America's most pressing problem: Leaving your peas on your plate after you've finished dinner.

And since this is America's most pressing problem, America's most responsive branch of government, the Obama administration, is doing something about it right now!

For example, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsak is hitting the hustings to lecture Americans about how they should eat all of Mom's creamed beets, not just a few bites to be polite. Here's PJ Media's report on Vilsak's Oct. 4 speech at the National Press Club:

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said America needs to stop wasting food, even if that means teaching people to cut back on the amount of food on their plates.

Speaking at the National Press Club on Monday, the former Iowa governor said long-term food insecurity "is a challenge, because we're going to have to increase food production — I've seen anywhere from 50 to 70 percent in the next 35 years — to meet a growing world population."

"But the first step, and the one way the USDA can provide help and assistance to meet this need, is to expand on the — on the issue of food waste," Vilsack said. "A third of the food that we grow, raise and produce in this country is never consumed the way it was intended. It's wasted."

Vilsak has been harping on those uneaten mashed potatoes for some time. In October 2015 the USDA teamed up with the Environmental Protection agency to launch "the United States' first-ever national food waste reduction goal, calling for a 50-percent reduction by 2030."

By 2030, only half as many peas left on the plate.

"The United States enjoys the most productive and abundant food supply on earth, but too much of this food goes to waste," said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. "An average family of four leaves more than two million calories, worth nearly $1500, uneaten each year. Our new reduction goal demonstrates America's leadership on a global level in in getting wholesome food to people who need it, protecting our natural resources, cutting environmental pollution and promoting innovative approaches for reducing food loss and waste."…

"Let's feed people, not landfills…," said EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy.

But of course the Obama administration doesn't want you to take that uneaten kale on your dinner plate and scrape it into a sack for that homeless guy on the street outside your office building. No, what the USDA wants you to do is eat less–just as it does with those calorie caps on school lunches that leave the high school football players starving:

"We can reduce portion sizes, we can have a more informed consuming public," [Vilsak] said.

And just to help, Vilsak already has some innovative ideas out there:

"The USDA is providing an app that allows you to sort of go online and figure out if something's been in the refrigerator for a couple of days, is it still OK to eat that type of thing? And if we can't reduce it or reuse it, then we need to recycle it. So that's one strategy that we're working on."

Mmm, just what we need: a taxpayer-funded device for figuring out whether that slice of leftover roast beef you stuck in the fridge last week is going over or not.

Ah, America's most pressing problem.