Fighting Food Waste--in Homes and Labs

World-wide, about 1/3 of the food being produced is wasted.  Of course, all this waste is an expense for individuals and families; furthermore, scientists keep warning us, organic waste material is detrimental to the environment in many ways. However, the positive side of the story is that human ingenuity is hard at work--at home, in labs, and in the business world--trying to decrease waste. For consumers, it's partly a matter of not creating waste in the first place and partly a matter of using leftovers in new ways to avoid losing them to the garbage can. More interesting are the ways in which science and industry try to deal with edible garbage by converting it into something useful. Various ideas have been in the news these days. We're hearing and reading about everything from the Biblical practice of gleaning to high-tech methods of transforming discarded food into energy.  And between those two extremes are simple money-saving methods that, you, the consumer, can use at home.

How the Savvy Consumer Can Cut Down on Discards:

Mother Nature Network says that every year a family of 4 Americans discards $2,275 in wasted food.  The blog then provides a list of suggestions, beginning with this one, which I love: "The website Shelf Life Advice looks very helpful in the fight against food waste. It has lots of handy tips on how long foods are good for, storing foods to give them a longer life, and more." 

Yes, Shelf Life Advice can help you cut down on waste with its countless tips on handling specific foods properly and thereby delaying spoilage. But, in addition, the site has posted three articles specifically focused on ways to fight food waste and why it's important to do so.   Here are links to them: 

http://shelflifeadvice.com/content/how-avoid-wasting-food-home

http://shelflifeadvice.com/content/food-waste-and-product-dating

http://shelflifeadvice.com/content/food-waste-and-global-warming-unfortunate-connection

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), "One-third of the food produced in the world for human consumption is thrown away or lost.  In industrialized countries, food waste most often happens at the retail and consumer levels. From the farm to the home, Americans waste about 40% of the food produced, but this figure does include things like meat bones and fruit rinds.  Estimates are that consumers discard about 25% of the food they buy.  Restaurants also discard a lot of food, especially what's been sitting on buffets.   Supermarkets do, too, discarding daily, for example, unsold cooked whole chickens. North American consumers take the prize for wasting more food than those living in any other continent. 

Here are some generalizations that come up over and over in newspaper, magazine, and online articles and some specific examples to support them:

• Don't buy so much. Don't go grocery shopping when you're hungry or have plenty of time for tempting browsing. Go shopping with meal plans and a list of items needed, and don't buy anything else--unless it's a great bargain and a healthful family favorite. Try not to carry one or more kids in your grocery cart; they'll nag you into buying all sorts of unnecessary and probably unhealthy items.
  
  
• Keep track of what's in your fridge, and use perishable food before it spoils. Milk getting old? Make chocolate pudding.
  
  
• Use leftovers in new ways to entice your family to eat them.  Bananas getting soft?  Make smoothies or a banana cake.  Apples being ignored?  Make some baked apples or a pie. 
  
  
• Make stock for soups.  Use vegetables that are misshapen or wilted you may not want to serve, but they'll add a lot to stock, as will bones from the chicken or roast that was last night's dinner. Shells from crustaceans such as lobster and crab can contribute to a fish soup base..  Stock will keep in the fridge for a week and in the freezer for months.
  
  
• Before fruits go bad, consider making a simple compote.  Boil and sweeten with a caloric or non-caloric sweetener.  Compote can be frozen.
  
  
• Freeze leftovers in small containers (preferably microwavable) that you can take to work for lunch. 
  
  
• Find ways to dispose of what you're not going to eat so that these foods are not adding to environmental pollution.  Going on vacation? Offer your leftovers to a neighbor instead of discarding them.  Compost your discarded food yourself or, the Chicago Tribune suggests, use a composting service to collect it.

Gleaning and Other Giveaways:

"Every year, some 7 billion pounds of fresh produce are left in fields or sent to landfills," says the USA Today in a lengthy article on gleaning. Meanwhile, in this struggling economy, millions cannot afford the fresh produce sold in retail stores.  Gleaning is one solution that's helping. In many communities, organized volunteers pick fresh fruit that has fallen to the ground and take misshapen produce that farmers can't sell to food banks.  Individuals, too, sometimes glean to bring fresh produce home.  Collecting what would otherwise be waste helps to feed the 50 million Americans that sometimes can't afford to buy food, including 17 million Americans regularly forced to skip meals.  The problem of food insecurity (affecting 6.8 million American households last year, according to the Department of Agriculture) can be alleviated by cutting down on waste.

