From Farm to Fridge to Garbage Can

Stuart Bradford

How much food does your family waste?

A lot, if you are typical. By most estimates, a quarter to half of all food produced in the United States goes uneaten — left in fields, spoiled in transport, thrown out at the grocery store, scraped into the garbage or forgotten until it spoils.

A study in Tompkins County, N.Y., showed that 40 percent of food waste occurred in the home. Another study, by the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab, found that 93 percent of respondents acknowledged buying foods they never used.

And worries about food safety prompt many of us to throw away perfectly good food. In a study at Oregon State University, consumers were shown three samples of iceberg lettuce, two of them with varying degrees of light brown on the edges and at the base. Although all three were edible, and the brown edges easily cut away, 40 percent of respondents said they would serve only the pristine lettuce.

In his new book “American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food” (Da Capo Press), Jonathan Bloom makes the case that curbing food waste isn’t just about cleaning your plate.

“The bad news is that we’re extremely wasteful,” Mr. Bloom said in an interview. “The positive side of it is that we have a real role to play here, and we can effect change. If we all reduce food waste in our homes, we’ll have a significant impact.”

Why should we care about food waste? For starters, it’s expensive. Citing various studies, including one at the University of Arizona called the Garbage Project that tracked home food waste for three decades, Mr. Bloom estimates that as much as 25 percent of the food we bring into our homes is wasted. So a family of four that spends $175 a week on groceries squanders more than $40 worth of food each week and $2,275 a year.

And from a health standpoint, allowing fresh fruits, vegetables and meats to spoil in our refrigerators increases the likelihood that we will turn to less healthful processed foods or restaurant meals. Wasted food also takes an environmental toll. Food scraps make up about 19 percent of the waste dumped in landfills, where it ends up rotting and producing methane, a greenhouse gas.

A major culprit, Mr. Bloom says, is refrigerator clutter. Fresh foods and leftovers languish on crowded shelves and eventually go bad. Mr. Bloom tells the story of discovering basil, mint and a red onion hiding in the fridge of a friend who had just bought all three, forgetting he already had them.

“It gets frustrating when you forget about something and discover it two weeks later,” Mr. Bloom said. “So many people these days have these massive refrigerators, and there is this sense that we need to keep them well stocked. But there’s no way you can eat all that food before it goes bad.”

Then there are chilling and food-storage problems. The ideal refrigerator temperature is 37 degrees Fahrenheit, and the freezer should be zero degrees, says Mark Connelly, deputy technical director for Consumer Reports, which recently conducted extensive testing on a variety of refrigerators. The magazine found that most but not all newer models had good temperature control, although models with digital temperature settings typically were the best.

Vegetables keep best in crisper drawers with separate humidity controls.

If food seems to be spoiling quickly in your refrigerator, check to make sure you’re following the manufacturer’s care instructions. Look behind the fridge to see if coils have become caked with dust, dirt or pet hair, which can interfere with performance.

“One of the pieces of advice we give is to go to a hardware store and buy a relatively inexpensive thermometer,” Mr. Connelly said. “Put it in the refrigerator to check the temperature to make sure it’s cold enough.”

There’s an even easier way: check the ice cream. If it feels soft, that means the temperature is at least 8 degrees Fahrenheit and you need to lower the setting. And if you’re investing in a new model, don’t just think about space and style, but focus on the refrigerator that has the best sight lines, so you can see what you’re storing. Bottom-freezer units put fresh foods at eye level, lowering the chance that they will be forgotten and left to spoil.

Mr. Bloom also suggests “making friends with your freezer,” using it to store fresh foods that would otherwise spoil before you have time to eat them.

Or invest in special produce containers with top vents and bottom strainers to keep food fresh. Buy whole heads of lettuce, which stay fresher longer, or add a paper towel to the bottom of bagged lettuce and vegetables to absorb liquids. Finally, plan out meals and create detailed shopping lists so you don’t buy more food than you can eat.

Don’t be afraid of brown spots or mushy parts that can easily be cut away.

“Consumers want perfect foods,” said Shirley Van Garde, the now-retired co-author of the Oregon State study. “They have real difficulty trying to tell the difference in quality changes and safety spoilage. With lettuce, take off a couple of leaves, you can do some cutting and the rest of it is still usable.”

And if you do decide to throw away food, give it a second look, Mr. Bloom advises. “The common attitude is ‘when in doubt, throw it out,’” he said. “But I try to give the food the benefit of the doubt.”


A version of this article appeared in print on Nov. 2, 2010, on page D5 of the New York edition of The Times.

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I’m always storing fruit about to become overripe in the freezer. I use it to make smoothies when I do eventually run out of fresh fruit. Veggies and even leftovers, like soup and burritos, also store really well in the freezer, and then you can have a homemade, microwaveable meal.

