This post at Tara Parker-Pope’s NYT health blog points out that 40% of food waste occurs in the home, and the average home wastes a quarter of the food they buy.
She makes the obvious point that this wastes our money. I’m surprised she didn’t also point out that it’s wasteful from an environmental standpoint too.
You know the whole locavore movement, the one that tries to shrink the transportation carbon footprint of your food?
Well, if you are a typical household, your transportation footprint is likely less than half of your food waste footprint. Start cutting where it really counts: buy less, cook less, and waste less.
I’m convinced, after struggling to reduce food waste in my own house, that a lot of the problem with food waste really does come from two gluttony-related subtopics.
(1) Worry that we won’t have enough food, or enough variety of food. This is utterly ridiculous. You should see my pantry. We are stocked to the ceiling. And my family, far from being disappointed in me if I made chili every week for a year, would probably cheer. Nevertheless, worrying that we don’t have enough food, or that our food isn’t interesting enough, appears to be a symptom of my inner glutton.
(2) Refusal to engage with the reality of what my family really likes to eat. Yes, it’s fine to make things that are new to us, to try new things. But once I’ve discovered that some dish is a loser with most of us, I shouldn’t repeat it except in small quantities.
I have often thought that one way to cure myself of this tendency might be to deliberately skip going to the grocery store from time to time, forcing us to eat down our stores.
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