We've probably all heard that claim that one-third of the food grown in the world is wasted -- from crops damaged in the field to ones that rot in storage all along the food chain to the pepper rotting in your fridge or the casserole nobody wanted to finish -- or how about the excessive restaurant portions that diners can't finish? What I didn't realize until recently is that the one-third of wasted food includes the discarding of parts of fruits and veggies I never thought of as edible.
I'm eclectic in my attitude toward peels. I never peel potatoes (except sweet potatoes); I always peel carrots. Well, that's wasting good stuff, so now I wash my carrots and cut them with the peel on. But this new take on "inedible" parts goes way beyond that. I started experimenting with the stalks of broccoli and the stems of asparagus, and this is what I learned: if I peel the broccoli stems and cut them into little pieces and steam them, they are delicious! (I do need to peel them, otherwise they're too tough.) And since I used to compost almost the full bottom half of asparagus spears while cooking the top half, I tried cooking the whole spear -- disgusting! So those bottom pieces I snap off still contribute to my food "waste."
I saw a movie last night -- "Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story" -- that was part of Yale's Environmental Film Festival. It featured a couple who decided to do an experiment by eating only food that had been discarded. One funny scene showed the handsome 30-something guy grabbing the recently acquired spare tire around his waist and complaining that he'd gained ten pounds since they started the experiment, because he couldn't bear the thought of letting food "go to waste." It was amazing the quality and amounts of food they were able to procure.
Doug Rauch, the former president of Trader Joe's, got a lot of bad publicity when he announced in 2013 that he'd be opening a store called The Daily Table that offered foods that were past their "sell by" dates, at lower prices to cater to lower-income folks. But the reality is that the sell by date has little to do with whether a food item is still good and safe to eat, and more to do with food companies' push for more sales and higher profits. It also contributes to the waste of food, as consumers worry that food a day or two beyond the sell-by date will make them sick, so they discard it. The Daily Table opened in Boston earlier this year. You can read about that here.
I'm eclectic in my attitude toward peels. I never peel potatoes (except sweet potatoes); I always peel carrots. Well, that's wasting good stuff, so now I wash my carrots and cut them with the peel on. But this new take on "inedible" parts goes way beyond that. I started experimenting with the stalks of broccoli and the stems of asparagus, and this is what I learned: if I peel the broccoli stems and cut them into little pieces and steam them, they are delicious! (I do need to peel them, otherwise they're too tough.) And since I used to compost almost the full bottom half of asparagus spears while cooking the top half, I tried cooking the whole spear -- disgusting! So those bottom pieces I snap off still contribute to my food "waste."
I saw a movie last night -- "Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story" -- that was part of Yale's Environmental Film Festival. It featured a couple who decided to do an experiment by eating only food that had been discarded. One funny scene showed the handsome 30-something guy grabbing the recently acquired spare tire around his waist and complaining that he'd gained ten pounds since they started the experiment, because he couldn't bear the thought of letting food "go to waste." It was amazing the quality and amounts of food they were able to procure.
Doug Rauch, the former president of Trader Joe's, got a lot of bad publicity when he announced in 2013 that he'd be opening a store called The Daily Table that offered foods that were past their "sell by" dates, at lower prices to cater to lower-income folks. But the reality is that the sell by date has little to do with whether a food item is still good and safe to eat, and more to do with food companies' push for more sales and higher profits. It also contributes to the waste of food, as consumers worry that food a day or two beyond the sell-by date will make them sick, so they discard it. The Daily Table opened in Boston earlier this year. You can read about that here.
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