How much of the thrown-away food is discarded because of approaching expiry dates?
When the 2008 financial crisis hit Japan, our pastor took my daughter and her husband along to distribute food at a Tokyo park. They got the food free; it was just a day short of expiry dates and would have otherwise been thrown away. The recipients were mostly people who had suddenly lost their jobs.
The EU is big on expiration dates, IIRC. They also had to walk back a lot of other regulations regarding food, especially having to do with food shapes, what names certain foods could be sold under, and a whole host of other draconian stuff. They still have their Common Agricultural Policy in place, though, and micromanage fishing for all the member states.