One young girl's desire to end America's chronic food waste

Washington

ONE of the most profound contradictions of modern America is that more than 45 million Americans don't have enough to eat, but the country wastes an estimated 40 per cent of its food. The forces fuelling this paradox are complex: Grocery stores think they'll assume legal liability in donating food. Farmers allow edible, but homely fruit to rot in fear it won't sell. Bananas blacken on all our shelves.

But the reasons behind this waste didn't feel so complex to a teenage girl named Maria Rose Belding on a chilly Iowa day five years ago. The whole thing felt simple. It felt wrong. It felt like something had to change.