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Monday, Nov. 10, 2025

Does half of the food in the US go to waste? 

Brian Arola, The Colorado Sun
no

Although a significant portion of food goes to waste in the U.S., the percentage is below 50%, according to food organizations.

Federal agencies estimate that between 30%-40% of food is wasted, making it the most common material in the country to be incinerated or dumped into landfills. Feeding America, a network of food banks, puts the wasted food figure at 38%.

Misunderstandings about expiration dates by both consumers and retailers contribute to food waste. Consumers throw out about 3 billion pounds of food each year as a result of date-label confusion. 

A product being past its “best if used by” or “sell-by” date doesn’t mean it’s spoiled. Unless spoilage is evident, “expired” food can still be safe to eat past its peak quality.

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Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by newsrooms in the Gigafact network.

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The Colorado Sun is a journalist-founded, award-winning and nonprofit news outlet based in Denver that strives to cover all of Colorado so that our state — our community — can better understand itself. In this way, we believe we can contribute to a more vibrant, informed and whole Colorado. We are committed to fact-based, in-depth and nonpartisan journalism. We cover everything from politics and culture to the outdoor industry and education. Our goal is to produce the best possible journalism. We do that with the help of you, our readers, and community backers. We launched on Sept. 10, 2018.

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