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July 6, 2008
Food Waste
I've discovered this blog that I really like called Wasted Food, by a fellow named Jonathan Bloom. He writes about all sorts of food waste, from personal to industrial. Tons of food waste in the restaurant industry, waste as kiwis don't fit size specifications and have to be thrown out due to stupid regulations, tales of dumpster diving West Philly-ites (awwww! like all my old friends!) serving rescued food at a community brunch... lots of tips on how not to waste food.
I haven't thought much about food waste lately because our CR practice makes it almost impossible for us to have leftovers. Since we know exactly how many calories we'll need for a meal and we weigh and measure so that we know exactly how many calories are on our plates, we clean our plates. MR even licks his plate and the dishes. We never have leftovers.
In addition, MR has taught me to use every piece of every piece of food we buy. He eats the asparagus bottoms that most throw out: I just cook them a minute longer. I cut up the hard stubby stems of cauliflower heads and cook them up in stir fries and stews. Even the bottoms of romaine lettuce make it into a stew. I used to kid him that he'd be the guy using buffalo testicles to make bike tires were he to learn how to hunt buffalo. He eats all citrus peels (which is why we only buy organic citrus -- the pesticides concentrate in the peel.) It's amazing how yummy finely diced lemon peel can be in a soup or stew, especially a curry or a southwestern-inspired dish. MR uses the very end of every condiment we buy, even if it means swishing vinegar around in the hot sauce bottle to get out the very last dreg. He can be kinda annoying on the subject, but I know he's doing the right thing. And Jonathan... we eat the whole brussels sprout too. Obviously you've just never had them done right. ;)
I used to be a bad food waster. I would let things go bad, throw out leftovers, and just forget about things I'd left in the fridge. My college roommate and I used to joke that "Dead Vegetables" would be the name of the rock band we would form, after the contents of our fridge.
Another way in which I used to waste food but don't anymore is that I used to eat too much. Rather than order just the entree I wanted, I'd order soup because everyone else at the table was having soup. I'd eat bread or nacho chips when they were free on the table, get all filled up before the meal even came, but eat the meal anyway. Most of the time these days, my friends and I just ask the server not to bring the bread. When we do feel like eating bread, we get it and eat it, but it's not an automatic thing anymore. I also take food home a lot, if I order more than I want to eat at that particular time. And I've just gotten to know how much food I want in the restaurants I usually go to. If I want a bite of something, just to try it, I quite routinely take a bite off my friends' plates... after asking, of course! That's better than ordering an entire dish I don't really want or need.
Maintaining the weight I used to carry around, pre-CR, was definitely a waste of food. I ate a whole lot more calories then, calories that were reducing my quality of life rather than improving it. Putting excess food into the body is just as much a waste as throwing it in the trash.
Posted by april at July 6, 2008 8:07 AM
Comments
The food-diary Mary put a link to was really worth studying when thinking about wasting food. See how little people from Africa have to go by a week. And how much food there is for a nuclear family from the west or the west-inspired countries. I hate wasting food, I almost never do. I feel that it's a sin to waste food, on your body too. We should respect food and eat enough to be fed, not more. The other day, I was in a grocery store buying some wine, I was invited to dinner at my friends', and a guy was trying to buy 4 bread loafs. The total was 80 kurus, so about 75 cents. The guy didn't have that much, so he had to leave a loaf. He only bought 3 loaves.
Bread is the main food of this countrys' people. That's one of the reasons why they're not very smart.
They are poor...
You can always not waste food by making a nice dinner for the kitties (yours, your neighbors', stray, or your nearest animal home) with the stuff you don't want. There will always be a creature who'll want it.
z.
Posted by: zeynep at July 7, 2008 4:29 PM
Taking care of yourself IS doing something good for the world. As a future nurse and RD....THANK YOU. :)
Posted by: Kelly at July 7, 2008 8:19 PM
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25588227/
That popped up on MSNBC today. If you or MR have time in the next couple weeks could I have a couple of sentence nutshell on why CR is not at all similar to hypothyroid (as the 'decreased T3 levels' claims in the article suggest).
I'm just starting to get my thyroid back to normal and being hypothyroid sounds nothing like what you describe CR. It was a bone-breaking fatigue, hair falling out, could barely get out of bed experience. And T3 supplementation is a suggested (albeit slightly unconventional) treatment. Just curious. TY! :)
Posted by: Anne at July 8, 2008 4:26 PM
I find this very interesting. My brother & I grew up hearing "Willful wasters will come to woeful want" on a daily basis from my Scottish mother. As a result, I have always been reasonably careful about not wasting food. It's a rare chicken or turkey whose carcass doesn't get made into soup, with slighly shrivelled veggies being tossed into the pot. I consider myself to be quite thrifty. Since we eat almost no pre-prepared foods and are careful to cook appropriate portions for our meals, our weekly garbage consists of one small, white kitchen bag (unlike everyone else on our entire street). My brother, OTOH, is the most dreadful waster of almost everything! MR, it would seem, has taken his grandma's admonishment to a whole new level. While my parents would spin in their graves if they could see him lick his plate, they'd be proud of him. MoMR :-)
Posted by: Judith at July 8, 2008 6:57 PM
I remember a disagreement once on the CRCOMM email list about the person who peeled apples and ate only the peel, throwing away the rest of the apple. I groused that this was wasteful. But others were happy to defend the practice, citing the fact that the peel was the most nutritious part and the rest was empty calories...why "waste" calories on non-nutritious food. I was always perturbed by this attitude. Nice to see that you two are rigorous in your non-wastefulness--much more so than I!
Posted by: Christopher Gagnon at July 11, 2008 1:00 PM