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Food deserts present a real problem these days. This piece addresses the different solutions, from Walmart to urban agriculture to food recovery.

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You want tips on how to avoid waste and (save money)? I’ve got plenty.

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The stats are a bit old, but this video nicely summarizes the food waste problem:

Yes, the Walmart video below is a nice bit of propaganda, but it’s a result of a genuine effort by that retailer to reduce their waste. And that effort is paying dividends.

The video contains some fabulous illustrations of the resources embedded in our eggs (and food supply). Plus, it features an image of a Manhattan-sized omelette!

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Because I’m a fan of Portland, dumpster diving and Fred Armisen, the Portlandia send up of freeganism really hit the spot.

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This piece contains some Thanksgiving-like advice for avoiding excessive Super Bowl leftovers: Give it away

If you’re hosting a Super Bowl party, plan to have resealable plastic bags and food-storage containers handy to send guests home with goodies. This works perfectly for potato and pasta salads, as well as cookies and other sweets.

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Finally, check out this Carrots ‘N Cake post on saving money at the grocery store. Many of the tips double as ways to reduce waste. The two usually go hand-in-hand.

That was how I felt when I came across Expendable Edibles. The site, around since 2004, has a beautiful premise: helping people use food that they’d otherwise throw away.

Expendable Edibles accomplishes that goal through recipes, and it’s organized into six categories of food that might be wasted:

• Stems, Skins and Stalks
• Past Peak
• Once Cooked
• Negligible Quantities
• Ill-Fated Creations
• Nearly Expired

Each section has interesting ideas for utilizing these often-tossed items, and we’re not just talking about making banana bread. Many of the ideas are really fun–like Chinese food takeout rice into rice pudding.

The recipes on the site mostly come from the site’s founders, Nancy and Marlene. Yet, when I spoke with Nancy, she said that they’re reaching out to culinary schools to tap into that ingrained French kitchen ethic of using (and reusing) everything.

Nancy also stressed that they’re seeking your use-it-up or repurposing recipes of all shapes and sizes. You can submit your ideas for any of the categories via the site’s sidebar. So go on–help us help ourselves!

So if you haven’t already–check it out!

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A little while back I wrote about the Green Egg Shopper app for iPhones. Well, the maker has been kind enough to provide us with some promo codes for free downloads.

You can use one of the codes listed below to snag it. If you do, please leave a comment telling everyone which code you used, as they only work once.

First come, first served…Hope it helps you curb your waste!

FKENPWRM3RYX
7JAP3HMLM7MN
YJ6RKAPKJYLT
6L9AWHFLWX7M
HN7ERE4AJTJA
E9FX9NT7XL6T
PJKAAE3NTA63
ET6RNRAPFL4M
YWY994ETEY4E
YNFHXNR3M7N4

Reduce food waste by never missing ‘Use by’ dates.

Now that’s my kind of app.

The Green Egg app–not to be confused with the smokers–helps avoid food waste in a few, neat ways. First, it allows you to make a handy grocery list and cross items off as you shop. That way, you don’t buy too much at the store, natch. (There are other waste-reduction tips on their site, too.)

More impressive, though, is its handling of expiration dates. The app allows you to set the expiration date on items after you buy them. You can see what’s expiring by perusing the “Use Me Now” list and plan/act accordingly. And it’s all very easily customized–you decide how long before “expiration” a food item goes on the list.

The Green Egg also helps track how much you’ve spent on groceries. It doesn’t look like there’s a way to track the cost of your wasted food, though. That’s too bad because it’d provide some real motivation to cut waste! Oh well, I guess you’ll just have to multiply by 0.25 (as in 25%–what most homes waste).

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Nice to see the study on the energy wasted when food isn’t eaten is getting some press. And man is it getting some press!

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Pay by what your food waste weighs?! In Korea, RFID technology on bins will enable this waste denier. Where was this when I was writing that Gizmodo piece??

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As reported by Emily Prager in The NYT, her new neighbors in Shanghai are uber-frugal. With food and other goods:

I put out a big garbage bag stuffed with unnecessary junk while my neighbors had almost no garbage at all. It was clear they used no paper products and ate every bit of food.

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In this article about an Italian cruise ship, the staff say waste is usually 10-20 percent and blame most of it on large eyed passengers. But they also have some techniques on how to avoid it.

The Fantasia does its best to minimise it by closing sections of the buffet when passenger numbers drop below 500. But a lot more waste is down to pure greed. Because they’ve paid for it, passengers take more than they can actually eat.

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Finally, since it’s October, here’s a quick reminder (via video) on how not to be wasteful at pick-your-own apple orchards.

Stephen Jannise of Distribution Software Advice recently wrote an interesting post dissecting this summer’s egg recall and pondering ways to avoid another such disaster. The post even included this handy, handsome infographic explaining exactly what happened:

Not surprisingly for someone writing for Software Advice, the post focuses on a potential technology-based solution. Essentially, the idea is whether or not food companies should install tracking software to be able to trace each box it ships.

While this would be expensive up-front, it would hopefully avoid unnecessary losses later. Once the outbreak’s origin is identified, this new tracking technology would hopefully prevent the ‘widely cast net’ recall method. What do you think–would this tracking be worth the trouble? And should the FDA require or help fund the technology??

One thought: I’ve seen eggs with the expiration date printed right on their shell. How much harder would it be to have the tracking number stamped on? Given the vagueness of “use-by” dates, that tracking info would probably be more useful.

Of course, free ranging hens would eliminate most all contamination concerns, as they’d be eating “food,” not “feed.” But we’re not likely to make a complete return to that system.

In a word, it’s methane:

But if you take the packaging away and focus on the naked food itself, you have to realize that the food will be rotting a lot sooner than if it weren’t packaged and, as a result, will be heading to the same place as the packaging: the landfill. Decaying food emits methane, a greenhouse gas that’s more than 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Packaging — unless it’s biodegradable — does not.

McWilliams used the classic shrink-wrapped cucumber example for how packaging expands food’s lifespan. He explained the comparative environmental stakes with this neat turn of the phrase:

Seems bizarre, but it’s possible that we waste more energy by not scraping the bottom of the barrel than we do by throwing out the barrel when we’re done.

I’d also like to add a word not brought up in the post–hunger. Perhaps it was too obvious and didn’t need stating. But concerning oneself with reducing waste can help feed the hungry, via food recovery. Reducing packaging can’t.

That’s not to say we shouldn’t strive to reduce packaging, when it’s unnecessary. But just why it’s not as high on my list as trimming food waste.

Portland’s solid waste and recycling manager, Bruce Walker, says, “We’re coming right into their kitchen saying, ‘Please change your habits.’ “

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Keep sandwich thieves away with these faux-mold bags. A clever idea, but I agree with commenters blogosphere-wide: the bags increase the odds that someone will throw out your “moldy” sandwich. (HT to Jay Hancock’s blog).

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EKOKOOK is a crazy, cool concept kitchen direct from France. There’s either a composting ferris wheel or a segmented worm bin beneath the sink. All you French speakers feel free to weigh in on the specifics.

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Sainsbury’s just made a major commitment to anaerobic digestion, signing a deal with waste firm Biffa. Yet some in the UK not content with regular old AD are trying their hand at mobile anaerobic digestion.

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Is it just me or do these sandwich cutters waste a bunch of the sandwich? Certainly the crusts…