Waste Not

I have just started reading “American Wasteland” by Jonathan Bloom and it is certainly thought provoking, he states that roughly half of the food in North America is wasted.

Throwing away food is just wrong. I used to think of it only in terms of money wasted, but now I realize that there is so much more involved. Early on in our marriage, while cleaning up the kitchen and putting the leftovers away, my husband would ask me “honey, should I just throw the leftovers out now or do you want to wait a week?”. I used to be offended as I always had the best intentions of taking the leftovers to work or eating them the following day, but it often didn’t happen. It always bothered me, but eventually I learned to do a quick fridge clean out on the morning of garbage day so the guilt didn’t last too long.

A lot of food is wasted in the grocery store – only perfect, unblemished food is being displayed and sold and if it is getting close to expiring it will be thrown out. While shopping the other day, my daughter and I decided to buy a fruit platter to take to the park as a snack. I quickly checked the label and found that the fresh fruit platter was packaged in the USA – this grocery store has a deli with everything needed to cut up and package food for retail sale, why would they not cut up fruit already in the store? How old was the cut up fruit in the fridge display? How do they preserve cut up fruit for two weeks? I don’t think I want to know.

Sometimes it takes someone to spell it out for us, to connect the dots I guess, because it is not just about throwing away food, it is also about how much energy was used to grow the food that is destined to be thrown out anyway. Fuel was used to seed the field, fertilizer was applied to the field, fuel was used to harvest the field, fuel was used to transport the fruits or vegetables to the warehouse in a refrigerated truck before finally arrived in our store. Here is sits until I buy it and drive it home where it sits in my refrigerator until it is thrown out! Now fuel is needed to truck it to the landfill where it will rot and create greenhouse gas.

Today food waste stops in our house, I am placing a large piece of cardboard covering the kitchen garbage can and I will record any food waste that happens so I can be more aware and accountable.

There is a fine line between planning for several meals at the time and buying too much food that does not get used and then thrown out. I am not sure what will work best but for me but for now I am going to buy less so I can make sure it gets used.

Eating food that is grown closer to home is healthier and cheaper and also benefits the environment – how many more reasons do we need?