Category Archives: Hunger

A Different Dollar Menu

In the One Dollar Diet Project, two high school teachers ate on a dollar a day (each) for a month. (Insert your own joke about teachers’ salaries here.) Christopher and Kerri spent the month of September scrimping to stretch their food dollar (read their rules here) with this goal: We are interested in many of […]

October 16, 2008 | Also posted in Household | Comments closed

Food Waste at the Summit?

While it is tempting to talk more about my pantry, I suppose I should address the UN world food crisis summit taking place in Rome. Yesterday, the gathering kicked off with an address by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. According to a report from NPR’s All Things Considered, Ban referenced wealthy nations “wasteful and excess […]

June 4, 2008 | Also posted in International | Comments closed

Banking on Waste

I went to a meeting of the Food Diversion Task Force yesterday and left thinking about food banks. A representative from the local food bank told the group how donations are down significantly. As food prices rise and manufacturers consolidate, there is more emphasis placed on reducing “shrink,” or product that they can’t market. While […]

April 24, 2008 | Also posted in Food Recovery | Comments closed

Food’s Violent Inflation

Food prices are on the rise domestically (especially for pizza) and even more so in the developing world. While that may prompt home budget adjusting for some, it causes others to go hungry and/or take to the streets. This weekend in Haiti, unrest caused by inflation brought violence and death. The Prime Minister (but not the […]

April 14, 2008 | Also posted in Household, International | Comments closed

Try to clean your plate

A reader recently sent me this article about Haitians so poor they’ve resorted to making cookies from mud, salt and vegetable shortening and I’ve been wrestling with whether to pass it along. While I don’t want to be manipulative and say, ‘See, these kids eat mud cookies, you shouldn’t waste food,’ I sort of do. […]

February 7, 2008 | Also posted in History and Culture, Household, International | Comments closed

Give by Giving

As we’ve heard lately, times are tough for food banks. Diminished government funding and private donations have left most food banks struggling to meet client demand. In New York, City Harvest has responded with a Million Pound Pledge to add that much food to its regular collection. Essentially, they’ve asked donors to step up, as described in this […]

December 11, 2007 | Also posted in Food Recovery | Comments closed

What’s at Stake

‘I waste food, so what?’ That’s one reaction I get when I tell people that I’m researching food waste. Countering that argument from a logical perspective can be difficult, as I have a gut reaction against squandering (as do many people). On that logical path, limiting food waste matters because farming and freight uses oil, water, time and money, pollutes […]

November 28, 2007 | Also posted in Household, Stats | Comments closed

Hunger Stamps

Wasted food wouldn’t be as significant of a problem if there weren’t people without enough to eat. But there are and probably always will be. Throughout human history, hunger has persisted. Even today, when the U.S. has the means to marginalize it–imagine if we spent as much on ending hunger as we did on our defense budget–we don’t. […]

May 17, 2007 | Also posted in Household, Supermarket | Comments closed

Stamp Out Hunger

It’d be silly to blog on food waste without talking about helping the hungry. To wit: Stamp Out Hunger. Thanks to this neat idea now in its 15th year you don’t even have to leave your house to help those less fortunate. Just leave non-perishable food items in a bag beside your mailbox this Saturday and your letter […]

May 9, 2007 | Also posted in Food Recovery, Stats | Comments closed