About the data: The USDA tracks food loss from the production level (farms), to retail (groceries stores) to the consumer level (your fridge and restaurants). Food loss isn't exclusively food waste: food loss includes shrinkage and evaporation. These numbers aren't an exact picture of waste, but they do help illustrate how much food goes uneaten in the United States. For Michael Erard's food waste, we used weights for medium-sized items (15.5 apples) and weights available in the USDA's National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference. When this database did not include a food item (Pirate's Booty, for example), we bought the item and weighed it. Note: In the USDA figures, fats and rice did not have numbers available for 2012, and the 2010 values were used instead.