Looking to boost your bank account? It might be as easy as cutting down on how much food you buy, use, and throw away.   According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the average American family is throwing away around $1,500 each year, all because of food waste!  Think about that figure; $1,500 could pay next month’s rent! How many car payments could you cover with that much?  What kind of weekend get-away could you treat yourself to with a cool $1,500 lying around?  The dollars with food waste add up faster than you may realize.  Each time you fail to clear your plate, leave leftovers at a restaurant, discard food like produce that doesn’t visually appear perfect, and let purchased food expire before it ever hits a plate, imagine hearing “ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching! “ And though for some people having too much food is a problem, for far too many others around the world the exact opposite is the concern.  United Nations figures show that of the 7 billion+ people on Earth, a whopping 2 billion of them don’t have reliable, year-long access to nutritious food.  Important to consider when thinking about food waste is more than just what’s visible to you on your plate.  From the smallest almond to the biggest steak, every piece of food on the planet needs resources to grow, be harvested, be produced and be transported. So when you throw away half of an apple, you’re actually throwing away much, much more than just what can fit in your hand. Consider this: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) figures show to produce just one hamburger, around 660 gallons of water are used.  That absolutely dwarfs the recommended 8 glasses of water we should drink in a day to stay hydrated, and all just for a sandwich that will be gone within a few minutes.  Thinking about where your food comes from, what it takes to make it, and how precious it is considering the number of hungry people in the world ought to give you a moment of pause.   Curious why it takes so much water just for a hamburger?  Remember that there’s much more to food than what’s visible on your plate.  Your hamburger came from a cow.  A cow requires water to live and grow.  Every step of that cow’s life from the moment it is born, to its slaughter in a factory, to its processing and transportation to your table, requires water.  It also requires grain and food to eat itself before it’s slaughtered that could otherwise be used in food production.   It’s important to mention other costs of our food we can’t see when it’s on our plate outside of how much water it takes.  This involves things like the issue of what to do with the greatly-untreated waste livestock produce (200 cows can produce as much nitrogen “as a community of 5,000 – 10,000 people” based on USDA data), the health effects of meat, especially processed meat, which the UN lists as “probably carcinogenic to humans“, and the climate impact of animal agriculture in deforestation for grazing areas. Regardless of what you eat, there’s a cost you can’t see.  Even things like a simple orange can require more than a dozen gallons of water to produce, according to an analysis by National Geographic.   So how can you make a difference, save some money and help your neighbor?  The EPA says the best method is source reduction; just buying less stuff!  If you find yourself cleaning the kitchen cabinets and throwing away boxes, jars, and bags, you might be overbuying and in turn overspending!  Another EPA recommended mitigation method is donating or diverting food to food banks and shelters.  The last place you want it to go is the landfill, the final destination of most of the waste we throw away each day.   Learn more about the “Food Recovery Hierarchy” and how to combat food waste and save some money from the EPA here.