Last night, the Food Network aired The Big Waste. Apparently, it was a cooking competition using food that would normally have been tossed. Not having cable, I didn’t catch the show. But I’ll be sure to add it to this post if video becomes available. In the meantime, who saw it? Thoughts? What I can [...]
The NRDC recently put out this handy two-page summary on food waste. It provides a compact answer to how much we waste, what it costs and what we can do about it. There’s a little about the environmental impact, but that’s not the main focus. I’m sure that was intentional, to shift the focus elsewhere. The [...]
“Clean your plate, there are children starving [somewhere].” That saying is problematic, partly because it guilts us into overeating. But a burgeoning non-profit called Halfsies has a better idea. At participating restaurants, customers can select a Halfsies version of a dish, giving them less food and ensuring that the value of the unserved half goes [...]
Thanks to this editorial, I just learned about the practice of celebrating UCSB soccer goals and wins by tossing tortillas on the field. To wit: Here’s an opposing editorial on why tortilla tossing is great, which includes this gem: Tortillas represent the Argentinian Cowboys, the Gauchos. It’s a feeling of who the Gauchos are, and [...]
In Back to the Future, we were treated to the site of Doc Brown using a Mr. Fusion to power up his flying DeLorean with food waste. In real life, we’re inching closer to that possibility. While it wouldn’t be as seamless a process as the Mr. Fusion, Waste Management is close to creating fuel from [...]
Despite having a bit of a hangover from yesterday’s Paperback Party, I wouldn’t want to leave your Friday Buffetless. Here goes: — — You know composting is spreading when you see a federal prison in Texas puts out an RFP for food waste removal. — — Just so we’re clear–pythons should not be composted. And [...]
This Saturday at the super duper Durham Farmer’s Market, I volunteered with Farmer Foodshare. This innovative program collects donations of food from farmers and edibles or currency from shoppers. Volunteers take the donated money and buy produce from the local growers (win-win-win!). Anyway, we try to stretch the money to get as much food as we can for [...]
This summer’s new school lunch guidelines that accompanied the updated federal food icon–MyPlate–push for larger portions of fruit and vegetables. Sounds great, right? There’s only one problem: fruit and vegetables are already the most wasted items in school lunches. Serving more of them to each student will only mean more food in the trash. Cue [...]
CNN just ran this in-depth piece on the just-released documentary Dive! It includes some new commentary from director/dumpster-diver-in-chief Jeremy Seifert. A large chunk of the film centers on Trader Joe’s food tossing and Seifert’s crew’s reclamation of those perfectly edible, gourmet items. That led to a Change.org petition telling Trader Joe’s to stop wasting food. [...]
The following commentary ran on the Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity site this Monday. It’s a bit longer than most posts, but hopefully it’s worth your time. — An increasing number of Americans face poverty and, as a result, hunger. Meanwhile, we waste close to half of all food produced domestically. It’s an American paradox. [...]
