While Arizona has many things going for it—beautiful scenery, mild winter weather and a thriving food scene—the state also has the dubious distinction of being the worst state in the nation for food waste. While some waste happens on farms, in the distribution chain and at retailers, a large chunk of it happens in our own kitchens. Nationally, we as consumers discard more than 40% of the food we buy—the most of all high-income countries.
Wasting food is an easy thing to do. Sweet red strawberries are on sale so you load up, but nobody eats them. Or the soup that was so delicious the day you made it, now on day three has lost its appeal. It was a rough day and takeout sounds like the easiest option, despite all the food in the fridge. Or you encounter that unlabeled block of mystery food you put in the freezer long ago. Is any of us immune? And why does this happen?
Maricarmen Vizcaino, PhD, a senior sustainability scientist at the Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems at ASU, has studied the psychology behind food waste and what we can do about it. “It’s a complex issue because of us humans,” she said. “Food waste is invisible.”
Much waste stems from the abundance in our food system and a concept called the “good provider phenomenon.” We don’t want our families or dinner guests to leave the table hungry, so we overbuy and overserve. And people want to be polite, so they overfill their plates with more food than they can eat, and it goes straight to the trash when the dishes are cleared. Piles of beautiful, perfect fruits and vegetables at the market sing their siren song and we can’t resist buying them to fill up our refrigerator and the fancy fruit bowl on the counter. It feels good to be surrounded by abundant food in your kitchen, but it doesn’t feel so great when you’re tossing it into the trash a week later.
Why should we care about wasting food? For most of us, the cost of groceries is a big issue. When you throw away that bag of decomposing spinach hiding out in your veggie drawer, you’ve lost every penny you paid for it and the cost of running your refrigerator to store it. According to Vizcaino, the average family of four could save between $1,500 and $2,400 a year by reducing their uneaten and discarded food.
Another aspect is the impact on the water, land and human resources it took to grow, harvest, package, transport, distribute and shop for that simple bag of food that has now become garbage.
The two most critical, big picture issues with food waste, though, are the contribution food rotting in landfills makes to climate change and the loss of food that could otherwise feed hungry people in our communities.
According to the EPA, annual food waste contributes 170 million tons of greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere—equal to the emissions from 42 coal-burning power plants—and that doesn’t include the methane rising from food decaying in landfills, which is 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide at warming the atmosphere.
It has been said we produce enough food in this country to feed everyone, but we have a problem distributing it. Actually, we produce way more food than we can eat, AND we have a problem with access. Nearly 30% of the world’s agricultural land is used to produce food that will never be eaten, while more than 10% of Arizona households are food insecure, meaning they don’t have the resources to adequately feed the people living there. That food insecurity leads to issues with cognition and behavioral development in children, as well as chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease and asthma.
While most of us may be unable to change how food is grown, harvested and distributed, we do have the power to change our own practices. I spoke with ASU’s Vizcaino and James Beard Award–winning Chef Charleen Badman, co-owner of Scottsdale’s FnB and founder of Blue Watermelon Project, a Valley nonprofit educating elementary school students about growing good food and healthy eating. They both offered suggestions for making a difference in our own kitchens:
1. Plan Before You Shop. Inventory what is at hand in your pantry and refrigerator. Decide how many meals you want to prepare for the upcoming week and make a list of ingredients you’ll need. Try to avoid exotic items you might use for just one dish and never use again. Instead, focus on cooking with pantry staples that store well, like pasta, beans and other legumes. Badman suggested you buy only what you know you will eat, and treat a trip to the farmers market as a shopping expedition rather than a social occasion.
While you’re taking inventory, you might be tempted to look at expiration dates on your dairy products and canned goods. But don’t bother. Dates on food are confusing, inconsistent and mostly useless. Vizcaino said it’s more important to use your senses to determine whether something is still “good.” Most canned items will be safely edible for two to five years, unless they’re highly acidic like tomatoes, which last about 12 to 18 months.