//www.foodfitnessfreshair.com

Make soup once a week. Read the soup section of a good general cookbook if soups are not one of the dishes you have already mastered, to review the basics and to see what combinations others have enjoyed. Then scour those fridge shelves for items that have been pushed out of sight or are a bit past their prime. Check the freezer for packages that have been in there a little too long. If you have to pour out a soup or two along the learning path, it will be no worse than the waste that would have occurred if you had just let the stuff decay and then tossed it. Within a few tries you’ll see how easy it is to come up with a pot of tasty, nourishing soup in place of a discouraging scatter of leftovers. Autumn is the time to start — before this winter is over you’ll be an expert. And you’ll have had a lot of hot meals, essentially ‘free’.

Two things that help me are buying soymilk instead of dairy milk most of the time and freezing any meat I’m not planning to eat in a few days. I find it’s much easier to be sure whether fruits and veggies are still good or not than it is with meat, and mostly they can get a bit past peak without becoming really horrible or toxic. And if they do spoil, they just go to the compost pile, rather than making the garbage stinky.

Check the coils on the back of the refrigerator? When was the last time refrigerators had coils. In the 50’s (yes, last century), my parents, one a chef, the other a farmers daughter, taught me about food, how to keep it fresh and how to cook. My rule of thumb is the fresher the meat and vegetables, the longer they last. Buy from your farmers market and ask the farmer how best to store the food.

FROM TPP — Just last week I got rid of one in my home that did. And yes it was covered with dust and pet hair….and not working well at all.

I’ve found that we throw out way less food ever since I started planning a weekly menu and limiting my grocery purchases to that menu (with the occasional impulse buy to keep things fun and interesting). Not only do I have a better handle on what’s in the fridge and pantry, but I have the opportunity to doublecheck my supplies while I’m making up my shopping list, rather than trying to remember at the store if I already have enough onions, spinach, yogurt, etc. Our meals tend to be tastier and healthier this way, too.

We have a junior-sized refrigerator but until recently suffered from the same problem of forgotten & spoiled food. What changed? We got a super blender (think Vita-Mix or Blendtec models). Now we buy 3-4 times as much produce as ever, turn it over quickly, and end up with little to no spoiled product. Our philosophy is that when it comes to produce, if you can chew it then you can make it into a delicious vegetable-fruit smoothie that is filling even as it promotes weight loss or maintenance. We still cook veggies, too, but if we don’t get cook a particular item we can usually make it work in a smoothie. We have to shop more frequently to maintain our produce supply but as a result are leading healthier and more energetic lives.

The soup thing is very important. That is also what you do with the ends of carrots, ends of onions, bases of celery stalks. That makes broth. This is the way our older family members lived a few years ago. No time? Get a inexpensive crock pot at Walmart and make the soup that way while you are off doing other necessary things away from home. That is the modern equivilant of the old pot simmering on the back of the stove all day when someone was home to watch it..

If you have a good enough refrigerator, save chicken bones, other bones, and so on, throw in a bay leaf, some salt and pepper, a pinch of dried thyme or marjoram. Keep a jar of peeled garlic from the grocery store in the refrigerator (about three or four dollars) and use your imagination! Buy chicken thighs on sale and freeze for baked or soup chicken dishes. Large bags of frozen peas, corn or other vegetables are often “fresher” than those languishing in the stores as fresh.

Cut up your own pineapple. Eat apples in season. Use your head.

Almost every vegetable tastes good in soup stock. Also, move onto buying dried green split peas or black beans and making soup from them–it is great, and the excess freezes well in plastic containers for future quick use. This is fine protein.

It is easy to eat in an inexpensive, healthy and good tasting way. There is a life beyond grilled steak or chicken and iceberg lettuce with bottled salad dressing. (Make your own dressing quickly with olive oil and vinagar and make salad out of spinach or a large head of Romaine lettuce).. Yes, steak from time to time, but not all the time.

In this way, my husband and I save enough on our home food bills to be able to afford to go out a couple of times a month to “fine” resturants and experience unusual dishes. Larger families or families with more children or expenses can do this some sort of thing at home and be more able to meet their heavy living expenses, even if they don’t use the savings to eat at resturants.

A refrigerator works by drawing heat from the cold compartments and rejecting that heat to the room, by way of a refrigerant. The heat rejection takes place in a coil, and every refrigerator has one.

What #2 and #7 said, with one caveat: cole vegetables (cabbage, brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower) do NOT taste good in broth.

Yet Another Concerned Citizen November 1, 2010 · 7:57 pm

I shan’t suggest ways to cut down on food waste, as the other comments posted here are excellent sources of great ideas. I just want to state my shock that people in this country are so wasteful. Obviously they have not had to suffer through famine. It also seems utterly selfish to waste food.

Try posting your grocery store receipts on your fridge door and checking off every item you finish. It’s a good way to figure out what you actually use and what you waste. I did it for a few months this summer and was able to weed out the things I just was not using up before they went bad. Saved me a lot of money too, because I stopped buying food I never finished!

*we overbuy because we have this crazed idea that we will be without food and die of starvation. americans don’t starve they just get diabetes and strokes from overfeeding.
if people would not stock up on foods, fruits and things that will go bad unless they are consumed within days, we would not be throwing food away.
we buy the same way we overeat. it is a sin to throw out food, just like parents used to tell us when i was growing up, “when there are children in the world who are starving”.

