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That viral stat about 60% of food being thrown out at stores took me 3 days to trace, and the source was a single store in Ohio
I saw that claim shared about 40 times in one day, so I dug into it. What I found was a 2019 blog post that cited a study, and that study only looked at one grocery chain in Ohio with 12 locations. The 60% number was also about produce shrink, not all food, and it included things like trimmings and spoilage that never hit a shelf. It took me 3 days and about 6 phone calls to track down the actual report because the blog never linked it. The scary part is that major news sites ran with the headline without checking a single number. Has anyone else noticed how often these big percentage claims trace back to one small sample?
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xena58220d ago
Did the news sites ever post a correction or did they just quietly let the headline sit there? Seems like once a number like 60% gets out, nobody bothers to walk it back, and the blog gets to keep the clicks either way. Curious if you ever heard back from any of them after you called.
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