“The average American consumer wastes 10 times as much food as someone in
Southeast Asia, up 50 percent from Americans in the 1970s. This means there was
once a time when we wasted far less, and we can get back there again.”

Dana Gunders’ “Wasted: How America Is Losing Up to 40 Percent of Its Food from Farm to Fork to Landfill” provides an extensive overview of American food waste. This Natural Resources Defense Council report from 2012 can be found here:

http://www.nrdc.org/food/files/wasted-food-IP.pdf