Okay, since so many farmers aren’t able to sell their various crops and products to the restaurant, school, and other institutional food industries, but the same number of people are still eating every day, it’s made me realize just how much food waste there is from the start of the process to the finish.
No, the “waste” you seem to be referring to is the fact that there are different cuts/processing/packaging for business use vs. consumer use.
Restaurants don’t buy quarts of milk, for example.
Or maybe lots of people are eating a lot less than they used to/need to. Probably plenty of out-of-work people not eating every day.
Shortages have been spotty, and primarily on some items. Stores haven’t at any point been empty of food (at least so far); so nobody’s been unable to get anything to eat, just not always able to get what they wanted.
In addition, quite a lot of people had for various reasons some stock of food in their houses to start with.
It’s true there’s usually a lot of food wasted in the USA. But it’s not necessary to posit that food they’d otherwise have thrown out has been the only thing, or even a major percentage of what anybody’s had to eat for weeks.
I don’t think you can actually say, “The same number of people eating every day.”
Food banks, soup kitchens, charitable organizations are seeing longer and longer lines every day. Very often the food runs out before the people do. Unemployment benefits are very spotty, and not everyone has received a stimulus check. There are people in the United States who are hungry, and the logistics are not in place to move the farmers’ products outside of their usual distribution chain.
I do hope that one outcome, when the pandemic finally fades from our lives, that alternate pathways are put in place, so that in the event of another crisis, the food can go to those who need it.
~VOW
There is something of an interesting point here. As a non US citizen, visiting the US is always something of a culture shock when it comes to portion sizes. In almost every restaurant (except the very high quality ones) portions are immense. Just utterly stupidly oversized by home standards. Either impossible to actually eat, or clearly the path to an early grave if eaten. It is something of an art to work out how to order a meal that is of a reasonable size. (On some visits to the US hosts would take a massive doggy bag of leftovers - often with the intent that they would actually go to dogs.)
So, with a closing down of many restaurants, how has this affected eating habits? Are people actually tending to eat less? Is there indeed, simply less waste for no other reason than because people are not able to go and order massively oversized meals?
As a U.S. citizen, when I dine out, I eat only till satiated, then look forward to a mid-night snack and often dinner the next day a la Doggy Bag. I usually have enough to to treat my kitty-cats to a snicky-snack, too (they don’t get the prime rib, but they’re welcome to the veggies I don’t like, like okra). I’ve turned my cats from carnivores to vegans (I have no idea why they’ve gotten so skinny). .
I’m also a practitioner of delayed gratification. I keep the best parts of my meal till last, so my dine-in meals are ok, but my mid-night snacks are da bomb!
In my experience, restaurants expect that a substantial number of diners will be taking their leftovers with them. It’s pretty routine to hear the server say, “Who needs a to-go box?”
If you’re cooking at home, it makes sense to prepare more than will be eaten at one sitting and save the leftovers for later; and a similar logic applies to restaurant meals.
I, for one, think you are onto something.
From USDA.gov:
“In the United States, food waste is estimated at between 30-40 percent of the food supply. This estimate, based on estimates from USDA’s Economic Research Service of 31 percent food loss at the retail and consumer levels, corresponded to approximately 133 billion pounds and $161 billion worth of food in 2010.”
I’ve also read it’s particularly bad in schools. I doubt that 30% of the lunches kids are now eating at home are going in the trash.
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Malnourishment and slow death will do that to you.
You aren’t serious here, right? You’re really feeding your cats an appropriate diet, right?
Yes, of course. If I didn’t feed them meat, they would eat me. And, with my peripheral neuropathy, I wouldn’t notice until I was half gone. It’s an understanding between us that I abide by.
Ah, oversize portions! Back in the day (pre-March 2020) MrsRico and I dined out, often splitting an entree, adding an extra salad, and sharing a dessert if so impelled. Full meals are just too much even for we tall folk. Bloat-a-rama! For fun, sample various appetizers and skip the pig-out action.
Food supplies are still adequate here in the central Sierra Nevada range overlooking California’s agribiz wonderland. No yeast for awhile but soda bread is easy. Frozen vegetables are rare - cautious folks must be avoiding unwrapped fresh stuff. We haven’t noticed restaurant-supply offerings at our grocery curbside pickups. And if things run short, the deer wandering by can be seen as “meal packets”. 
Yes, but the point is, that’s a almost uniquely American phenomenon. Even in Canada, which is probably the most American-like country that isn’t actually america, we don’t serve the amounts you do.
And you do it even for food that doesn’t travel well. I ordered a tempura dinner once while on vacation. The price was comparable to what I’d pay at home, but when it arrived, there was 3-4 times as much food as I was expecting. I did take the leftovers back to the hotel, but tempura really doesn’t last long in a takeout container, so I ended up tossing most of it.
The idea that the issue is the wastefully large portions served by restaurants is just wrong.
You may recall reading that during the Great Depression farmers dumped milk and buried potatoes, yet people did not eat out nearly as often as we do today, and restaurant portions were smaller. This tells us the issue is not merely waste and gluttony.
Summarizing a good NYT article on the subject:
There are fewer people eating restaurant meals and school lunches, but there are dramatically more people requesting Meals on Wheels and food bank goods. Yet those organizations have faced a dearth of volunteers during the pandemic. They simply can’t get food from field to consumer.
Another issue is capacity. A restaurant or school cafeteria can store huge quantities; a home kitchen cannot. You might buy a gallon of milk a week for your family. Dairy processing plants have maxed out their storage. Starbucks used to buy 13,500 gallons of milk per day from a Cleveland dairy processor. Now it buys 4500 gallons every three days, and the processing plant simply has no room for more milk from dairy farmers. When people make coffee at home, they’re usually not making vente nonfat, no-whip latte. I wouldn’t count that as waste.
Eating habits are different at home. People eat less produce. And during COVID, they’re eating more processed snack food.
Switching from industrial-size to home-size packaging and amounts requires millions of dollars in machinery. Is that a wise investment? What happens when and if things go back to “normal.”
I see how you got from A to B, OP. It’s just that there are a lot of factors in between.
No, not so much large portions, as the amount of food that restaurants themselves discard. I worked many buffets where we had to pitch untouched vats of food, because they had been placed out in the dining room and few if any people took some. We were not allowed to take home leftovers, either.
There’s a “Dirty Jobs” episode where Vegas buffets sent their food waste to a pig farmer. That’s not waste. I’m talking about things going into the garbage, period.
Food needs to be transported in something, and there are shortages of some types of containers as well.
About large portions–I think this is the reason:
To the restaurant, the cost of the actual food on your plate is low, compared to the other costs that the customer pays willingly. So they can heap a lot of food on the plate for almost the same cost to them as a smaller portion.
But the big portion is good salesmanship–it looks impressive, and makes people think they’re getting a good deal.
And once the process starts, it keeps going. One restaurant gives you a supersize portion, so the competitors begin doing the same thing. This has been going on for 30 years now, and so Americans have come to expect it.
Here in rural-ish New England, the farm stands, farmers’ markets, and general local food producers are going gangbusters. I see few shortages in the food co-op which preferences local foods, including local meat, dairy, and egg producers. This is a system which is much more flexible than the gigantic industrial food system most of the US relies on. I read today that the same thing is happening nationally – the small growers are selling direct to consumers, the mega growers are having a horrible time because the supply chain is broken and re-tooling is a vast slow process.
It seems likely to me that small farmers, which have gotten a shorter and shorter end of the stick over the past decades, might get a permanent boost from this. One can hope anyway.
Around here lately people have been selling raw chicken out of the back of a truck. (Whatever could go wrong?)