Quick note: I’ll be on ESPN Radio’s Gameday in about 20 minutes (1:20 pm EDT).
Found this interesting article in the International Herald Tribune via Gmail on how much food we waste:
In 1997, in one of the few studies of food waste, the Department of Agriculture estimated that two years before, 96.4 billion pounds of the 356 billion pounds of edible food in the United States was never eaten. Fresh produce, milk, grain products and sweeteners made up two-thirds of the waste. An update is under way.
I have to admit that nothing makes me more upset than throwing food away. In the past few years, I’ve decreased my food purchases to more or less just what I know I’ll use, making more trips to the store (which isn’t feasible for everyone) and, for ingredients that can’t be purchased in small enough quantities, planning several meals around them to avoid waste. I also convert foods that maybe are past their primes for eating straight and convert them into other foods, like using fruit to make pies or cobblers or jams, or taking stale bread and making fresh bread crumbs by tossing it in the food processor. And yet I still find myself tossing, usually via the garbage disposal, way more food than I’d like – leftovers usually.
Unfortunately, short of tailoring your purchases to more closely fit what you eat, which isn’t easy for people who shop for food once a week, there’s not much you can do to reduce the impact of what you waste. Composting isn’t for everyone, and with skunks and raccoons in our neighborhood, it’s definitely not for us. There’s just no way to get the food I’ve bought and won’t or can’t use into the hands of someone who needs it.
Anyway, it was an interesting read for me, because I’m conscious of what I waste. Just the other day, my wife and I both bought strawberries without realizing the other had done so, and one batch (mine, I think) had mold on half the berries by the next day. With a two-year-old in the house, it wasn’t worth taking chances on the “clean” berries, so out they went. It’s just a shame.
I share your sentiment of hating throwing food away. In the past year, to try and reduce the food I waste, I’ve been sacrificing the quality by buying more frozen, dried, and canned foods with only a minimal amount of fresh produce and unfrozen meat, but I still find myself throwing out a decent amount of food. I guess it’s just pretty much inevitable.
Keith, have you read Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan? It’s a compelling synthesis of several issues related to food production and usage in the U.S. I was fascinated throughout.
That’s a shocking amount of waste and it makes me want to work even harder on reducing mine.
I think you should give composting a shot, even with a neighborhood full of racoons and skunks. My neighborhood is full of them (and possums) but I still compost pretty much everything except meat. I get an occasional critter that digs through the pile, but its very rare. I think they’ve mostly given up because there’s never any meat in there and there’s always a nice pile of leaves and yard waste on top of the food.
As for meat, if it’s near the end of its useful life or if there’s a carcass/bone with little left on it, freeze it and once you’ve collected a good amount of frozen bits make stock with the bones and some veggies that are also near the end of their useful life. Freeze the stock and you’re good to go for months. It doesn’t completely do away with the waste, but it’s one more way to reduce it.
I have one of those black composters made of recycled tires or something. I regularly see racoons in my neighborhood and have certainly smelled the presence of skunks. Occasionally the wind blows the lid off the composter, but I’ve never seen any indication of animal visitations (aside from worms and the occasional fly, if I miscalculate on proportions).
Buying no more than I can eat/use is an especial challenge for me, as I live alone. In season, I buy at farmers markets and farmstands, partly because I can often choose how much to buy and partly because more of the shelf-life of the produce is available to me, as it hasn’t been used up in transport and in the supermarket. And I have a veggie garden, which helps also (this last might not be practical for someone who travels a lot).
My wife and I make a menu for the upcoming week. Then we purchase only the food needed for the menu. We waste less food, and we save money. Every time people come over, they comment on the menu hanging on the fridge.
Preaching to the choir on the stock issue. I have a bag of frozen veggie bits, like the top rings left after chopping bell peppers, as well as a frozen chicken carcass waiting for the next day I’m home long enough to make stock.
I’ve fallen in love with the bulk aisle at Whole Foods in addition to shopping more at farm stands for produce. The bulk aisle lets me buy in smaller quantities, especially for nuts and whole grains, which go rancid if not kept in the freezer. Less in the house means less temptation to make a bigger portion than we’ll use.
By the way, I forgot one of my favorite food “recycling” options: Left over white rice -> rice pudding!
If anyone lives in a heavily populated area (I live in Atlanta) there usually is a good chance of finding a homeless person who is more than willing to eat what we would waste..especially after getting a “to go” box from a restaurant..I cannot think of how many times I have gotten one, never finished it, and just wound up throwing it out.
As much as we waste in our homes, I suspect it’s far worse at the grocery store. They have so much perishable food, and I would bet that there is a large amount of variance in how much people buy on a daily/weekly basis, so they would be fairly regularly overstocked on perishable items.
I know many grocery stores have agreements with food banks etc on some stuff…but they must not send that much over, since they’re always looking for more food.
