May 19th, 2008 - Don’t waste your food
The NY Times Online has an interesting article One Country’s Table Scraps, Another Country’s Meal about how food American’s waste every year. It’s staggering. Less than 2% is composted.
In our house, less than 2% of our food waste is NOT composted. In that number figures the occasional item accidentally thrown away, meat bones (not compostable), and the bits of stuff on plates that goes down the drain.
I doubt we have more food waste than typical families, but I actually throw out more food than I might if we didn’t compost. Old bread? I don’t try to use it up if its really dry and I’ve made a new loaf because I know it will nourish my garden in a year or two.
And I fully understand the one line that families with young children throw away up to 25% of their food. You can never tell from day to day what or how much your child will eat. We usually don’t compost it the first time around, but after a couple days, it’s drying out and really unappetizing. We don’t force her to eat anything (”clean your plate!” is suggested as a reason for obesity levels.) so we often end up giving her more than she will eat. And kids will rarely try something new if they haven’t seen it before, so you go through many rounds of putting it on the plate before it gets eaten.
I know. If we were a third world family and that was all she was going to get to eat she’d learn to eat it or starve. Except we aren’t, and she knows she’ll get different food at the next meal. I prefer to give her a variety of foods so that we don’t have a cranky child due to hunger. But it’s hard to justify at times when you know life could be so different.