FOOD is the basic necessity for any living organism in the world. We all need food to grow and survive. When it comes to humans, food has a very important role to play in our every day lives. There are some who live to eat and then on the other hand there are many who eat to live. There are many blogs, discussions, arguments on this topic “Eat to Live or Live to Eat”. I am myself somewhere in the middle 😉. I love food but I cannot gather the courage to put myself in the “Live to eat” category 😂.
Over 2+ decades ago when I came to the America – “the Land of the free and Home of the brave”, I noticed one thing very quickly. The food portions were big – and I was amazed! I was in my early 20’s and I was so happy with these large portions of food, eating to my hearts content, as I was young, without realizing what those large portions are doing to me and my health and in general obesity in America! There are many places in the world where sugary beverages (SODA) are cheaper than Water, even beer is cheaper than water in some countries. So for the people to whom cost is a big factor in their day to day lives – they choose either beer or these sugary drinks over water! Growing up in India, water (most common), lassi or fresh fruit juices were the choice of options with any meal in restaurants, when we used to occasionally eat at a restaurant. Unfortunately, that trend has changed in India as well.
Let me ask you a question – Have you ever been to theaters to watch movies??? Yes, once upon a time before COVID-19, people used to go to theaters to watch movies and I pray and hope those days are back soon! I used to love the fact that a large bucket of popcorn and a large drink was always economical (see images below)! Funny isn’t it?
Large portions and increased consumption has its negative impact. These large portions means larger calories intake, that then leads to weight and obesity challenges. Another side effect of the large portions is Food Waste, which has negative impact on our mother earth. Food waste is the topic of this current blog. Lets dive into it!
Each year, 108 billion pounds of food is wasted in the United States. That equates to more than $161 billion worth of food thrown away each year. Shockingly, nearly 40% of all food in America is wasted.
Feeding America
The quote above highlights the staggering amount of food that is wasted in our good old America. Now, that is a lot of food wasted. Indeed, it is scary. One may not really even recognize why this is bad in so many ways. Just thinking morally, there are millions of people who go hungry on a regular basis and just the idea of wasting food where other fellow humans in the world don’t have the luxury to even get something to eat, is MORALLY WRONG. Ok fine maybe you don’t care about being morally right. Maybe this helps change your perspective? All this wasted food, eventually ends up in our landfill. This food in the landfill, is then responsible for producing large amounts of “Methane” – a more powerful greenhouse gas than Carbon Dioxide! And what happens because of this??? You guessed it right, Global Warming. The impacts of Global Warming are real (some example images highlight the impact) and the threat to our lives and our planet is real! A simple google search would be the solution to find out more about global warming’s impact on our planet and our lives.
Now that we have established that food waste is bad in MANY different ways, lets see what can we do as individuals, friends, neighbors, community members, and more state and nation wide and eventually all over the world. There are a ton of good Samaritans who are already doing the good deed, so why not we jump on the same band-wagon and help with this Noble cause? I will highlight in the following section what my family and I do to help with this cause and also some ideas on what else can we do both as a community and as a country (individuals, legislation and other such entities).
Did you know that an average home can divert about 150 kg of food waste a year from local waste disposal facilities by adopting home composting?
Move for Hunger
Our Individual commitment
- Plan your groceries and buy things wisely. For e.g. we try to come up with a plan weekly what we will be making for Lunch and Dinner. Now we do not stick with the plan religiously, but we follow it for the most part. This way we are careful when we buy perishable goods which tend to go bad and become food waste more often.
- Make sure you have proper storage for all your food that you buy and that it is visible at all times. Now this seems very simple, but many a times food was wasted because some perishable food items was hidden in our refrigerator or in our pantry (onions, potatoes, garlic etc.) If we organize and store food properly the chances of wasting food reduces.
- Eating Out – be conscious of how much you eat when you eat out. Now my personal tendency (until recently) was to overstuff myself. I love food and on top of that I want my money’s worth 😉. This happens especially in a BUFFET situation and then before I realize I have eaten too much and the remaining goes to waste. Has this happened to you at all? If NOT then you are AWESOME!!! If it has happened to you then you are a foodie like me. Well with a lot of restraint I have tried to overcome this in the past few years as I became more aware of the negative effects of food waste (I dont claim I am perfect!!!). In a non-buffet scenario, I always packed food back home (again money’s worth!).
- We started composting 3 years ago and we can proudly say that we have been able to reduce the amount of food waste in the garbage that goes to the landfill. Now we aren’t experts at composting and its a trial and error, but we have had our results. Below are some pictures of fruits of our composting.
Community wide ideas
I have tried to list down some of the ideas that I found in my online research:
- Saving food waste in parties (birthdays and other celebrations) and weddings – hosts should work with the organizers, caterers to talk about food waste and how the remaining food can be donated to non-profit orgs and other such venues who can use this food to distribute to those in needs. The hosts can also request guests to carry some of the food home, that is another option. Here’s the Indian dabbawalla’s success story! Food Recovery network is another example of an organization working hard to stop food waste.
- Every school and university should have policies in place to reduce food waste and even make composting mandatory. Dickinson’s college farm – this student run farm composts and helps reduce food waste. Such an amazing story! We need more such schools and colleges doing this every day.
- I read online a story about this organization in Germany – Culinary Misfits – this org seeks out not so good looking vegetables from grocery stores, restaurants etc… and turns them into delectable dishes at the events they cater in the city. I am sure there are many such organizations all around the world, but I feel we need more of these to help avoid food waste just because they do not appear in a certain way.
- Local, state and national policy makers should PASS a law that needs help from food industry, media, grocery stores and other such entities to educate consumers about the confusion over the “Date labels” – Best By, Sell by, Use by etc. Stats show that a lot of food (around 20%) is thrown away and hence wasted by consumers because of lack of proper understanding of these dates. The FDA did its part by working with the Food industry to come up with a solution to reduce the confusion, but the awareness should be spread out far and wide. We do not want to waste food just because of some confusion.
While I would like to list a ton of things here, I want to stop at this point. Helping avoid food waste is a moral and ethical obligation for every human being in this world. And we all should MAKE A RESOLUTION (we don’t need to wait till end of the year or till 1st of January) starting NOW that we will do our bit, even if its small, to help with this cause.
Now its not all doom and gloom lot of businesses and consumers are realizing the impact of food waste and they have started putting policies and practices in place to reduce waste and shown their commitment to the cause. Image below is from Grocerywaste.com which highlights businesses like Kroger, AD USA, Walmart have publicly committed to Zero Waste by 2025. Read more on the website.
As usual, please provide your thoughts, comments, feedback. Together we can do this and avoid food being WASTED!!!
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