What you need to know about food waste
That 795 million people in the world are undernourished emphasized another surprising statistic: the United States wastes almost half of its food.
How could so much food possibly go to waste? How can we prevent food waste? Understanding and then limiting food waste in the United States is more complex than you may expect. There are a number of reasons food waste figures in America are so high.
First, there isn’t a majority culture of composting in the United States. A huge number of unwanted foods can be put into compost, turned by nature into soil, and used to produce more food. Food that is composted is never wasted, even if that food has gone “bad.”
Old meal leftovers, stale bread, coffee grinds, empty peels, inedible parts of vegetables, and grains are among the many foods that can and probably should be composted. Many urban areas in the United States have composting services that, once a week, or once per some other interval, will drive to your house, pick up your waste, and compost food scraps for you. Some will even give you soil in return.
Second, the “use everything” mindset that characterized the approach of American cooks in past ages, as well as the approach of many cooks in countries abroad today, has largely died out in the United States. Convenience has supplanted a pervasive no-waste approach.
When you purchase a whole chicken, the cavity of the chicken comes stuffed with liver, heart, neck, and often more. The livers can be sautéed and are delicious as a pate or in the filling of ravioli. The neck can be used to make chicken stock. But many cooks will discard these off cuts, just as they will the rind of a watermelon (which can be pickled) or fish bones (which can be used to make stock). Often, usable food like these end up in landfills.
Food waste, too, occurs at the level of the farm. It occurs at the level of the restaurant, the bar, and the brewery. Leftover lemons, for example, can be pressed once more for essences and residual juices rather than being simply tossed, and grain that has been simmered to make beer can be fed to livestock rather than discarded.
There are a number of ways to reduce food waste.
Farms can adopt cycles more harmonious with the earth’s natural rhythms, such as moving away from monocultures and adopting more efficient crop rotation systems. Restaurants can get creative in using scraps. (Many seemingly inedible parts can be used pickled, made into syrups, or turned to ash for use as flavoring.)
Consumers can take several active steps. Not buying too much. Making a reasonable effort to use scraps. Composting what can be composted. If nothing else, you can reduce American food waste by staying conscious of what’s in your fridge, staying on top of expiration dates, and remembering that there are people out there who would do a lot to get their hands on the food that you may be throwing away.
Food waste is a serious problem — one that, without all that much effort, can be curtailed.
QWerks supports conservation efforts by reducing paper and improving efficiency of teams.
