Rachel Laudan on Food Waste

EconTalk

Library of Economics and Liberty

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4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 4 December 2017

⏱️ 62 minutes

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Summary

Historian Rachel Laudan talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about food waste. Laudan argues that there are tradeoffs in preventing food waste--in reduced time for example, or a reduction in food security, and that these tradeoffs need to be measured carefully when considering policy or giving advice to individuals or organizations. She also discusses the role of food taboos and moralizing about food. Along the way, Laudan defends the virtue of individual choice and freedom in deciding what to eat.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:08.0	I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
0:12.0	Our website is econtalk.org, where you can subscribe, comment on this podcast,
0:17.0	and find links and other information related to today's conversation.
0:21.0	We'll also find our archives where you can listen to every episode we've ever done going back to 2006.
0:27.0	Our email address is mailadycontalk.org. We'd love to hear from you.
0:33.0	Today is November 10, 2017.
0:36.0	My guest is author and historian Rachel Loudon.
0:39.0	She is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute for Historical Studies at the University of Texas Austin.
0:45.0	Her first appearance on e-contalk was in August of 2015 when we talked about her book, Quasine and Empire.
0:52.0	Our topic for today is food waste.
0:55.0	Now Rachel, welcome to e-contalk.
0:59.0	I'm delighted to be back.
1:01.0	Now you wrote on your blog, Food Waste is presented in moral terms.
1:05.0	It's bad, even a sin to waste food.
1:08.0	This is a terrible way to frame the issue.
1:11.0	And I end up quote, but it does, I think, for many people, seem like a moral issue.
1:17.0	It just seems wrong to waste food.
1:20.0	Why do you think it's bad to frame it that way?
1:25.0	I think there are two reasons.
1:27.0	The first one is that even if you accept that wasting food is bad, and I think most of us have that drummed into us from small children with the phrase,
1:41.0	waste not want not, we could come back to that if you want to.
	...

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