John Oliver's Last Week Tonight has made something of an art out of taking obscure or tedious topics and making them both engaging and hilarious. This week he turned his sights to America's food waste problem and how a combination of misconceptions and laziness are making the hungry hungrier and the overfed needlessly wasteful.

His rundown touched on a lot of problems, but focused primarily on how a fear of lawsuits from grocery stores and the transportation costs for distributors creates a culture of risk mitigation that leads to lots of otherwise quality food being thrown in the garbage. It turns out the idea that grocery stores and restaurants can be held liable for donating bad food to the needy is entirely untrue, a myth that has spread unchecked despite the fact that Congress passed a law in 1996 that indemnified companies against such lawsuits.

It's a truly eye-opening segment that masterfully picks apart many of our misconceptions about food.

Watch the clip below: