Love Food More, Waste it Less. Yup.

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 America.

(There’s a whole non-profit over there, Love Food, Hate Waste, dedicated to fighting food waste. How awesome is that??)

(Cantaloupe from the discounted produce bin. Ugly on the outside, delicious on the inside.)

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.

So, when Glad contacted me to see if I’d like to participate in their new campaign against food waste, I was pretty excited. What?? A national food waste campaign in the U.S.?? Yay!

Two other bloggers (Mavis from One Hundred Dollars a Month and Winnie from Healthy Green Kitchen) are joining me, and Alex Guarnaschelli (you might recognize her from the Chopped TV show) is also working with Glad on this initiative.

(My kids, who watched Chopped on Netflix, were all, “Oh, that’s so awesome!”)

I’d been feeling a little blah on the food waste front, but discussing this program with Glad, Mavis, and Winnie has kicked my booty back into gear (see my recent zero-waste week)!

Anyway, once a month over the next nine months, Mavis, Winnie, and I will be writing about food waste on our blogs (which, you know, is sort of a matter of course for me anyway).

(A breakfast of scrambled eggs and leftover salsa and guacamole. I suffer for the cause, people.)

To help us all avoid waste, Glad has a whole database put together to demystify the process of storing some common foods you may not be sure how to properly protect.

And while they do recommend their products when possible, it’s not all about using ClingWrap. 😉 For instance, they recommend that mushrooms be stored in a paper bag.

The site also has lots of practical ideas, like taking stock of the fridge contents daily, and storing food in see-through containers.

The official name of this campaign is #SAVEITSUNDAY, and the idea is that since a lot of people grocery shop on Sundays, Sunday is also a good day to do some prepping and protecting for the week of meals ahead so that freshly-bought food stays fresher, longer.

But hey, you don’t have to shop on Sundays to participate! (I hardly ever shop on Sundays, myself). The day isn’t important…what matters is that you take good care of the food you buy the day you buy it.

The #SAVEITSUNDAY program launched just this past Sunday, and if you head on over to SaveItSunday.com, you can learn those tips and tricks I mentioned for protecting the food you love, and take the #SAVEITSUNDAY pledge.

People who take the pledge are entered into a monthly drawing to win a chef-prepared meal at their house (!), which would be a pretty sweet prize.

Also, each week, there’s a challenge (for instance, at the moment, you’re encouraged to post a photo of the produce you bought this week on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, using the #SAVEITSUNDAY hashtag).

Participating in the weekly challenges enters you for a chance to win a #SAVEITSUNDAY prize pack or be featured on SaveItSunday.com.

Since you all hang out here, I know the topic of food waste is already on your radar, but a lot of people don’t pay much attention to food waste, and I think this campaign will help to bring the issue of food waste to the attention of more people nationwide.

(Because my blog hasn’t quite covered the whole nation. At least, not yet. 😉 )

Anyway, I really think that programs like this one will start to bring about a wave of food waste change in the U.S., and I’m thrilled to pieces about that.

P.S. For next month’s Save It Sunday post, I’m going to be trying out some storage ideas and reporting back on how they work. Bring on the experimentation!

P. P. S. You can keep up to day with the Save It Sunday program by following Glad on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.