Being a foreign guy, the portion of food served in most of the eating places makes me surprise, as it never seems to be consumed by single person… I just try to minimize the amount of food wasted by spending some time to organize menu of the week ahead so that I don’t buy some ingredient over and over again by not knowing what I have now. Anyway, it is grave concern for me intertwined with recycling.
Keith, I heard you on the radio yesterday without hearing the introduction first or knowing it was you. I actually said out loud to my dad who was in the car with me, “is this guy reading Keith Law’s notes? He’s saying everything Keith would say.” Then at the end, the host said “thanks Keith, always a pleasure”. My dad looked at me and said “you’re not very bright, are you?”
Okay that story was pointless.
My wife and I have a problem with food waste as well. Very few food items are sold with customers like us in mind (working couples with no kids). Milk is usually our biggest problem. A gallon is too much and a half gallon isn’t enough.
I have the milk problem, too. I buy for just myself and generally only use milk for morning cereal (sometimes i use it for other things, but that’s usually planned ahead). I run out between grocery store trips if I buy a quart, but I often end up throwing out significant portions of a half gallon.
I think my food wasting is actually not too bad, since I only buy things I plan on eating in the ensuing week or two. But I also eat out a lot, which is a wasteful practice. And the milk thing does bother me, for financial reasons if not for moral ones.
My wife and I actually have a zero food-waste-quotient. I think part of the secret is that I make trips to the store everyday, and we have an ideal situation in that we work very close to home and thus can come home for lunch. The result is that I make our main meal at lunch time, then we have the leftovers for the evening meal. I realize this is not doable for everybody, but certainly bringing leftovers from yesterday’s supper to work would be fine for most as long as they have small coolers or cooler-bags. It gets rid of a lot of waste. It may also have to do with the fact that we live in Europe and perhaps some of the quantities are different in the shops. Of course this doesn’t apply to produce, but maybe to other items.
Keith, I’d like to hear your take on instant replay in baseball. Last night’s reversal of Delgado’s homerun was pathetic at best. People who argue against it say it would lengthen the game more, but how about shortening tv commercial spots by one ad for every half inning. i bet that shortens up a game a lot more than instant replay would lengthen it. and instant replay could actually have an impact on the game, instead of some ford focus commercial featuring derek jeter.
baseball makes enough of a revenue from tv and ads that they could forsake the one ad/half inning. we see players complain about how long they have to wait in between innings anyways.
your thoughts? thanks again, keith.
Keith, a suggestion that would benefit all your readers: any chance you could compile all your food reviews and categorize them by city, adding to it any time a new review is written? As someone who travels often I would love to check out reviews for cities I’m about to visit in a quicker manner.
Rick: You can search on city name in the search box on the right-hand side, or check the tag cloud, which I’m still working on updating for past posts.
Jason: I despise instant-replay. It’s going to slow the game down, and the cost/benefit ratio doesn’t work in my eyes. Eliminating ads is a non-starter – there’s no way baseball will voluntarily give up revenues.
Todd: Haven’t read it, seemed too much like a food-police rant, and I have zero interest in that type of argument.
Keith, this is in reference from a while back, but one of your entries talked about the detriments of high-fructose corn syrup and inspired me to write a research paper about it for my chemistry (for non-majors) course this past term. After doing further research (including looking at damn near every label of everything I bought at the grocery store), I found that a lot of mass-produced food or food substance that require some sort of sweetener use HFCS (including sauces, ketchup, some baby foods, even baked goods such as the sliced white bread that so many people buy).
I know that baking every day would be out of the question for me, but I was also thinking that making your own juices (hand squeezed or juiced from fresh or whatnot) and sauces (maybe not ketchup, but some of the other things don’t look too hard to make) might be an inexpensive way to substitute these things (since a lot of the alternative grocery options are more expensive). I wasn’t sure this is a feasible option, however, since I don’t know how quickly those things would spoil. Any thoughts or suggestions?
I’ve just been back from my first visit to the US, and kept an eye out for HFCS due to your previous comments Keith. It is in everything, and it makes coke/dr pepper taste quite unusual (Don’t get me started on what it does to Ketchup). Why don’t you guys march on Washington! At the very least it can save on confusion amongst tourists.
This is also a major problem in the UK.
UK Food Waste
Aaron:
Lots of stuff has HFCS in it, but not everything. There are plenty of juices that are in fact 100% juice (especially OJ, which I can never get enough of). That said, even at our cheapo grocery store any juice (even HFCS juice) is priced way higher than I think it’s worth anyway.
I bake my own bread and am quite happy with the results, but that’s not for everyone – you can get bread from a bakery and there are *some* breads that don’t have too much stuff added to them at the grocery store. You just gotta look.
Just one thing… Heinz organic ketchup doesn’t have HFCS in there.
I read the EU is looking at substantially cutting CAP, so at least some good can come from this recession.
There was just a piece on our local news in Chicago last night talking about the popularity of “dumpster diving” by people known as “freegans” – vegans who only eat what is thrown out by supermarkets.
If interested, it’s under “weird news” on:
http://www.nbc5.com/index.html