Food waste: numbers are enormous
Not directly a Montreal story, but following on the heels of the news of high demand on food banks is a piece about how much food Canadians waste with the allegation that much of the waste is at the household level, with 79 kg (175 lbs) being thrown out per person annually.
That’s fairly staggering. I put stuff in the composting, yes – peels and eggshells and other inedible trimmings. But per year, actual once-edible food? Maybe a few past-due salad greens. How can people lose track of so much food?
MarcG 15:35 on 2021-03-04 Permalink
That’s 216g a day. I had to toss a moldy squash a few weeks ago, that was probably 1kg right there. I was under the impression food waste was, like most things, more egregious at the commercial/industrial level, and that seems to be confirmed by the info on this government page: https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/managing-reducing-waste/food-loss-waste/taking-stock.html
MarcG 15:44 on 2021-03-04 Permalink
However, the report the article links to seems interesting and more up-to-date than the link I posted above.
Kate 20:55 on 2021-03-04 Permalink
Didn’t mean to sound righteous, there. I realize that people with more complex households can easily lose track of food. It’s much simpler cooking for oneself, to know exactly what’s in the fridge and how quickly it has to be used up not to go to waste.
Blork 22:04 on 2021-03-04 Permalink
I suspect much (perhaps most) of that domestic waste is in the form of leftovers that creep their way to the back of the fridge until they’re just too disgusting to eat and are then tossed. Many people are very disorganized about how they feed themselves, so I think this happens a lot.
In my case, over the course of many years of suburban domestication I have gotten food down to a science so it’s almost unheard of to throw away leftovers or to have food go off before you have a chance to eat it. In fact I factor leftovers into my meal planning.
I can’t say I was very good at it in my younger years (my 30s) when I lived alone and couldn’t tell you from one day to the next what tonight’s dinner would be or where it would come from. (Home? Girlfriend’s place? Bar? Restaurant? We’ll find out when it happens!)
That said, tonight I threw out two roma tomatoes and four avocados. The tomato loss is unusual; I can always find a use for a tomato but the past week or so just had no call for them and I hadn’t noticed how gnarly they were getting. The avocado situation is also unusual. In fact I’ve sort of cracked the code on avocados and almost never loose any (and I buy a bag almost every week) but yesterday I was distracted at the store and chose badly, and when I looked at them today they were all overripe and some spoiled. 🙁
Bill Binns 10:06 on 2021-03-05 Permalink
I probably throw away about half the avocados I buy since they tend to go from hard as rock and not ready to black and mushy with wild unpredictability. A lot of the leftovers and other stuff that goes in the freezer eventually gets thrown out during semi-annual freezer clean outs but overall, I would give myself pretty high marks for avoiding waste.
My wife can’t stand to waste food and has lots of tricks to prevent it. If we have half a loaf of bread that’s just starting to go stale, she puts it in the freezer and we use it to make toast by throwing the frozen slices right into the toaster. This actually makes better toast than fresh bread imo.
Blork 10:34 on 2021-03-05 Permalink
Here’s the trick with avocados. It takes a bit of practice and planning but once you’re in the groove it comes naturally.
First, buy a bag of avocados that are about a week away from ripe. Not rock-hard green, but showing some black yet far from ready. When you get home, put the ripest ones in the fridge and keep the others on the counter. (If they’re all very green let them ripen for a few days before you divide them.) In a couple of days time, swap. Another day or two and the ones that started in the fridge and moved to the counter will be ready to eat. You have maybe a two day window. Once they’re gone, get the other ones out of the fridge and eat those over the next two days.
So basically it’s a matter of letting them get almost ripe, then slowing the ripening by putting in the fridge, then get out again to finish ripening.
BTW, for my freezer I label and date-stamp everything that goes in there. I also record it in a note in my phone. So when I’m planning meals for the week I check what’s in the freezer (by looking at my phone) as part of the plan. I rarely throw frozen stuff away. (Exception: recently tossed a couple of bags of shrimp because they had thawed during a power outage last summer and when they re-froze they became a block of freezer-burned ice.)
Kate 10:47 on 2021-03-05 Permalink
What, no QR codes, Blork?
Ant6n 12:53 on 2021-03-05 Permalink
Imo fridges and avocados don’t mix well
Blork 12:58 on 2021-03-05 Permalink
They don’t mix well if you leave them in there too long, or after they’re fully ripe. But I haven’t found much problem using the fridge to stunt the ripening process for a few days, then letting it finish at room temp.