We asked food process engineer Dr. Timothy Bowser about the health risks of gleaning since produce lying on the ground can be contaminated by wild animals and polluted water and give the person eating it a food-borne illness.  "Many nuts and some fruit products are collected from the ground. Apples collected from the ground were implicated in several outbreaks caused by unpasteurized apple cider.  Personally, I think that collection from the ground is okay as long as the product is cleaned and sanitized."  Proper sanitizing is accomplished with a mixture of water and the recommended amount of household bleach.

Use one gallon of water and the following amounts of bleach for these products:

• Apples, pears, squash, cucumbers: 1 teaspoon of bleach
• Leafy greens, peaches, peppers, tomatoes, asparagus, broccoli, carrots: 2 teaspoons of bleach
• Melons, citrus, root crops: 2 tablespoons of bleach

Produce must be rinsed well with potable water after the sanitizing treatment.

Here's another great idea that came into being when the infamous 2012 drought bypassed Minnesota.  That state had too much corn for Green Giant to use.  Enter the corn rescue.  The Chicago Tribune reported that 600,000 pounds of corn became 465,000 meals eaten by residents of 10 states.  Small farmers had donated surplus crops before, but this rescue, started by Seneca Foods (which freezes and cans Green Giant products for General Mills) was the first major rescue effort on this large scale. 

Scientific Solutions to Waste:

The September 2012 issue of Time magazine contained a fascinating article about the research of Carol Lin, a biochemical engineer at the City University of Hong Kong.  She and her team of researchers "are converting organic food waste (think old pastries, bread and coffee grounds) into succinic acid."  Perhaps you never heard of that chemical, but you live with it. It is one of the versatile ingredients created by bacteria, and it's an important component of biodegradable plastics. Furthermore, it's widely used, according to the article, "in everything from laundry-detergent bottles to food additives to car parts."   Lin's Hong Kong lab is not the only one trying to make waste useful. Similar efforts are going on in labs around the world.

Two of our Advisory Board scientists offered these reassurances that measures can be taken to deal with the food waste problem:

Dr. Joe Regenstein (food scientist): "There are lot of uses for food waste, such as composting, biogas, and waste to energy. In my mind, the best idea would be re-feeding to animals such as pigs or poultry.  The slop would need a heat treatment to prevent the spread of trichinosis."

Dr. Bowser:  "I have worked on many projects designed to reduce or reuse food waste. Currently, I've submitted a grant proposal for a research project that investigates the use of mushroom byproducts for pet food. Once a product or ingredient enters the waste stream, it loses value and may become a liability.

"Much research can still be done on methods to keep food from entering the waste stream. Conversion of food waste to chemicals is a valid application. Oklahoma State University has looked at other opportunities including gasification of food waste to produce energy."

Source(s):

Timothy J. Bowser, Ph.D., Oklahoma State University, Dept. of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering

Joe Regenstein, Ph.D., Cornell University, Dept. of Food Science

mnn.com (mother nature network) "Do almost half your groceries go in the trash?

http://www.mnn.com/food/healthy-eating/blogs/do-almost-half-your-groceries-go-in-the-trash

USA Today "Volunteers take to fields in harvest against hunger" October 8, 2012

http://tucsoncitizen.com/usa-today-news/2012/10/08/volunteers-take-to-fields-in-harvest-against-hunger/

news.blogs.cnn.com "40% of U.S. Food Wasted, Report Says"

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/22/40-of-u-s-food-wasted-report-says/

fao.org (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations)

 "FAO, partners, urge greater push to reduce food losses and waste"

http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/147427/icode/

okstate.edu "Guidelines for the Use of Chlorine Bleach as a Sanitizer in Food Processing Operations"

http://pods.dasnr.okstate.edu/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-963/FAPC-116web.pdf

Time "Waste Not: Can old food really be repurposed?" September 10, 2012

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2123317,00.html

(link accessible to Time subscribers only)

Chicago Tribune "Diving into the food waste problem"   April 18, 2012

Chicago Tribune "In Minnesota, surplus corn feeds 465K hungry" September 9, 2012

Chicago Tribune "Don't toss those shells" September 26, 2012.