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Essay 2: An Argument on Food Waste in America
Introduction
An estimated of 1.3 billion tons of food, about 30 percent of global production, is lost or wasted
annually while 800 billion go hungry. Much of this waste happens in the United States.
According to Oliver Milman, a writer for The Guardian, “Americans waste about a pound
of food per person each day […]. About 150,000 tons of food is tossed out in US households each
day, equivalent to about a third of the daily calories that each American consumes.”
The numbers are shocking. But there is something we can all do about it. In this classroom, we
find young students who will soon inherit this crisis, we find parents who do the grocery
shopping and cooking in the household, and we find some who work at restaurants or grocery
stores. In the end, we are all consumers of food, and it is my hope that this unit will get us to
consider our consumption, and more specifically what we don’t end up consuming, more closely
and carefully.
With this assignment, we will address the food waste epidemic by analyzing its core causes and
effects while considering ways that we can advocate for solutions and change.
Reading and Writing Skills
Over the course of this assignment, we will continue to work on developing key academic
reading and writing skills, which you will use throughout your career as a student and which
constitute the basis of most scholarly writing. We will be annotating and close reading texts,
dissecting parts of argument, evaluating different types of sources, taking into consideration the
purpose and audience of our writing, and finally creating our own arguments by developing
strong thesis statements, incorporating sources into our argument and thoroughly explaining
and analyzing evidence to convince our intended audience of our argument and to hopefully
make a change.
Focusing Questions
Now that you briefly understand what we are doing with this assignment and why we are doing
it, I will now introduce our guiding questions. Through our reading and writing over the next
few weeks, we will be considering and discussing the following: What are the primary causes
and/or immediate effects of the current food waste crisis? What are some possible solutions to
this crisis?
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Assignment Overview
The section below outlines the specific requirement of this assignment.
Purpose
The purpose of this assignment is to:
1. Read and respond to a college-level text.
2. Compose college-level writing.
3. Evaluate sources for credibility and appropriateness in respect to their audience and
purpose.
4. Complete the writing process—synthesizing information, brainstorming, outlining and
writing drafts.
5. Respond to a topic with an original argument.
Goals
This assignment will help students meet the following Student Learning Objectives, as stated on
the course syllabus:
1. Use active/critical-reading strategies to produce accurate, concise
summaries of college level/academic texts.
2. Synthesize researched material from multiple texts to create and support
an argument in response to a prompt. Draw direct evidence from texts in
support of claims and analyze how that evidence supports the claim.
3. Utilize the various phases in the writing process—prewriting, writing
revision, and proofreading—to produce clear, articulate, well-supported,
well-organized essays.
4. Avoid plagiarism by properly citing quoted, summarized, and
paraphrased material using MLA format.
Texts
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•
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Aubrey, Allison. “It's Time To Get Serious About Reducing Food Waste, Feds Say.”
National Public Radio Inc, 16 Sept. 2015.
Oliver, John. “Food Waste.” Last Week Tonight. 19 Jul. 2015. Web.
Royte , Elizabeth. “One-Third of Food Is Lost or Wasted: What Can Be Done.” National
Geographic, 13 Oct. 2014.
Stuart, Tristan. “The Global Food Waste Scandal.” Ted Talk. TEDSalon, London. Sep
2012.Web.
Qi, Danyi, Brian E. Roe. “Household Food Waste: Multivariate Regression and Principal
Components of Analyses of Awareness and Attitudes among U.S. Consumers.” PLoS
One. 21 Jul. 2016.
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Task
Compose an essay, between 4-6 pages in length, which presents an argument about the causes
and effects of food waste in the United States and presents possible solutions to the crisis.
More Specifically:
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Identify a narrowed topic and develop an argument about that topic
Be well organized and demonstrate coherence. Your paper should include:
o An introduction section that states your topic and thesis;
o A discussion section which develops your argument with PIE paragraphs;
o A conclusion section which wraps up the paper.
o Utilizes at least three sources from the list.
o Only use sources provided in this prompt.
o At least two direct quotes in each body paragraph.
o NOTE: Since you are citing the articles and videos, don’t forget your
Works Cited page.
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Final Draft Rubric
Skilled
Adequate
Developing
Not Yet
Well-developed
introductory
paragraph contains
detailed background
information, a clear
explanation or
definition of the
problem, and a
thesis statement.
Introductory
paragraph
contains some
background
information and
states the
problem, but
does not explain
using details.
States the thesis
of the paper.
Introduction states
the thesis but does
not adequately
explain the
background of the
problem. The
problem is stated, but
lacks detail.
Thesis and/or
problem is vague
or unclear.
Background details
are a seemingly
random collection
of information,
unclear, or not
related to the topic.
CONCLUSION
Conclusion
summarizes the
main topics without
repeating previous
sentences; writer's
opinions and
suggestions for
change are logical
and well thought
out.
Conclusion
summarizes
main
topics. Some
suggestions for
change are
evident.
Conclusion
summarizes main
topics, but is
repetitive. No
suggestions for
change and/or
opinions are
included.
Conclusion does
not adequately
summarize the
main points. No
suggestions for
change or opinions
are included.
MAIN POINTS
Body Paragraphs
PIE Paragraph
Structure
Three or more main
points are well
developed with
supporting details.
Three or more
main points are
present but may
lack detail and
development in
one or two.
Three or more main
points, but all lack
development..
Less than three
main points, with
poor development
of ideas.
USE OF SOURCES
Documentation
All source material
is used and
smoothly integrated
into the text. All
sources are
accurately
documented and in
the desired format
on the Works Cited
page.
