On the heels of Friday’s major outcry against waste by the EU Parliament, the head of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization spoke out against food waste this weekend. In other words, this issue is picking up steam. — — How did I not know there was a Discard Studies blog before now? A recent [...]
It’s official: You can ignore those ‘best before’ dates on your eggs. (At least that’s the word in the UK.) — — This article on Bon Appetit Management food waste minimization at Penn is music to my ears. — — Wish you had a sleek kitchen compost container? Now UCan. — — Finally, it’s nice to [...]
I’m not a fan of expiration dates in general–see yesterday’s post–but if stamping them on eggs (along with the batch number) saves half a billion eggs per year at Walmart alone…I can stomach them. Yes, the Walmart video below is a nice bit of propaganda, but it’s a result of a genuine effort by that retailer [...]
There’s a good amount of discussion on whether expiration dates are bogus. I’m sure you can guess where I stand on the topic. My dismissal of most expiration dates stems from personal experience and knowing how much caution is built into those dates. Still, it’s nice to have the backing of some hard science mixed with journalistic [...]
I’m traveling now, but wanted to highlight this article on expiration dates that ran this week in The Boston Globe. I don’t recall such a detailed look at the topic in a major newspaper. The food waste awareness is mounting…
I’m still getting mentally unpacked from a fabulous West Coast swing. (Thanks to all who came out to one event or another.) While I was away, I didn’t have the chance to pass along a link to this New York Times piece on expiration dates. It was neat to see such a major newspaper address [...]
Just because your food has a little mold on it doesn’t mean you have to throw it away. With many, but not all foods, a little scraping, spooning, facing or cutting will remove the problem. As a general rule, the softer an item, the easier it is for mold to spread. So tread lighter with [...]
Food recalls are the worst. First, they only occur when food-borne illnesses are causing sickness and sometimes death. Second, the mechanism of recalling vast amounts of food means millions of pounds of perfectly good food won’t be eaten. Stephen Jannise of Distribution Software Advice recently wrote an interesting post dissecting this summer’s egg recall and [...]
It’s happened again. Our British friends at WRAP released another food waste study, this time on Reducing Waste Through the Chill Chain. (Here’s the abbreviated version.) While their “chill chain” may be our cold one, the study is quite useful on either side of the Atlantic. It found that many folks’ refrigerator temperatures are often [...]
Courtesy of the NY Times’ City Room Blog, Answers from a Garbologist Part I and Part II. Here’s the best line from first part: Products most often discarded without being used: vegetables. — — The people have spoken on the 5-Second Rule. Well, at least they’ve participated in a poll. — — Dan Sullivan kills [...]
