I heard an astounding statistic when I was listening to a Good Food podcast the other day. Laura Wright, author of an article called How to Wage War on Food Waste for www.onearth.org, was discussing the staggering amount of food wasted in the U.S.: 40 percent of the food produced in this country is thrown out!
Isn't that insane? And the vast majority of the waste occurs at the consumer end of the food pipeline, either in our homes or in restaurants and cafeterias. Food scraps from those sources amount to 30 million tons a year, or enough to feed the entire country of Canada for a year.
I have started talking to our children about what we can do to contain this in our lives, and we have talked about ordering less when we go out to eat and trying to use up what we have in our refrigerator before we shop for more. I will practice the art of making something out of what's left in the fridge. I also have to work on my farmers' market impulse purchases. Especially as we head into this season of abundance, I have to make sure that my urge to splurge on all that beautiful produce doesn't exceed what we can reasonably consume in a week.
Any other ideas?
At least once a year I make myself cook only with what is in the pantry/freezer. Lots of what is in there is stuff like random veggie parts I can use in soup or frozen containers of tomato juice (drained off of the chopped toms I use for other things) or small amounts of rice or beans -- all stuck in the freezer so as not to waste them.
I also have a lot of badly identified herbs that were bought fresh and stuck in there before they went bad. I might do a "random" pesto.
Posted by: Carey | May 05, 2010 at 10:25 AM
Hi, Maggy -- Composting is a great way to return food scraps to the earth. (Of course, this doesn't deal with all of the processed food that is not appropriate for compost.) But our trash has greatly reduced since we have gotten composting worms and have also made an African "kitchen garden" that takes all the compost that the worms won't eat.
Posted by: Hetty | May 06, 2010 at 10:03 AM
It's too complicated sometimes. The 2-year old might eat as much as I do for dinner, or she might eat nothing. If I eat what she doesn't eat, and I always want to, I will get as big as a house. But I hate throwing it out, composting it, whatever.
Obviously I need a large dog.
But yeah, "anonymous vegetable soup" can cover a lot of farmers' market sins. :)
Posted by: Craig | May 06, 2010 at 11:52 AM
Carey, that's an excellent plan. I have some things at the bottom of the freezer that we need to use. And it's a great idea to freeze those herbs before they become useless.
Hetty, I do compost yard waste but have been nervous about using food scraps because we already have rodent issues. I would like to figure out a good option, though.
Craig, we end up cleaning up our kids plates, too! And I am amazed at how much their appetites vary from day to day.
Posted by: Margy | May 08, 2010 at 03:24 PM