Trimming Food Waste

I read this amazing book, American Wasteland by Jonathan Bloom, last year.  The book is well-researched and completely easy to read.  It looks at our entire food system - from farms and production, to packaging and shipping, grocery stores, restaurants, and your kitchen - and points highlights inefficiencies and waste in the system.  It’s astounding.  Nearly half of all the food produced in the United States is thrown away.  Half!  And think about when the waste occurs at the end of this system, for example, after the food has been grown, picked, packaged, shipped, stored, purchased, prepared and served in a restaurant or your home.  If you don’t end up eating it then, the amount of materials (fertilizers, boxes, packaging) and energy (transport, cooking, refrigeration) that are literally just being thrown away is mind-boggling.

I really can’t do it justice here, if you have the time, pick up a copy for yourself or for Christmas presents (I actually did give this book to some of my family for Christmas last year). 

Growing and preparing food is not only a chemical/biological process but a part of our cultural identity and for many of us also defines our relationship with nature.  If you think of farming as assisting and coaxing nature to provide us with the things that we need to survive and if you think of cooking as an act of generosity and love, then this amount of food waste kind of breaks your heart.  It signifies a lack of respect for the earth, lack of understanding and respect for the effort and energy that has gone into bringing you this item, and a lack of awareness of where that thrown away food will end up.  If we can waste this much food, this exemplifies our disconnectedness with nature and food systems.

The book does have glimmers of hope in it.  It describes some great efforts underway at all stages (at the farm, grocery store, restaurant) to reduce food waste and recover food for donation to those who need it.   Jonathan Bloom also offers the rest of us, although subtly, some advice on how we can contribute less to this problem.  Here are some ideas:

• Skip the buffet.  An amazing amount of food is wasted at buffet restaurants since most of them need to keep all of the trays full right up until closing and then 5 minutes after closing much of it is thrown away.
• Buy the misfit fruits and vegetables.  From the farm to the grocery store, a lot of food is thrown out just because it doesn’t “look perfect”.  Send a message to the stores about what is important to you and rescue a few lopsided apples from a fate as garbage by buying some of the fruits and vegetables that might not be the most beautiful on the shelf.
• Don’t fall into the “sell by/best by” trap.  The dates on packages have gotten out of hand and are intentionally confusing.  Confusion leads to people, both you at home and the guy at the grocery store, to throwing things out unnecessarily “just to be safe”.  Learn what the dates mean and use common sense. 
• If you are buying something that you know you will use soon (e.g., something for a recipe or something your family always consumes quickly), buy the items with that has the soonest best by/sell by date, because if you don’t there is  a great likelihood it will be wasted.  For example, we eat a lot of yogurt.  A container of yogurt in our house lasts 3 days tops, so why would I need one that will be good in my fridge for the next 30 days?
• Avoid buying tons of condiments.  Your refrigerator is probably full of things that you bought big jars of and used 1 tablespoon for a recipe 6 months ago.   Learn about substitutions in recipes so you can avoid buying some of these things in the first place, and know what is in your refrigerator and try to use it up.

The cooking and shopping tips section of this blog tries to incorporate a lot of these ideas.  For example, I recommend using the whole zucchini, onion, or pepper (or whatever) in your dish instead of following recipes exactly that call for things like 1 cup of sliced zucchini.  Also by becoming more comfortable in your kitchen you’ll be able to whip up meals that will use what is leftover in your fridge so you don’t end up throwing things out.

If I’ve haven’t convinced you yet, here are a few more excerpts from American Wasteland:

• Every day America wastes enough food to fill the Rose Bowl or 500 million pounds.  500 million pounds!
• Annually as a country, we waste 160 billion pounds of food or 197 pounds of food per person.
• 49 million Americans don’t get enough to eat.

[Some quick math…we throw away enough food to feed each hungry Americans 10 pounds of food per day]

• It is estimated that we (the consumer) throw away about 25% of the food we buy, which for a family of four would be about $2,200 annually.
• 18% of what ends up in our landfills is food.  Food in landfills release methane (a greenhouse gas with 25 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide).
• It takes 15 tons of water to produce 2.2 pounds of red meat (including the water needed to grow the grains fed to the cattle).
• As landfills fill up and move farther and farther from cities, our garbage (and food waste) is hauled farther and father in trucks averaging 4 to 8 miles to the gallon.