Reducing Food Waste Through Thoughtful Utilization

In the Washington Post, an opinion piece discusses food waste from a position we have long taken...better utilization. From the time food is processed/prepared, it starts down a path of fading quality to the point where it is no longer edible. Depending on whether it is from a restaurant where that path is short, to retail food items where there is a longer time until it is no longer usable, food too often reaches that point where there it must be thrown out.

Certainly using it when it still has the quality we desire is best. So basically, using it well before the stated shelf-life is best. Best utilization also includes making food that will be eaten in a reasonable amount of time, or ordering only what we can eat in one setting .

But once the food quality changes, perhaps to the point where it is less than what we would want, the author opines that there are still avenues where this food can be utilized. He looks at this transition in the nature of the given food as just an opportunity to make something different that is not only edible, but perhaps desirable.

"By focusing on using food beyond the confines of our first imaginings, we’re granted access to a world of flavor — in soup that has tightened and melded overnight into a delicious sauce, or a dressing whose dregs improve a lunchtime sandwich. We also attain invaluable culinary intelligence, learning how flavor migrates from one ingredient to another, what happens to liquid and fat overnight, how acid and salt can soften what has hardened, how clever knife work can crisp what has sagged."

So okay for a chef to say, but what can we do?  Could groups like Extension, food banks, food pantries promote alternative uses?  This could be development and dissemination of  recipes that utilize items food pantries often have difficulty in moving.....or items that no longer have the same quality but still have nutrient value.  Could milk be made into kefir or yogurt?  What about brown bananas?  What can we utilize in making easy-to-make soups?

Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/13/food-waste-problem/
We’re thinking about food ‘waste’ all wrong
By Tamar Adler
March 13, 2023 at 7:00 a.m. EDT
Tamar Adler, a former professional cook, is the author of “An Everlasting Meal: Cooking With Economy and Grace,” “Something Old, Something New: Classic Recipes Revised” and, most recently, “The Everlasting Meal Cookbook: Leftovers A-Z.”

Excerpts

"Buzz about “food waste” has recently been everywhere. There’s the public awareness campaign to reduce food in landfills in Ohio. Kroger has a Zero Hunger Zero Waste pledge, Walmart a “50% food waste reduction goal” by 2030. In January, President Biden signed the Food Donation Improvement Act, expanding liability protection for food donors, to encourage donation of food that’s typically discarded. In February, the Zero Food Waste Act was introduced in Congress."

"The statistics tell us why: 30 to 40 percent of the food the United States produces ends its life in landfills. Food waste accounts for as much as 8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, of which the United States produces 11 percent. American households of four people throw out, on average, $120 worth of food each month."

"Legislation and public awareness campaigns might lead to small improvements in the numbers. But more vitally: Americans need to collectively replace a preoccupation with “food waste” — which does not sound edible, never mind delicious — with a passion for food use. We need to change our approach from a moralistic one to a practical human one that treats edible ingredients as what they are: food."

"Food becomes “waste” subjectively, and in that subjective becoming lies a world of culinary possibility. Until it is squandered, food is food. Food changes over time — as humans do. But one could say of food what the anthropologist Mary Douglas did of dirt: “There is no such thing as absolute dirt: It exists in the eye of the beholder.”"

"In the meantime, it’s essential to trust that we humans have intricate noses, evolved over millions of years for exactly the purpose of divining the edible from the inedible. We smell some things better than dogs do. A study published by the National Academy of Sciences showed that “disgust is an evolved human emotion that functions to limit infection.” Our gut responses to food are evolutionarily fine-tuned to help us distinguish between “food” and “waste.”"

"So yes, Americans should throw out less food. But a more direct, economical, pleasurable and honest route than obsessing over food waste is to use the food we have — to follow the examples of the thousands of ways frugal cooks from across the globe have done this for millennia. Who knows? The next discovery of refried beans, or chao fan, or ribollita might be just around the corner."