John Oliver turned his attention from politics to the plate on Last Week Tonight on Sunday to discuss food – specifically, food waste.
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Although Oliver failed to mention the presidential candidate’s outrageous dig at Vietnam War veteran John McCain-calling the POW turned senator “not a war hero”-the host still had some choice words for The Donald. It’s lovely to have you with us.'”.
The jab was part of Last Week Tonight’s 18-minute investigative segment on food waste in America. That amounts to $165 billion worth of food, which could fill 730 football stadiums. “It can fill a surprising number of stadiums even though most people consider it complete garbage”.
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Oliver points out that “watching all that food go from farm to not a table is bad for a bunch of reasons”, but especially because almost 50 million people in the country experienced “food insecurity” in 2013. “When we dump food into a landfill”, Oliver explains, “we’re essentially throwing a trash blanket over a flatulent food man and Dutch-ovening the entire planet”. It’s also a huge waste of labor and natural resources to grow food that’s never eaten, and all of those fruits and vegetables being thrown into landfills decompose without any air, which creates methane, a greenhouse gas that traps heat. And, sadly, we’re nowhere near solving the problem, as a bill incentivizing businesses to donate food with tax breaks – which would literally be in every single one of our best interests – was recently hijacked by the Senate. “Our produce aisles have become a lot like Leonardo DiCaprio’s penis”, Oliver says: “Exclusively accessible to the physically flawless”.
