The next time you wipe the uneaten remains of your dinner into a trash bin, pause a moment and think of China. Despite the fact that 11.5 percent of the mainland's population was undernourished between 2010 and 2012, Chinese still manage to waste more food than Americans on an annual basis.
A lot more, in fact, according to data presented earlier this week by Wu Zidan, China's deputy director of the State Administration of Grain. Wu noted that Chinese waste more than 38 million tons of grains — mostly rice and wheat — every year. (There's no good data on total Chinese food waste, unfortunately.) By contrast, in 2012 Americans tossed a total of 36.43 million tons of food overall, according to data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Of course, the disparity shouldn't come as a total surprise. There are four times as many Chinese as Americans, and many of them have entered the middle class over the last 30 years. On a per capita basis, Chinese still waste far less than their U.S. counterparts.