Author Archives: maryjane

Trick question: Who first discovered that the world is round?

Photo courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society via Wikimedia Commons

No, contrary to outdated grade-school history books, it wasn’t Columbus. It wasn’t even one of those brainy philosophers of ancient Greece.

Photo by Matt Neale via Wikimedia Commons

In fact, you might say that it wasn’t a “who” at all …

Stumped?

Well, hold onto your honey jars, because the answer might surprise you …

Photo by Björn Appel via Wikimedia Commons

That’s right, honeybees can be credited with the first system of global circumnavigation! And you don’t hear them bragging about it, do you?

Using the sun as a reference point—even when it’s on the other side of the planet—honeybees are able to communicate the location of food to one another through a deceptively simple dance.

“The dance language, which bees use to communicate, is based on the location of the sun,” explain researchers at Ohio State University. “When bees return from a food source, they perform a ‘waggle dance’ on the vertical comb nearest the entrance to the hive. The dancing bee makes a short, straight run while waggling its abdomen, then circles back and repeats the action several times. The bee orients its dance so that the angle between the direction of the straight run and the ray opposite gravity is the same as the angle between the food source and the position of the sun. Given this angle, other bees can orient themselves to the sun and locate the food source.”

Need I mention that bees have a minute fraction of the brain cells we possess?

Photo by Ken Thomas via Wikimedia Commons

Of course, I’m sure the bees’ sense of direction is boosted by the fact that bees are more sensitive to the Earth’s magnetic field than any other creature. Not only do they incorporate this magnetic pull into their solar calculations, they use it to accomplish the perfectly precise hexagonal design of their combs.

Photo by Merdal via Wikimedia Commons

“Dear Food, you probably already know this, but I need you.”

So begins a touching new video, “Love Letter to Food,” created by YouTube channel MinuteEarth. The channel’s planet-minded production team joined forces with families, farmers, and friendly faces to drive home the reality of food waste in the U.S.

“Roughly 40 percent of the United States’ food supply is never eaten,” explains the University of Minnesota study, which preceded the video. “At 1500 food calories lost per person per day, that is twice as much as most other industrialized nations and 50 percent more than was lost in the 1970s.”

Photo by Dwight Sipler via Wikimedia Commons

Even though I’ve talked about food waste before, I still find these numbers shocking. Nationwide, obesity has skyrocked since the ’70s, and we’re wasting more food than ever.

As you’ll see in the video below, waste is happening in more places than the kitchen. In fact, every step of a food item’s journey from field to fork is fraught with the peril of perishing at the hands of humans in one way or another. Whether it’s a crop left standing to rot due to high harvesting costs, proverbial spilled beans, milk gone sour, bruised banana skins, or misleading label dates, the woe of waste often seems to have a common denominator: we take food for granted.

Photo by Paul Asman and Jill Lenoble via Wikimedia Commons

Even as the rapidly rising global demand for food threatens the very survival of our species, food is cheaper and more readily available in our country than our ancestors could have dreamed possible. It comes in rainbow colors, eye-catching cartons, super sizes, and all-you-can-eat.

Photo by National Cancer Institute via Wikimedia Commons

“Part of the problem is that on average, I spend a smaller fraction of my household budget on [food] than in any other country or any other time in history,” states one of the video’s stars, CGP Grey. “My spending is spread out over days or weeks, so I don’t notice the cost of wasting [food]. But my lack of noticing adds up.”

In addition to wasting the food itself, the University of Minnesota study’s authors Alexander H. Reich and Jonathan A. Foley tell us, “Tremendous resources are used to produce uneaten food in the U.S.: 30 percent of fertilizer, 31 percent of cropland, 25 percent of total freshwater consumption, and two percent of total energy consumption.”

Photo by Tony Atkin via Wikimedia Commons

I know you share my punch-in-the-gut reaction to these statistics, but this is one of those issues I feel like I can tackle, starting today. I don’t need a how-to manual, a support group, more money, or special doo-dads.

I just need to appreciate food.

Photo by Roger Braunstein via Wikimedia Commons

Here’s the video that got me to thinking and speaking out …