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Supermarkets destroy food if it doesn't sell. We can always feed the world. We just don't.
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this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2026
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Work Reform
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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
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- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
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- Higher wages for underpaid workers.
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I do a lot of big events at big convention hotels, and you would be shocked at how much amazing food they throw out. I know you think you know, but trust me you have no idea.
Big events are irregular things with hot, fresh food, so it doesn't surprise me. It would be nice if the food could go to a food bank, but that one would be a logistical nightmare compared sending a regular, but small amount of baked goods from a local grocery store to a local food bank.
Hey, give me some numbers please.
I fear I might be overestimating it and getting angrier by the minute.
I once saw a hotel throw out at least a dozen delicious pork roasts (I grabbed a couple before), 2 entire queens of key lime pies, and too much of everything else to quantify. It was a massive banquet for 2000+, and they made lots more food than they needed.
These events are not "irregular things," as one poster put it. That was only one banquet, on one night, in one hotel. I am in one of the major convention cities, and banquets like that go on EVERY night, in multiple hotels. Some hotels are hosting multiple conventions at a time, AND multiple large companies attending those conventions, as well as their Local Social events like Weddings and Bar Mitzvahs. The food waste is mind-boggling.
One of the favorite things I watch for is cheese. As we're leaving, I always take a stroll past the dishwashing room, where there are always queens (rolling racks) lined up full of dirty dishes. I guarantee that on one of those queens is the cheese tray that was on the buffet, and it will contain four or five multi-POUND blocks of barely touched, expensive cheese that is going to go straight into the trash. I can usually grab a block of cheddar, blue cheese, Swiss, maybe a couple more. I probably take home $1000 in free cheese every year.
I understand that they have to carefully monitor the food safety protocols, but I don't know why vans from food banks can't be waiting at the hotels at 9 pm at night, to collect any leftover food, and rush it back to refrigeration, to be reheated and served the next day.
Or even that night. I'm sure hungry homeless people wouldn't mind waiting until 10 pm to eat, if it meant a feast like pork roast mashed potatoes, and key lime pie.
Impossible. There's no way you could possibly imagine it.
You couldn't imagine how upset I am hearing about wasted food at hotel conventions.
Food, electronics, furniture, basically any good either generates profits or it is destroyed so it can't affect the profitability of other products. If anything seems to be a good deal and it's a new product, it's designed to fall apart so that you buy a new, better product.
Instant Pot, the company that brought pressure cookers to the mainstream in the US, went bankrupt. This was because the pressure cookers they made were too good, didn't breakdown enough, so they ended up devouring their own market potential because first-time customers were only-time customers. They were bought by private equity, guess what the new instant pots do now?
Capitalism is Ouroboros infinitely devouring itself because that's the only way to generate profit. It creates too many goods, since mass production is cheaper per unit than smaller production. It destroys the unsold products because they'd make the sold products worth less. It under pays labor, because that's the only way to get profits, but it crashes every decade or so because too much defaulted debt causes a trust crisis. We decapitate government competence, because effective government services deny capitalists markets they could expand into.
All of this waste. All of it. It's just there to rationalize why some assholes and their kids never have to work. That's it. They, like the fucking rest of us, value downtime and thought there was no way the collective us would allow them to get away it, so they created the most massive accounting scheme in the world to hide their blatant, massive lazy fuck shit. We're burning the world to cinders cause some people don't want to work, and they want to feel important about it, too.