The Today Show reports on America's wasted food
I grew up in a household where we embraced leftovers, composted actively and had a dog with an iron-clad stomach, so very little food went to waste. As I got older and started living on my own, I realized what a feat of meal planning and conservation my mother had been pulling off all those years, as I found myself tossing heads of lettuce, moldy cheese and sour milk at the end of each week. I worked to change my habits, learning how much food I needed for each given week, working hard to use up my leftovers and buying an indoor composter to ensure that my vegetal waste didn't go into the landfills.
As food and fuel prices rise, more and more people are becoming concerned with the amount of food that we waste. This morning the Today Show aired a segment on food waste and in it they interviewed journalist and blogger Jonathan Bloom. Bloom runs the website Wasted Food and is currently writing a book about the amount of uneaten food that gets sent to landfills each day.
The segment is interesting and is an excellent primer for those people who are new to the idea of food conservation. They suggest that more frequent trips to the supermarket, in which you buy less, is one of the answers to preventing food waste. While I think that's a good idea, I wish they had stressed tactics like shopping at farmers markets (the food is fresher, so it stays good longer, giving you more time in which to use it) and using your freezer (if you make a large meal, halve it and freeze a portion for another time).
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2Yeah, I dunno about the shopping more often thing . . . aren't you replacing the food waste with more wasted gas, with all that entails? I'd much rather freeze the extra, as you suggested, or dry it in my dehydrator. For example, I don't use much milk, but the lactose-free kind that I buy only comes in half-gallons, so I usually freeze part of the carton in small canning jars.
What I'd like to do in order to further reduce my food waste is find somebody who can compost my veggie scraps; I don't have a yard, so I have no use for compost myself, but I hate that the veggie leftovers go to waste.
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