Since I bought a Vitamix, I waste much less food because I can use a collection of greens and fruit in green smoothies. Today I made one consisting on 1 apple, 2 cuties, 3 leaves of chard, and 4 lettuce leaves, water and ice cubes. Besides tasting fresh and great, these green smoothies have tamed my sweet tooth. Another plus is a on the porch composter in which I regualrly make compost for my garden. I feed it almost all fresh scraps. Voila. Waste limited again.

Vegetable peelings and scraps go to the chickens. So do meat scraps, stale bread, almost anything.

More dubious stuff goes into compost.

Solid fats go to the birds (mixed w/ birdseed).

Now that I don’r live downtown, I waste a lot less.

It is so terrible that food waste is occuring while so many people are hungry! It is not necessary. Perhaps curbing consumerism and not buying so much extra product will calm people down enough to take on slow cooking again and feed people healthy and also cut down our waste…the soup stock is an excellent idea, in fact we do it with every vegie peeled, even corn husks…the cauliflower, broccoli and brussel sprout thoughts above…these can be used in pickles…

i agree with the fact that we in the land of (too much) abundance waste too much. On board with the Vitamix to convert veg and fruit into something great; but, excuse my ignorance Pam #13, I’ll bite – what is a ‘cutie’?

It is really too bad more people don’t have a few chickens or a hog or two to recycle their garbage. It has worked well for a couple of thousand years or more. It is really too bad we are so clean that we are drowning in our garbage. It is good for producers of all this food and those that retail it though. I don’t think that our government is going to let our farmers starve; they have too much political clout. The more people that leave the country and move to the cities, the more power the rural senators and reps have.

The fridge in my house is used primarily for scientific experiments. Anyone need some certain kind of mold for an experiment, I have plenty to share.

Its just best we eat out. For some reason we still buy groceries.

OK. HOw many people compost. I never, ever throw any vegetable scrap in the garbage. If it is not meat, it goes in the compost heap. Doesn’t have to be fancy, just out of sight.

paseo #16. Cuties, clementines and others, are mini orange citrus like small oranges/tangerines. Great quick snacks, most kids love “em,and i find they last well in the fridge.

Seems odd to me that our kitchens are planned for storing, preparing. eating and throwing out food, but not for composting . In so many settings, including compost in planning would require radical changes in design. Yet a couple commenters have mentioned Vita Mi.x You can compost in such a machine, and pour the resulting “tea” on gardens anywhere you have one. I’ve done that for years. Not as routinely as might be good, but often enough to help.

For imparting this on the next generation:
Encourage zero food waste competitions (like every summer camp I attended) in which minimizing food waste from plates becomes a challenge with a reward. Obviously there is a delicate balance between eating all of your food and becoming obese, but it’s possible to make the entire equation a game, including portion control.
Teach children about the expense of eating, and practice a week of budgeting and careful food monitoring. Those of us who grew up and/or remain poor have no trouble with this one. It is financially and emotionally painful to discard food.
In my mid 20’s, I am a near zero food waste producer, and an avid composter of the inedible food trimmings. I am proud of eating all of the food that I purchase and/or cook, and for having a relatively clean smelling garbage because of it :-) My garden thrives with a constant stream of composted nutrients. It all started at home and at summer camp.

I was hungry a lot when I was a teenager. My mom never wasted a scrap of food in those days. We didn’t have enough money to eat regular meals but we managed to survive on spaghetti and cornflakes. When I was 14, I started to faint in school a lot and we started to get mysterious free bags of groceries delivered to us. But we got foods we had never seen before, so my mother started to make mystery stews. Some of them tasted horrible and it was the first time we ever threw any food away that I can remember. It always seemed like we were doing something really sinful.
Forty years later, throwing away even scraps of food seems incredibly wasteful to me. I can’t shake the memories of going without, no matter how well off I am today. It’s in my bones.

I go to the other extreme, but I’m a minimalist. When I lived alone, the only items in the fridge were going to be eaten in a day or two. More often than not the only items I had to offer guests was a some corn chips and glass of water or occasionally a coke. If they/I needed more the store was within walking distance. Of course, people will say they don’t have time to go to the store every other day but to that I say “nonsense…just watch a little less TV”.

What about the grocery stores that throw away food? One day I was sitting in my car in the parking lot of my local grocery store talking on my cell phone, and I watched one of the employees wheel cart after cart of food out of the store and throw it in the dumpster. The dumpster is kept under lock and key, so no one can get in there and get the food, which has simply passed its expiration date and is most likely edible for a few days longer. With all the homeless people here in Los Angeles, this is a travesty. There are so many hungry people in this town! Why can’t these grocery stores donate their food to a homeless shelter? Now when I watch the clerks take slightly bruised bananas off the shelf, I know they’re headed for the dumpster. This just seems wrong.

Re #19: Yes, I compost, though household waste is a miniscule portion of what goes into mine.

But I have a really basic problem with the freezer advice given in the column. If the proper freezer temperature for other stuff is cold enough that the ice cream is not soft, then where the heck am I supposed to keep the ice cream, which should be soft?