The following editorial appeared in the Chicago Tribune on Thursday, Aug. 23:If your parents made you sit at the kitchen table until you finished dinner, the following announcement is certain to disturb you: Americans are wasting up to 40 per cent of the country聮s food supply. It聮s a statistic that ought to outrage every member of the Clean Plate Club.Excuses for wastefulness abound. The blueberries 聴 now moldy fur-berries 聴 were on sale at the farmer聮s market. So you bought five containers. The neighbor dropped off five kilograms of zucchini from his garden. Those bananas surrounded by fruit flies? No time to reconstitute them into banana bread. To the trash they go.Sometimes, ambitions at the grocery store wither when faced with the prospect of actually cooking the food and then cleaning dirty dishes. Grocery shopping is exhausting, after all. Can聮t we order Chinese? (You聮ll make the chicken casserole and green beans tomorrow).Even the more conscientious among us who stuff containers of leftovers into the freezer often resort to food wasting. What the heck is the frost-covered, freezer-burned item banished to the back of the shelf? Is it chicken soup or apple pie filling?A report from the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, estimates Americans waste $165 billion in food items each year. The average family tosses nine kilograms per person, per month.The numbers may sound like an exaggeration, but consider the garbage created from plate-scraping one meal. Baked potato shells. Corners of New York strip. Asparagus stalks. That awful Waldorf salad with the raisins and the mayonnaise. If we don聮t like something, we just throw it away.Bigger picture: Dumped food isn聮t the only thing we聮re wasting. Think of the energy it took to produce the food. Those moldy blueberries were planted, watered, cleaned and trucked to the farmers market. The bananas may have been flown from South America. All that work, for nothing 聴 except to pile up in a landfill. The defense council聮s report says getting food to our tables consumes 10 per cent of the total U.S. energy budget.And yet as a whole, Americans are fatter than ever. Apparently, we aren聮t throwing away the cheeseburgers, fries and ice cream sandwiches. Are you kidding? We lick the wrappers.No, it聮s the fresh fruit and vegetables that end up in the garbage bin.According to the report, the United Kingdom and European Union are making food waste a predominant issue. A U.K. education campaign called 聯Love Food Hate Waste聰 is raising awareness and driving down consumption. Businesses (think family-style Italian restaurants) are doing a better job of identifying ways to reduce food-as-trash.As consumers, we can help by buying scarred or damaged fruits and vegetables. We can plan our meals better and smaller.And we can make more pots of 聯garbage soup.聰 You know, the recipe where you throw everything from the fridge into the crockpot.Our grandmas would be proud.The following editorial appeared in the Chicago Tribune on Thursday, Aug. 23:If your parents made you sit at the kitchen table until you finished dinner, the following announcement is certain to disturb you: Americans are wasting up to 40 per cent of the country聮s food supply. It聮s a statistic that ought to outrage every member of the Clean Plate Club.Excuses for wastefulness abound. The blueberries 聴 now moldy fur-berries 聴 were on sale at the farmer聮s market. So you bought five containers. The neighbor dropped off five kilograms of zucchini from his garden. Those bananas surrounded by fruit flies? No time to reconstitute them into banana bread. To the trash they go.Sometimes, ambitions at the grocery store wither when faced with the prospect of actually cooking the food and then cleaning dirty dishes. Grocery shopping is exhausting, after all. Can聮t we order Chinese? (You聮ll make the chicken casserole and green beans tomorrow).Even the more conscientious among us who stuff containers of leftovers into the freezer often resort to food wasting. What the heck is the frost-covered, freezer-burned item banished to the back of the shelf? Is it chicken soup or apple pie filling?A report from the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, estimates Americans waste $165 billion in food items each year. The average family tosses nine kilograms per person, per month.The numbers may sound like an exaggeration, but consider the garbage created from plate-scraping one meal. Baked potato shells. Corners of New York strip. Asparagus stalks. That awful Waldorf salad with the raisins and the mayonnaise. If we don聮t like something, we just throw it away.Bigger picture: Dumped food isn聮t the only thing we聮re wasting. Think of the energy it took to produce the food. Those moldy blueberries were planted, watered, cleaned and trucked to the farmers market. The bananas may have been flown from South America. All that work, for nothing 聴 except to pile up in a landfill. The defense council聮s report says getting food to our tables consumes 10 per cent of the total U.S. energy budget.And yet as a whole, Americans are fatter than ever. Apparently, we aren聮t throwing away the cheeseburgers, fries and ice cream sandwiches. Are you kidding? We lick the wrappers.No, it聮s the fresh fruit and vegetables that end up in the garbage bin.According to the report, the United Kingdom and European Union are making food waste a predominant issue. A U.K. education campaign called 聯Love Food Hate Waste聰 is raising awareness and driving down consumption. Businesses (think family-style Italian restaurants) are doing a better job of identifying ways to reduce food-as-trash.As consumers, we can help by buying scarred or damaged fruits and vegetables. We can plan our meals better and smaller.And we can make more pots of 聯garbage soup.聰 You know, the recipe where you throw everything from the fridge into the crockpot.Our grandmas would be proud.
