Through the Neighborhood Good Eats

My mom always told me not to waste food. It’s amazing how much food goes to waste in America. 34 million tons of food waste is produced in America, and only 3% of that is recovered. The rest goes to landfills, contributing to trash and the production of methane gas.

I’m sure their moms told them not to waste food either.

It’s not just to food thrown out, but the fact that all the resources that went into the production of it is wasted as well.

If you think how much energy, soil, and water goes into all the vegetables, fruits, and grains, it accounts for a lot. Tons of water goes into just plants, so went you think about watering and harvest all those plants for the consumption of animals, who later would be slaughtered for meat, it’s absolutely insane to even consider wasting food.

I may be sounding too drastic here, as I firmly believe in eating until you’re full, not when your plate is clean, but that comes into putting less on your plate (however, I am guilty for overeating many times). I just want people to be more aware that wasting food goes so much more than what is being thrown away.

Now, consider all the people that go hungry in America, let alone the world. If the food, instead of being wasted, goes to hungry mouths, then we can save a lot of money and lives. Less programs needed for the hungry because there’s less hungry people. More people focusing on other aspects of their lives such as work, getting an education, or anything else because they are no longer worried about food.

So, where did this come from?

Well, there are two things that have stuck with me.

I have a grape fruit tree where I live in San Jose. I remember one day as I returned home, I noticed how many grapefruits have fallen. Since I don’t really eat it, they just sit there on the floor, rotting. All this food can go to people who really need them, and even if I did eat them, there is no way I can eat a whole tree of grapefruit.

Another trigger happened yesterday actually. I was at the mall going some lat minute Christmas shopping (I know, crazy) and as I was trying to get my foursquare to load up an Express coupon, I decided to buy a pizza pretzel. While in line, they made new pizza pretzels, which got me excited as I will have fresh ones. However, they took the pizza pretzels just sitting there, and proceeded to toss it, or placed it somewhere under the counter away from customers. I presumed that they tossed it, and all I could think about was how many people would’ve loved to have those perfectly fine pretzels.

So for 2012, I will be adding something new to this website. I will not only record my food journeys, but also issues about food and food waste, as well as start organizing efforts to move food from being waste to becoming a meal.

The pictures were from a BBQ my roommate had in San Jose. I am so serious about saving food that after everyone left or fell asleep, I took the time to wrap and preserve all the food…

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