Just Desserts: The Morality of Food Waste in America

Food, waste, and food waste are embroiled in a wide array of political and moral debates in the United States today. These debates are staged across a range of scales and sites—from individual decisions made in front of refrigerators and compost bins to public deliberations on the U.S. Senate and House floors. They often manifest as a moral panic inspiring a range of Americans at seemingly opposed ends of the political spectrum. This article contrasts three distinct sites where food waste is moralized, with the aim of deconstructing connections between discarded food and consumer ethics. In doing so, we argue that across the contemporary American social strata, food waste reduction efforts enfold taken-for-granted ideas of moral justice, or theodicy, that foreground individual responsibility and, as a result, obfuscate broader systemic issues of food inequality perpetuated by late stage capitalism.