All sources are
relevant and
reliable.
All source
material is used.
All sources are
accurately
documented, but
a few are not in
the desired
format on the
Works Cited
page.
Most sources are
relevant and
reliable.
All sources are
accurately
documented, but
many are not in the
desired format on the
Works Cited page.
Some sources are
relevant and reliable.
Lacks sources
and/or sources are
not accurately
documented.
Incorrect format is
used.
Sources are neither
relevant nor
reliable.
Punctuation and
capitalization are
correct. Sentence
structure is correct,
and the language
used in the essay is
easy to understand.
Sentence
structure is
generally correct.
Some awkward
sentences do
appear. There
are one or two
errors in
punctuation
and/or
capitalization.
Work contains
structural weaknesses
and grammatical
errors. There are
three or four errors in
punctuation and/or
capitalization.
Work contains
multiple incorrect
sentence
structures. There
are four or more
errors in
punctuation
and/or
capitalization.
INTRODUCTION
Background/History
Define the Problem
Thesis Statement
MECHANICS
Sentence Clarity,
Punctuation &
Capitalization
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Essay #2; Food Waste
Stop Don't Dump a Treasure
Dumping food is dumping money and is more hungry people and more pollution.
According to a research article, the world population is expected to increase to 9.3 billion people
by the mid of the century. This means the food production should increase 60% of the present
production (Danyi Qi and Brian E. Roe, 1). Also, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
of the United Nations reported that there is about 2.8 trillion pounds of food loss and waste
annually (Elizabeth Royte, 3). However, food loss is the responsibility of everyone starting from
the farmers who plant the produce, the industries that pro
ng it, to retailers such as the
supermarkets who buy it and sell it to the public, to the restaurants and ends up in our kitchen.
However, there are multi factors that effect our behavior in dumping the healthy food while there
are millions of people are hungry, especially in the developing countries while still people in the
developed countries are food insecure. In fact, the developing countries waste food because of
lack of technology such as refrigeration and transportation for instance, in Africa about 10% to
20% of the grains are spoiled because of the storage. Similarly, in India the losses of fruit and
vegetables is 35% to 40% annually (Royte, 4-5). While the industrialized countries waste 1.5
trillion pounds of food annually equal to whole production of Africa (Royte, 5). However, in the
USA the waste of food is affected by the attitude of consumers, the lack of incentives to donate
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the food by retailers, the policy to protect those who donate the food. While others argue that
they have the right to trash the expired and non-fresh food.
To begin with the attitude of the consumers, a study conducted by Qi and Roe measuring
the behavior/attitude of household related to food waste, reveals that “69.7% of respondents say
that they waste food because food expired as labeled date, causes illness.” (7). This means two
third of the consumers in the survey have misconception about the expiration date. Also, “58.4%
admit that throwing food is bad for the environment” (7). The authors explain that this answer
means they have feeling of guilt, behaving against the right behavior. However, two third of
them (63%) feels they are not losing money on wasting food. Nevertheless, Elizabeth Royte
points out that people overbuy food, store it improperly. She further clarifies that the expiration
date is the peak of freshness and have nothing to do with food safety.
However, the lack of incentives discourages the realters donating the food. According to
John Olive states that “it is easier and cheaper for the industry to throw it away because for
economic incentive” (you tube). Oliver points out that retailers would rather dump the food
products than donating it, because they will lose money, especially if their food labeled as level 2
according to the American food standard. To encourage the retailers to donate their unwanted
food there should be an incentive such as tax reduction. Furthermore, the food can be given to
livestock as part of the solution. However, Royte says the first step in reducing the food waste is
making the people aware at about the existing problem of food waste. People has to know when
they are dumping food they are contributing to the environment pollution, because the garbage in
the landfill will decay and emit methane and carbon dioxide.
Moreover, Lack of policy to protect those who donate food. According to Tristan Stuart
"We domesticated pigs to turn food waste back into food. And yet, in Europe, that practice has
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become illegal since 2001 as a result of the foot-and-mouth outbreak” (11:46). Stuart explains
that this policy is preventing retailers from donating massive food to animals to produce another
kind of food for human being. So, what is the solution? Using unwanted healthy food for the
animals will feed them instead of planting food for them such as importing soya beans to feed
them. This process will save the environment from extra garbage that will emit gases that pollute
the water and the air, will save money and will feed the hungry people.
Some argue that they have the right to trash the expired and non-fresh food. According to
Aubrey says American should be more sensitive toward wasting food, she states that the
“national 50 percent waste reduction goal will be voluntary” (par 8). Aubrey explains that there
should be more public education about how to shop and cook to reduce food waste. Also, there
should be a policy requires the households to sort out their wasted food, such as in Seattle the
homeowners will be fined for not sorting their garbage. Also, in Massachusetts food waste is
band for certain institutions and expected other states to do the same. However, the people
should not have the right to accumulate garbage from healthy edible food, it should be donated to
charity centers.
After all, food waste is the responsibility of all and it is a problem all over the world.
However, the most contributors to the food waste are the consumers, the retailers, and the policy
makers. In fact, in the mid century the population is expected to increase by 9.3 billion while 2.8
trillion pounds of food are wasted annually. Nevertheless, the developing and developed
countries are wasting food. For instance, in Africa they waste about 10% to 20% of the grains
because of improper and in India they waste 35% to 40% annually of food and vegetables. While
the industrialized countries waste 1.5 trillion pounds of food annually equal to whole production
of Africa. There are many ways food waste can be avoided such as make the public and the
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