About one-third of the food Americans buy is wasted, hurting the climate and consumers’ wallets

You saw it at Thanksgiving, and you’ll likely see it at your next holiday feast: piles of unwanted food – unfinished second helpings, underwhelming kitchen experiments and the like – all dressed up with no place to go, except the back of the refrigerator.

With luck, hungry relatives will discover some of it before the inevitable green mold renders it inedible.

U.S. consumers waste a lot of food year-round – about one-third of all purchased food …