Here’s the latest installment of my food waste advice column, Dear Wasted Food Dude. It will run on BioCycle‘s website and in BioCycle Food Recycling News, their fledgling e-bulletin, but I’ll also crosspost here. Very related: send inquiries! Please write in with any food-waste-related question/issue/conundrum. I’m not picky–the query can be big or small, true or false, named or anonymous. [...]
Here’s the latest installment of my food waste advice column, Dear Wasted Food Dude. The column will run on BioCycle‘s website and in BioCycle Food Recycling News, their fledgling e-bulletin that all “wasted foodies” should sign up for pronto! I will also crosspost the columns here on Wasted Food. One thing any advice column needs inquiries. That means you need [...]
America’s date label status quo has expired. Lack of a national standard on date labels combined with a jumble of state laws on the subject causes a jumble of confusing terms. A recent Harvard/Hopkins survey (PDF) documented the extent of that confusion. In that haze, we often throw out perfectly good food. That confusion causes [...]
The Harvard Food Policy and Law Clinic (FLPC) just released a fabulous short film on date labels called EXPIRED? You can watch it below and don’t miss their stout op-ed in the LA Times. I’m pretty sure you won’t spend a better 5 minutes online today. EXPIRED? is part of a neat companion site with plenty of [...]
If you’re like me, you love innovations that prevent food from being wasted and hate the inefficiency of expiration dates. That’s why I’m high on Bump Mark, an in-package fresh food indicator now in development. Solveiga Pakstaite, a recent university grad in Britain, created Bump Mark after winning the James Dyson Award to do so. As you [...]
Here’s a blast of knowledge: The below NRDC infographic helps us get to know our refrigerators better so as to combat food waste. Read and learn!
More than 100 New York City restaurants–including ones owned by Mario Batali, Lidia Bastianich and Danny Meyer–have pledged to cut their waste in half. One thing conspicuously absent in the writeup was any kind of timeline. Still, great news! — — The GRACE Communications Foundation (the folks behind The Meatrix) just launched a new site on food waste, and [...]
A recent L.A. Times piece on the legality of restaurant donations made me wonder a bit about the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act–you know, that 1996 federal shield law that protects donors from liability when they donate food that they deem to be in good shape. In the article, Shirley Wei Sher, a [...]
Can “electronic sensor circuits” reduce food waste by judging food freshness (through measuring acidity levels) more accurately than expiration dates? Yes. But… -But that’s not saying much, as expiration dates aren’t all that accurate. -But so could your own sensors–of smell, sight and taste. -But these food sensors are currently too expensive for mainstream adoption. -But, the [...]
Texas company MicroZap has found a way to redefine bread’s shelf life by keeping it mold-free for 60 days. This isn’t done by using a freezer or all-powerful preservatives, but rather by sending bread through a “sophisticated microwave array” resembling an assembly line. While this solution feels a bit…unnatural, it’s similar to pasteurization of milk (which [...]
