over to your kitchen trash bin and take a look.
Is it filled with vegetable peels and coffee grinds, or whole pieces of rotten fruit or leftover cooked food?
Do you fill a kitchen garbage bag more than once a week? Or every day?
Do you find that you habitually throw away certain food items due to expiration (produce, bread, dairy)?
Now peek inside your refrigerator.
Are you storing food optimally?
Are there containers shoved to the back?
Is there fruit or spinach rotting in a drawer?
What about your pantry or wherever you keep dry goods?
Are there boxes or cans that you’ve had a long time and haven’t used?
Are the foods dry, clean, and well-sealed? Are the packages in good physical condition?
Do you still stock snacks that are no longer your child’s favorites?
Do you have enough rice and ramen to feed an army?
Depending on your answers, you may need to focus your efforts in one or more of the following areas:
If your kitchen trash can is heavy with rotten bananas, Thursday’s uneaten leftovers, or moldy bread, then it’s time to coordinate a shopping list and meal plan and utilize your freezer. Head to Chapters 5, 6, and 7.
If you found long-forgotten take-out leftovers pushed to the back of your fridge, then it’s time to evaluate take-out orders or consider a weekly fridge check. Find related tips in Chapter 21.
If your produce drawer contains more slime than fruit, then an evaluation of storage habits is in order. Find storage guidelines in Chapter 5.If your household of two always ends up with a bag of 4 or 5 extra buns, consider individual buns from the bakery instead next time.
If you’ve stockpiled more cereal in your pantry than you can eat in a year, then it could be time to mark that item off your grocery list and walk away from those tempting end cap sales.
Chapter 2
A Side of Sustainability: Putting Food and the Environment into Context
IN THIS CHAPTER
You may be wondering, “Why do I need to learn about sustainability or what farmers and ranchers do in a zero waste cooking book?” Arming yourself with a little background about sustainability, food waste data, and how your food gets from a farmer’s field to your local market can help you understand your role to reduce food waste at home.
In this chapter, you find out about the food supply chain, the challenges that farmers and ranchers face, as well as some of the exciting technological advances of modern agriculture that make farming more efficient and eco-friendly, and bring more varieties of nutritious food to the table. This chapter also helps you understand how to interpret some of the hype and claims you often see on food packaging so you can skip the food fear and guild trip and avoid unnecessarily wasting the fruits of so many farmers’ labor.
Boiling It Down: Defining Sustainability
Sustainability is a broad term that’s important to just about every industry today, from businesses to technology to social and environmental sciences. According to Merriam-Webster, sustainable generally means “capable of being sustained.” In the case of sustainable farming, it’s defined as “of, relating to, or being a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damaged.”
The fact is, farmers have been thinking about sustainability for a long time. The dozens of farmers I’ve met all have a passion for caring for their land, wildlife, air, and water. They view sustainability as producing crops and livestock in an efficient way that preserves the environment while maintaining the well-being of their animals, land, families, and the community around them. This is done in part by using advanced specialized veterinary healthcare, genetic technology, and advanced nutrition for plant crops and animal production.
However, you don’t have to look far to read or hear statements that demonize ingredients — or worse, demonize the farmers and ranchers who work hard to grow and cultivate our food. The topic of sustainability has garnered a lot of attention over the past several years. Concerns are often encompassed within the context of scientific, economic, and political stances. Like just about every topic these days, a lot of misinformation and disagreement exists.
These are challenging times for the world. Food waste contributes greenhouse gasses to the environment and is part of the climate change issue. You and I can start by making changes in our own kitchens, but it’s also important to understand a little about what sustainability in agriculture looks like and the roles of all the other players. Many people, across all food-related industries, are working to manage the nexus between food and climate to feed a growing population while also protecting the planet.
Sustainability in Agriculture: Economic, Environmental, and Social Concerns
Big-picture sustainability encompasses concerns for the environment as well as social equity and economic viability. Without one, you can’t have
