As you all know, I’ve been blogging about food waste for half a decade now, and during that time, I’ve always felt a bit jealous of places like the U.K., where food waste gets a whole lot more attention than it does here in the U.S. (There’s a whole non-profit over there, Love Food, Hate Waste, dedicated to fighting food waste).
My box of bruised apples, which were almost entirely edible. Oh yes.
But here in the U.S., food waste just doesn’t come up all that often.
We like to talk about food, photograph food, eat food, read about food, and, thanks to the Food Network, we even like to watch other people prepare and eat food. But when it comes to thinking and reading about what happens to the food we don’t eat…well, that’s a whole lot less popular.
Hopefully that’s all about to change, though, and I’m part of a team that’s working to give the food waste issue the attention it deserves. Click here to finish reading all about it!
Jo@simplybeingmum
Friday 1st of November 2013
Gave this post a shout on on the Food Waste Friday post today. Here's to a successful US campaign in reducing food-waste!
Tina
Tuesday 29th of October 2013
Hi from the UK! We are lucky here - wasting is really frowned upon, and we have several TV chefs who have done shows dedicated to showing people how to stretch their food budgets and reduce waste. In my county we are lucky enough to be provided with free compost bins so we can make even the wasted stuff work for us. It's not perfect though; we still waste around 7 million tonnes of food a year and we have the same issues here with most people not buying carefully or eating healthily enough.
I work for a charity where some of our customers don't have enough money to buy food, so this makes me more conscious of what I'm using, and very ashamed if I waste something that another would cherish. I get a little bit cross when I see things like Man v Food, which just seems to encourage greediness and wastage.
I love Food Waste Friday - it makes me take a long hard look at myself!
ClaraB
Tuesday 29th of October 2013
I just found this article on NPR about startup companies trying to combat food waste: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/10/26/240990793/start-ups-try-to-reroute-food-waste-to-the-hungry . Some of the comments were interesting - apparently there is some resistance to donating food, for liability reasons.
Sarah The Happiness Advocate
Tuesday 29th of October 2013
I hadn't thought about how we glorify "new" food via the Food Network and magazines before -- I love the idea of promoting ways to use food to reduce waste. I would much prefer a cooking show about foraged fruits, veggies and plants than one about special cheeses :)
Kristen
Tuesday 29th of October 2013
You know, it would be pretty awesome to see a show about using leftovers too. Or using random odds and ends.