(Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post) 
 
 One of the most profound contradictions of modern America is that more than 45 million Americans don’t have enough to eat, but the country wastes an estimated 40 percent of its food. Our concept is simple and the execution extraordinarily complicated. It felt wrong. Math felt like an exercise in frustration and wholly disconnected from trying to feed people struggling with hunger. “We were throwing away all of this food just because we couldn’t communicate,” Belding, then a freshman in high school, remembers venting that day. Pantries simply post their excess food to the program — and someone else in the network picks it up and puts it to use. Getty Images for L'Oreal Paris Belding strikes a pose at the L’Oreal Paris Women of Worth 2015 Celebration in New York. And experts agree programs such as the interactive MEANS website, which stands for Matching Excess and Need for Stability, can close lapses in communication between pantries and chip away at the country’s colossal problem with chronic waste. Around half of the phone numbers listed under food pantries, she said, didn’t even work. Math isn't the problem I thought it was - it's the solution. As Grant introduced me to the concept of data science, it was clear I owed a few high school math teachers an apology. Nelson, now a third-year law student at George Washington University and program co-founder, had experience with building programs. What could we possibly build that would be slicker for all of the food banks and food pantries to communicate with each other that isn’t already solved by something else?’ ” 
 
 In the end, he helped anyway. In its first year, the food recovery notification system rescued about 4,000 pounds of food; became the first non-profit to win the GW New Venture Competition; and just took home a $10,000 prize from L’Oreal Paris through its Women Of Worth campaign. “They’re like the off-brand Mountain Dew in the food world,” Belding said. The beans had moved.” 
 
 “We were kind of desperate,” said Stephanie Shallah, an official with the District’s So Others Might Eat who had posted the item. On top of the full-time hours she puts into MEANS—she didn’t want to say how many because her parents will read the story—she is still a student. Not everything found a home before the expiration date, and a lot ended up in the trash. It’s not a problem of supply or demand. It’s also figuring out how to make enough money to become self sufficient, a rarity for non-profits.
– There are 48 million Americans who, at some point each year, may be unable to get enough food. Meanwhile, a third of the country's food goes to waste. This isn't as easy an issue to solve as it sounds—something Maria Rose Belding realized while volunteering at a soup pantry as a teen. At one point, the pantry received 10,000 boxes of mac 'n cheese, but couldn't find enough people in need before the stuff expired, reports Quartz. "We were throwing away all of this food just because we couldn't communicate," Belding tells the Washington Post. Now a 20-year-old American University student, Belding hopes the app and website she co-created can help: Overflowing pantries list what extra food they have available on the MEANS (Matching Excess and Need for Stability) Database, and neighboring pantries get notifications, Belding writes at the Huffington Post. Grocery stores and restaurants with food to unload can make use of the site, too. Belding remembers watching the first donation of canned beans pop up after MEANS launched in February. "We were all anxiously sitting by our computers hitting refresh," she says—the anxiety intensified by the fact that beans are donated so regularly they aren't a hot commodity. Suddenly, "it just disappeared." Since then, the database has kept 4,000 pounds of food from the trash. While a similar service saved 50 million pounds of food in New York in 2015 by matching donations with food kitchens, MEANS allows smaller organizations to do the ground work themselves, and currently has 200 accounts across 27 states. While grants and awards keep the site running for now, Belding has plans: to track large retailers' donations from a tax-benefit perspective, something most don't currently do since those donations are made on such a local level. MEANS would charge a small fee for doing all the tracking. (On the food front, this young chef has left one of the world's best restaurants to try to save America's school lunch program.)