Food waste: Incessant problem meets modern solutions
By Juliana Smith-Etienne
Have you ever proudly purchased a vegetable at the store, recipe ideas churning in your head, only to abandon it in the far reaches of your fridge and rediscover it weeks later covered in suspiciously-colored biohazardous fuzz? You’re not alone. Food waste is a problem that is largely perpetuated in our own homes.
“Eating is a necessity for everybody. You have to eat to live. But that being said, it is a practice that we do need to be mindful of because it’s something that we do so often,” said Kylie Burke, president of the Environmental Conservation Organization at Texas State University.
According to Feeding America, Americans waste a whopping 80 million tons of food every year, or about 38% of the food in the U.S.. These numbers are even more alarming when you take into account the 44 million people in the U.S. who face hunger. From restaurants tossing their leftovers at the end of the day, to consumers discarding long-forgotten vegetables to retailers rejecting produce that doesn’t look picture-perfect, food that could be feeding hungry mouths often ends up in landfills. Apps like FoodHero, Flashfood and TooGoodToGo, however, are offering ways for consumers and businesses alike to reduce their food waste (and be fed for an affordable price).
TooGoodToGo is an app that gives businesses like restaurants and grocery stores a platform to sell their leftover food by way of “Surprise Bags,” or, as the name suggests, bags full of whatever kind of leftover food is available. This can include pastries, beverages, snacks, unused ingredients, and even full meals. Though the customer doesn’t get to pick what’s in their bag and has to be willing to pick it up when the business is closing (generally later at night), they can get the food for a much reduced price, sometimes as low as $4 depending on the business. FoodHero works essentially the same way, whereas Flashfood focuses on grocery stores specifically.
“I did Whole Foods, and I did a bakery bag, so it came with just some pastries that they had. It was actually a lot, it was like, a full size container of, I think it was maybe croissants, cinnamon rolls and muffins or something like that.” said Abby Breyfogle, a UT Austin student and TooGoodToGo user. “And then I also did Foxtrot here on the Drag. And that was, I think another thing of pastries. That one was a little smaller, but it was again, just some croissants and kind of stuff like that.”
A study conducted by Therese Fostervold Mathisen and Frode Ramstad Johansen, faculty at Østfold University College in Norway, found that although the meals on TooGoodToGo are cheap, it doesn’t truly stop food waste if the consumer doesn’t end up liking what they got in their bag; it simply passes the food waste from the producer to the consumer.
Despite these criticisms, Breyfogle said she believes the app is helping reduce food waste in the U.S. while giving people access to affordable food.
“I think it could also provide a way to get a cheaper meal, especially for college students, as well as allowing restaurants and bakeries to give away some of their food for a cheaper cost,” she said.
You don’t need an app to reduce your food waste, however. There are a plethora of recipes online that encourage people to use up their food scraps and clear out their fridges. Soups and stocks make great mediums for using up old vegetables, and the skins of many fruits can be used to make desserts or jams.
“If you save a lot of your veggie scraps that you’d normally throw away, you can put those in a Ziploc bag and put that in the freezer and then use that to make a veggie stock homemade, which is way tastier than something you could just buy at the store,” said Burke. “Same thing with bones, if you like bone broth type stuff.”
One of the best ways to use up old produce is to make a sauce. Greens tend to go bad rather quickly in the fridge, so this waste-free pesto is a great way to make use of that wilting spinach and kale. It also gives you an excuse to make use of nutritious but often overlooked greens like carrot tops and radish greens rather than throwing them away.
Food waste is a problem that will exist to some degree as long as we have to eat food to survive. However, from apps to waste-free recipes (to putting down that vegetable at the grocery store unless you’re absolutely certain you’re going to use it), there are plenty of steps we can take to reduce our waste and make the planet a more well-fed place for everyone.
Waste-Free Pesto
Ingredients:
- 2 cups, packed, of any leftover greens of your choice (carrot tops, radish greens, spinach, kale, arugula, etc. If you have old herbs, even better. Use those stems.)
- ½–¾ cup pine nuts (or walnuts for a more accessible option)
- 1–3 cloves of garlic
- ¾ cup parmesan cheese (for a vegan alternative, add some nutritional yeast to taste.)
- Zest and juice of 1 lemon
- ½ cup extra virgin olive oil
- Salt, pepper and red pepper flakes to taste
- Toast your garlic and nuts on a dry skillet and add them to a food processor.
- Wash your greens of choice and add them to the food processor.
- Add the rest of your ingredients and blend until desired consistency is reached. Adjust seasoning to taste.
- Use as a sauce for whatever your heart desires. I used mine to make some delicious pesto rigatoni.
