A Small Treatise on Waste

Being children of the World War II generation, my sister and I are conditioned to obtain all of our needs and wants at the lowest cost possible and then to use everything up before we dispose of it.

It is a burden.
And a blessing.

Leftovers are always eaten at my house. Things can get downright innovative! I frequently clean out items we aren't using any more and donate them to the Goodwill truck, but I am much happier when I can re-purpose the goods or find a recipient who will do the same.

I think my children have all rebelled to some degree against my obsessiveness on the matter. I could tell you some fine stories about the mould cultures I have found in their refrigerators. I think many of them would have qualified for a scientific study! But we shall speak no more of that.

About a year ago, I read an article that laid out the economic and environmental impact of food waste.
Aha! I thought to myself, I shall write a blog about that some day.
And here I am.

So, it turns out that my frugal instincts are completely justified.
Hearken to just a few of the startling statistics.

• According to the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, just over 25% of all food (about 26 million tons) is thrown away in the U.S. every year. It costs us over a billion dollars annually just to dispose of this food, which is taken to landfills.
• Rotting food produces methane, which is 23% more efficient at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. Thirty-four percent of methane emissions in the U.S. comes from landfills.
• It is estimated that U.S. restaurants throw away over 6,000 tons of food every day.
• Schoolchildren waste about $2 billion every year in taxpayers' money through the school lunch programme.
• In America, an average household spends about $600 a year on food that is thrown away, at an annual cost of over $100 billion. Extrapolate this out to the costs of food production, storage, and transportation and the true cost of wasted food becomes much more egregious. Think of all the oil, water, pesticides, fertilizer, money and human effort that is literally spent for naught.

I don't know about you, but contemplating the ramifications of food waste makes my blood boil. And, apart from the cold hard facts, there are some other subtleties involved.

It used to take a good chunk of a family's income to buy food; in fact, in many parts of the world, it still does. Food was a precious commodity. In 2006, we only spent (and I say we, but I don't mean me, because, you know, I'm frugal) ten percent of disposable income on food, the lowest in the 70 years that USDA has been tracking the figures. As food becomes cheaper, it also has less intrinsic worth.

Now, I am famous for my picky eating habits, and some of my children have food quirks. But I have noticed that the next generation of children, my own grandchildren included, refuse to eat anything that doesn't fit into their very narrow parameters of acceptable food. And, on the whole, their demands are indulged. I was thus amazed, on our trip to Peru several years ago, to see children happily eating the same food as the adults. Food in Peru is plentiful, but is, relative to total income, much more expensive than here in America. This seems to engender a difference in attitude that I wish we could emulate. Before it is forced upon us.

We are a culture of excess. Perhaps less so since the financial downturn, but we have such short memories that I fear any improvement will not outlast an economic recovery. I believe that we need to bring back the idea that food is a precious resource and treat it as such. My heart breaks when I think of a malnourished orphan that we met in Haiti, less than a year old and clutching precious rice in each hand. We heard of families that don't even eat once a day, grandmothers who struggle to cook for sixteen extended family members and who are themselves always hungry. Without food in our stomachs, life stinks. What kind of a privileged life do we lead when we can say I don't eat leftovers and all over the world are people in pain from hunger?

So, considering the enormity of the problem, what can you or I do?
I'll tell you what I do.

• I compost my kitchen waste and put it on the vegetable beds.
• I rarely eat out. If I do eat out, I bring my leftovers home (preferably in one of my own containers, if I have been awesome and thought ahead) and then I eat them.
• I keep track of what's in the fridge and plan ahead for dinners that will use up the leftovers.
• If fruit is getting too ripe, I make cake or bread with it, put it in a smoothie or freeze it so that I can do so later. Smoothies are great for using up fruit, leafy greens, or yogurts that no one wants to eat.
• I try to only buy amounts that we will use before food spoils. Admittedly, I get caught on that one once in a while when I hit a great bargain! But better to give it away than for it to waste.
• I keep a well-stocked pantry that allows me to reinvent leftovers. Sauces, spices, tortillas, basic canned and frozen goods.
• I have lots of containers and bags for storing surplus food. I also invested in a vacuum sealer.
• If I've stocked up on canned goods that end up being not to our liking, I donate them to a food pantry.
• I read about food. Recipe blogs. Recipe books. Articles in magazines. Books like Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food, Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Books that make me thing about the way we eat and how to do it better. 
• I invite people over to help me eat all my food!

Just so you know, I'm not setting myself up on a pedestal here. There are many things I don't do so well when it comes to food. I eat too much sugar. I don't eat salads. I don't eat enough vegetables.

But I do leftovers really well.

And I am blessed with a husband who thinks almost everything I cook is delicious.

That being said, I'm sure Jeff will be really glad when this latest pot of rice and beans is gone.

Now, if you're even a teensy bit motivated to learn some new tricks or change some behaviors, here are a couple of great websites that say it all so much better than I.

First, you can click on the new green button to the right, Love Food, Hate Waste. It's a British campaign to educate people on food waste and has some nifty ideas on what to do with leftover food as well as storage and portion tips.

Then, check out this article on the Culinate blog. There are some other great articles on the blog, like this one  on how to get kids to eat well.

If you are naturally thrifty, I hope I've given you some new ammo and ideas.

If you lean more towards the wastrel side of living, I hope I've given you something to think about and maybe motivation to try some new tactics.

Thanks for reading.

P.S. Oops, forgot this one.