Americans’ profligate food-tossing ways waste the energy equivalent of 350 million barrels of oil per year, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Texas. The figure is actually probably higher, since the researchers admit that their estimate that 27 percent of the food in this country gets thrown out is low.

Jonathan Bloom, the author of American Wasteland, a forthcoming book about waste in the food system, says that figure should be closer to the more shameful 40 percent. Enough food gets discarded in this country “to fill the Rose Bowl every day,” he told CNN in an interview last week.

Why do we waste so much? We take food for granted because it’s everywhere. “There’s food in pharmacies, gas stations, and placers like Home Depot. We’re inundated. And it’s cheap,” Bloom says. Watch the interview: