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.