Jonathan Bloom does for food waste. The topic couldn’t be timelier: As more people are going hungry while simultaneously more people are morbidly obese, American Wasteland sheds light on the history, culture, and mindset of waste while exploring the parallel eco-friendly and sustainable-food movements. As the era of unprecedented prosperity comes to an end, it’s time to reexamine our culture of excess. Working at both a local grocery store and a major fast food chain and volunteering with a food recovery group, Bloom also interviews experts—from Brian Wansink to Alice Waters to Nobel Prize–winning economist Amartya Sen—and digs up not only why and how we waste, but, more importantly, what we can do to change our ways.
Needless to say, I'm looking forward to this one and will likely have more to say when it debuts in October. In the mean time, you can follow Jonathan on his blog Wasted Food...
