By Vicki Parsons
It seemed very appropriate to read a book about food waste in the dark on a laptop with a fading battery during Hurricane Milton. Families on Facebook were asking for food, water or ice, and police were manning gas stations to keep order. The things we take for granted – refrigerators full of food, hot showers and air-conditioning – were in short supply. We were all scared and grumpy.
The premise of No Scrap Left Behind: My Life Without Food Waste by Teralyn Pilgrim is what she calls “the hungry kid test.” Would you put that food in the trashcan if a hungry child – or, in this case, someone whose refrigerator had stopped working — was watching? Her trip from a typical suburban mom with two toddlers to nearly zero waste is a fast, funny read that I’ll go over more carefully when we’re back to normal.
Reducing food waste benefits your family’s budget and provides significant environmental benefits. Somewhere between 30 and 50% of all food grown worldwide is thrown away. Globally, we waste enough food to feed every hungry person three times over. Some reports indicate that food waste is responsible for up to 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, as well as about 20% of all water used in agriculture. Then, when wasted food ends up in a landfill, it rots and produces methane, a greenhouse gas even more potent than carbon dioxide.
Additionally, thousands of acres of habitat are transformed into farmlands treated with petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides. The environmental damage caused by excess fertilizer washing off agricultural lands fouls waterbodies, fueling algal growth that chokes out underwater vegetation, like seagrasses in Tampa Bay. As those algae die, they consume oxygen, creating dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico and the Chesapeake Bay that extend for millions of acres where nothing can survive.
While most of the food waste happens on farms, and in grocery stores and restaurants, Pilgrim reports that the average family of four throws out about 60 pounds and $100 worth of perfectly good food every month. Like most of us, Pilgrim never threw away perfectly good food – she put it in the refrigerator in Tupperware until it spoiled, and then she threw it away.
Pilgrim writes that getting to her final goal of less than five pounds was more difficult than she had expected. “Everyone can cut their food waste down by 50%, easily. I’m talking overnight easily. It takes only slight changes and a little effort to make that big of a difference. Cutting down food to zero, on the other hand, was not so easy.”
Once she got in the swing of things, Pilgrim says she saved both time and money. Dozens of tips are highlighted throughout the book, some targeted toward mothers with young children, others focused on shopping and storing food more effectively.
With most of us faced with empty refrigerators and freezers after days with no power caused by two hurricanes in a row, one of her tips will be easier than it would be otherwise: clean out all your food storage locations so you know exactly what you have. Then – I loved this one – put the things that you use often in the back of your pantry and leave what you don’t use regularly in the front, so you don’t forget you own them.
Our nearly empty freezers can be refilled with things I would never have imagined freezing – avocados, eggs, grapes, cheese and nuts – with a chart showing recommended actions. Then you can start putting your leftovers in the freezer where they won’t spoil as fast as the proverbial Tupperware in the back of the refrigerator. But, you’ll need to focus on not forgetting what’s already there to save both time and money – and Pilgrim has tips on how to make that happen.
Additional advice covers topics like how to best reheat leftovers, recipes for potato peels and turkey carcasses, reviving stale cookies, sharing leftovers after a pot-luck party, and preventing freezer burn.
If you just scroll through this article or her book with absolutely no intention of getting to zero waste, take away this one crucial point: expiration dates don’t mean much. In fact, Pilgrim writes, “They are stupid and ignore them. None of those dates are regulated, and except for a few things – like baby food and prescription drugs – they aren’t even required. In the vast majority of cases, the dates indicate freshness, not safety.”
No Scrap Left Behind is well-footnoted throughout, but she goes into further explanations about expiration dates, for the readers who are sure they will die if they eat food past its “best by” date. Smithsonian Magazine published an article entitled “Sell By” And “Best By” Dates on Food Are Basically Made Up—But Hard to Get Rid Of. Harvard concurs with an article entitled The Food Waste Problem, which reports on a survey by the Food Marketing Institute showing “that 91% percent of consumers at least occasionally discarded food past its ‘sell by’ date out of concern for the product’s safety. A quarter of respondents said they always did so.” Even the USDA chimes in, explicitly stating that dates are not indicators of safety, but quality.
Use your best judgment, Pilgrim writes. Milk spoils faster than dried beans, and salt may never spoil. “In 2018, I found an online picture of sea salt with a label that said, ‘formed by the primal sea more than 250 million years ago.’ Its expiration date was 2019.”
I was given a free copy of No Scraps Left Behind to write this review, but purchasing the $15.20 book would have saved me several hundred dollars a year – while I was minimizing my carbon footprint and protecting the waters I love. It’s a great investment with wins all around.
Originally posted Nov. 3, 2024
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