I'm telling you, food waste -- not eating local -- is the future of eco-cooking.

A brief bit on NPR about harnessing some of the good stuff out of the food waste stream:

About 40 percent of food in the United States today goes uneaten. The average American consumer wastes 10 times as much food as someone in Southeast Asia — up 50 percent from Americans in the 1970s. Yet, 1 in 6 Americans doesn't have enough to eat, says the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And food waste costs us about $165 billion a year and sucks up 25 percent of our freshwater supply.

That's all according to the report with the not-so-subtle title, "Wasted: How America Is Losing Up to 40 Percent of Its Food from Farm to Fork to Landfill," just released by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

I really have to read that whole report, because this is one of my pet peeves:  all the exhortation to eat local to reduce your carbon footprint, when household and restaurant food waste slips by silently, all that energy and water that went into production, processing, packaging, and transportation gone just like that.

Maybe I'll get to it after I finish with all the post-secondary education series.  In the meantime, consider putting your family on the Squawkfox Food Waste Challenge.

Comments

[Christy P.]

Thanks, now I have a new blog to read.

I totally agree about food waste. Proud to be indoctrinating my kids into the eat what you take or save it properly for later lifestyle. Z is carrying the same partially-eaten carrot to school again today of her own accord. Although I have to say that I'm totally ok with composting veggies, particularly ones from my own garden with the notion that I will eat them eventually, just not on this iteration of their life wheel.

[bearing]

Agree with you that compost isn't wasted, but if you have to put compost in your truck to drive it to a friend's house because you ran out of room in your own garden, you still have a problem.

I guess you could tow the extra compost around in a bike trailer.

[Christy P.]

Ours is transported only by feet and wheelbarrow from the backyard to the garden. I still want to vermicompost, but I haven't mustered the activation energy yet.

[mrp]

As a Bearing friend who works in a state program that recently quantified restaurant waste: 50-80% of non-chain restaurant waste is compostable food waste. They actually save money by running compost bins in our area, although they have to also just want to do it because it isn't a lot of savings.

And no I am not missing the main point - we would be transporting a lot less food to our grocery stores and restaurants and homes if it wasn't wasted, and this impact is much greater than transportation. It just isn't all directly in consumer control.

[Bearing]

Food waste will never get as much attention as the buy local movement, probably because no one can sell you very much to give you the illusion that you are doing something about food waste. Maybe a compost bin or some food storage bags.