2. Repurpose and Use Food Scraps. During meal prep, before you toss those radish tops or chicken bones, stop and think about how you could repurpose them. Badman likes to chop radish greens—which taste like arugula—and add them to yogurt with some assorted herbs as a tasty topping for fresh cucumbers. Cilantro stems have just as much flavor as the leaves. Pesto from carrot tops, sautéed beet greens, shaved broccoli stems tossed into a salad—you almost never have to discard vegetable scraps.
When you roast a chicken, save the carcass for stock. Turn it into a hearty soup with some of those vegetable scraps and freeze some in an ice cube tray. A cube or two adds body and flavor to risotto, pasta sauces and gravies.
Learn to freeze, ferment and pickle. If you have produce on the brink of spoiling and you can’t eat it right away—despite your best plans—it’s simple to save it. Badman roasts softening tomatoes with salt, pepper and olive oil, purées them for sauce or dip, or freezes them for later use. She recommends sautéing greens like chard, kale, arugula and escarole, then chopping and freezing them for a delicious and simple addition to pasta or soup.
Fermenting and pickling are not only easy, but good for you, too. It’s simple to turn excess cabbage into sauerkraut, radishes and bok choy into kimchi and milk into yogurt. Fermented foods are exceedingly beneficial for your gut and allow you to wring every drop of nutrition from food that might have otherwise been wasted.
3. Organize and Store Food Properly. When you return home with your haul, take a hint from retailers and rotate. Move older items to the front of your fridge and pantry and place the newer ones in back. Store highly perishable fruits and vegetables like berries and greens in the appropriate drawers and use them first.
Invest in storage containers for dry goods and leftovers. Square ones fit better on shelves and if they’re clear, it’s easier to see the contents. Also helpful: Add your own date label when you fill them.
Rotate your freezer stock, too, and label every container with the contents and date. You also might find it helpful—especially if you have a stand-alone freezer—to attach a small, magnetic whiteboard to the door and keep an updated list as you add and remove foods. You’ll always know what is in the freezer, when you put it there and when you need to think about using it.
4. Eat What You Have on Hand Before You Eat Out. You’re worn out at the end of the day, everybody’s hangry and a trip to the neighborhood drive-through seems like a logical, quick fix. But that’s one more day those gorgeous, leafy salad greens are withering away in the fridge, and the leftover meatloaf is one day closer to the landfill. Plus, all that plastic and foam fast-food packaging fills up the waste stream for centuries before it ever decomposes.
This is the opportunity to engage the family in meal prep. Get some pasta going—with the frozen sautéed greens in the freezer—and let everybody help make the salad and set the table. In the time you would have spent to drive to and through Giant Jonnie’s Burgers and Tacos, you’ll have a healthy dinner ready. (And that leftover meatloaf? Label it, freeze it and pull it out the next time you’re in a “dinner emergency.”)
Even though she owns a restaurant, Badman encourages people to make eating away from home an intentional occasion and not just a spur of the moment default.
5. Compost. You’re bound to have food scraps like eggshells or coffee grounds and instead of throwing them away, turn them into food for your garden. If you have room, you can go the traditional route and build your own compost pile or bin in your yard. But even if you live in a small apartment, you can buy a countertop electric composter that will dry and grind your food waste with no muss or fuss (or smell), and then feed it to your houseplants. Many Valley municipalities have composting or green recycling programs, and private companies like R.City offer a pickup service for your compostable scraps that get turned into soil amendments for local farms. It makes for a healthy and robust circle of local food production.
6. Make New Habits. You may be wondering how hard it is to make these changes in your own home, but Vizcaino assured us it’s possible, even if a little challenging. “A habit is something repetitive that becomes unconscious. It becomes a way of life, even if it’s hard at first,” she said. “It’s about your values, what’s important to you.”
She added that people tend to mimic the behaviors they see around them, whether that’s recycling or throwing away food. By being more conscious and intentional about the things you do in your own kitchen, you’ll have an impact on your family, friends and neighbors, and that can have a ripple effect throughout communities. The changes you make as an individual have the power to change the world.
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