waste less food

On one hand, I’ve gotten a lot better about this. I still throw away more food than I’d like, but I’ve gotten a lot more creative about using up bits of leftovers.

On the other hand … sometimes I find myself eating things I don’t want simply for the sake of not wasting them, or eating more than I want so that a little bit doesn’t go to waste. Isn’t it also wasteful to treat my body as a garbage disposal? Especially when taking pains to not waste food runs against my other goal of not overeating and maintaining my weight loss!

I will still continue to make more upfront efforts to plan the use of the food that I buy so that it doesn’t go to waste, but I will also balance this against my need to respect my own wants and my health.

From the NY Times: One Country’s Table Scraps, Another Country’s Meal. An estimated 27% of the food available for consumption in the United States goes to waste. Granted, a significant amount of that is commercial waste, like fast food restaurants discarding uneaten cheeseburgers and grocery store delis pitching rotisserie chickens. But American families waste a fair share, too.

I’m guilty, and I’m still working on this. I buy more produce than I can reasonably eat, or buy something on sale and am not able to use it all before it expires. Sometimes it’s something that I don’t even realize expires. Just last night, I was going to fix some cinnamon crescent rolls to go with dinner – something I haven’t done in ages since I’ve been eating better. (My plan was to eat just one or two, not four like before.) But the refrigerated rolls expired back in February. February!

Or, it’s something I buy for a recipe, and I don’t think through how to use up the rest of it. While rummaging in the fridge for those cinnamon rolls, I found a package of shredded Swiss cheese that had gone moldy. I bought it for a casserole dish; it’s not something I normally use.

So, yeah, still working on this. I need to (1) buy things only when I make a real commitment to eat it all; (2) think carefully, before trying a new recipe, what I’ll do with the leftover ingredients; and (3) check expiration dates carefully.

Sparkpeople has more tips for keeping produce fresh. And Wasted Food has more, period.