Food Aid for People in Need

"The United States is the world's largest food aid donor with a long tradition of generosity in providing humanitarian assistance to needy people throughout the world. U.S. programs help feed the hungry, improve global food security, encourage education, and promote agricultural development in food insecure countries. Most U.S. food aid is provided through donations."(USDA)

I remember, when I was a teenager, I worked at the restaurants and I noticed one very disappointing thing at every restaurant that I worked for. Waste of food. Food that was left on the trays after the party is going straight to the garbage and it is a lot. Sometimes when we were catering corporate parties, we used to throw out about half of the cooked food that was prepared for the party. Restaurants do that for several reasons, they do not want to serve non-fresh food to their customers, store cooked food for too long, risk food poisoning customers and keep food that takes a lot of space in the commercial restaurant equipment, such as commercial refrigerators, walk in coolers & commercial freezers. Customer safety and customer retention is very important for every restaurant and the food is cheap for the restaurants, because they buy food at the wholesale prices, that is why they throw the food out. I perfectly understand restaurant owners why do they throw it out, but I don't understand why do charity institutions do not create some kind of food collecting network, which will be collecting untouched leftover food from the restaurants on a daily or weekly basis, wrap it up properly, freeze it and airborne it to the countries in need.

The benefits are clear: the food is free, restaurants will save on sanitation services, such as garbage removal, people in need will get $30-$80 meals and finally everyone is happy.

With current economic conditions, I think this would be a good idea to fight hunger around the world and will ease tensions among biofuel fighters.

"Study highlights problems linked to converting crops into biofuels. Taking up valuable land and growing edible crops for biofuels poses a dilemma: Is it ethical to produce inefficient renewable energies at the expense of an already malnourished population?" (Sciencedaily)