In the midst of a food crisis, with grocery prices spiraling upwards across the globe, there’s nothing worse than hearing that every day, a massive amount of food gets tossed in the trash.

But since we’re not here to obscure reality as an excuse to make everyone feel better, here’s the truth: According to a new report by the Stockholm International Water Institute, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and the International Water Management Institute, about half of all the food produced worldwide goes to waste. The report states that the amount of food we produce is more than enough to feed the world’s population, but between our inefficient (or nonexistent) distribution systems and our ridiculous practice of tossing out perfectly good food, a big chunk of humanity goes hungry while another eats itself into an epidemic.

More depressing highlights:

The U.S. throws away as much as 30 percent of its food, worth some $48.3 billion. And where do all those all-you-can-eat buffet leftovers go? Straight into landfills, where, adding insult to injury, they generate methane as they rot.

Meanwhile, in poorer countries, most uneaten food bites the big one before it has a chance to be consumed. An estimated 15 to 35 percent of food may be lost in the fields, while another 10 to15 percent is spoiled during processing, transport, and storage.

But the real problem isn’t even food—it’s water. The authors estimate that about half of the H2O used to produce all this food also goes to waste, since agriculture is the largest human use of water. As Treehugger points out, that’s ten trillion gallons of water wasted to produce that whopping $48 billion of uneaten food in the U.S.—enough to meet the needs of 500 million families.

So what can we do to put the kibosh on all this horrific waste? (And we use “horrific” as a euphemism here.) On the barest micro level, we can watch our individual consumption and be sure to minimize what we throw away. And there’s always room for ideas like this one.

BusinessWeek reports that the company acquiesced to the change after threat of a lawsuit came from the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a non-profit watchdog group that specializes in nutrition and food safety. But what about the FDA? Shouldn’t it be regulating misleading labeling of so-called “healthy” products?

It’s no secret that the food industry is notorious for slapping “healthy-sounding” labels on food that barely scrape by the minimum requirements, but so far the agency has done little to stamp out the practice. In 2006, it released a statement acknowledging that unqualified “whole grain” labels could be confusing to consumers and stating the following:

Manufacturers can make factual statements about whole grains on the label of their products, such as “10 grams of whole grains,” “½ ounce of whole grains,”… and “100% whole grain oatmeal”… provided that the statements are not false or misleading … and do not imply a particular level of the ingredient, i.e., “high” or “excellent source.”

So what was the food industry’s response? Use unqualified wording like “made with whole grains” to sidestep FDA guidelines.

Given the fact that despite a ramp-up in nutrition education for consumers, obesity rates are going nowhere but up, it might be worth the FDA’s time to consider cracking down on some of the innumerable gray areas in food packaging and advertising. Otherwise, Skittles won’t be the only candy on the shelf touting “All Natural Flavoring” and “Made from natural ingredients.”

Image: Flickr/agilitynut

No surprise, his remarks spurred indignant responses from Indian commerce and economics officials, who fired back with the argument that the increase in food prices has as much—or more—to do with American overconsumption as it does with industrialization in India. Their argument is supported by recent research showing that the 34 percent of Americans (and similar percentage of British) who are obese consume 18 percent more food energy than the rest of the population.

But another major factor that’s, er, fueling the price increase is ethanol. Since the embrace of the corn-based product as an alternative fuel source, the federal government has mandated that large amounts of U.S.-grown corn be converted into biofuels. To this end, the feds created additional subsidies to induce farmers to grow corn for fuel as opposed to food—meaning that substantial amounts of what was once food-producing land has been diverted to non-food production. Combine less product with higher demand and prices are bound to creep up.

Ironically, it was all those corn growers creating an abundance of corn-based foods that helped obesity rise in the first place. Obesity and food experts credit the mass production of high fructose corn syrup, a high-calorie liquid sweetener found in most packaged foods, with jump-starting the obesity epidemic. The product, introduced in 1970, is now a staple ingredient in everything from soft drinks to fruit juices to cookies. In 2000, the average yearly consumption of HFCS hit 73.5 pounds per person in the U.S.

But now that all those corn fields are being diverted to ethanol, will HFCS production fall, leading to lower obesity rates, less overall demand for food, and thus lower food prices? It’s possible. HFCS came to dominate the market because it was cheaper than cane sugar; with more corn getting “eaten” by cars, the prices are going up, which may mean more foods sweetened with good ‘ol sugar rather than HFCS. As obesity expert Eric Finkelstein told me in an interview, “It’s not clear that [the ethanol shift] will help reduce oil dependency, but perhaps it will help with obesity.”

So while it’s done nothing good for food prices yet, all that ethanol land diversion may actually drive our obesity rates (and food demand) down—even if it doesn’t do jack to reduce our carbon emissions.