Wasting food and US piggishness

With the rising price of food and gas, it seems like we have a huge opportunity to put a dent in the obesity problem here in the US. Buy less food and gas, save money, and improve your health by eating less and walking more.

When you cook a lot of meals from scratch, there is going to be waste. However, I actually feel virtuous when what's in the container to be carried out to the compost pile is mostly egg shells, carrot peels, onion roots & tops, apple cores, and orange rinds instead of prepared food.

A few years ago there was a study that showed that because of transportation, refrigeration, & pest contol, we waste significantly less food than less advanced societies. Twenty-five percent does sound like a high amount, but waste is inherent in the nature perishable goods.

As one diet guru once remarked, if it goes down your gullet or down the garbage disposal, it's not going to make one bit of difference to the starving people in (insert appropriate starving country here).

Wouldn't it be smart if churches took up the issue of food waste as part of teaching about the virtues of thrift?

Yes, let's get Prestonwood Baptist to teach the virtues of thrift. They're already bragging that they lowered their utility bill to 'only' $250,000 per month. I understand their, uh, 'outreach' pastor drove a hybrid to meet his 'date.'

Thank you for this.

Like the plastic issue, this an area where our personal choices matter, but not as much as national policy. We can't continue to pursue policies that are short-sighted, that choose short-term cost savings and profit over long-term food security both for ourselves AND for the rest of the world. Food security for ourselves (diverse, widely-spread production on our own soil) is self-evident. Food security for the world (among other things, not undercutting local markets so dramatically that they abandon their own food production, as happened in Haiti) is in our interests because it alleviates some of the causes of unrest and war.

Along with "waste not, want not", shame at our greediness (or anything else, for that matter) seems to have gone by the wayside as well. I know of a newly-constructed church in my area -- not a mega church, just a medium size town church -- that lights it's gymnasium to the tune of $50 an hour! A few sky-lights in the roof could have cut that dramatically in the day time, which is when it gets most use, along with perhaps a different type of light fixture. (I don't know about fixtures though, so ???) Just think what other things that money could be going for, let alone the energy resources. Some "stewardship".

Just to be clear: I made the argument about food security above based on self-interest. However even if the self-interest angle were to break down, the argument based on right moral action still stands. It's just the right thing to do to order our policies in a way that allows us to have *enough* food and profit (which is different than "as much as we can amass") and does not harm the food security of other nations.

I remember one evening, when I was about seven or eight, when I just flat out refused to eat my overcooked canned peas. My dad gave the me the standard line about children starving in Asia. My response was to get up, march over to my mom's dress, get out an envelope, pour my peas into it and hand it back to my dad saying, "Here. Mail it to them."

I also remember visiting my aunt, and not finishing my meatloaf. She served the cold, half-eaten slice of meatloaf to me the next morning for breakfast, then for lunch, and then dinner (at which point I surreptitiously fed it to the dog).

My parents were both children of the Depression and had a phobia about wasting food. We always had about 17 Tupperware containers in the fridge containing half a hot dog, or a tablespoon of mashed potatoes. No one ever seemed to actually consume these leftovers, and once they got moldy it was morally OK to throw them out.

I have noticed, as an adult, that my childrens' food-wasting is directly tied to how much they have snacked. It seems that these days, the schools like to stuff them as much as possible. I can count on my eight-year-old turning up her nose at dinner on the day she has Brownies, because they insist upon stuffing the Brownies with unlimited snacks at the meetings. The leader even went so far as to tell us to send another alternate snack with our girls, "in case they didn't like the snack provided at the meeting." To which my response was "Waaaah. If they are being picky, it means they are obviously not very hungry. There is no need to tempt them with cupcakes at four-thirty in the evening."

I would imagine a lot of adult food-wasting is due to ridiculously oversized restaurant portions, and also to the lack of knowledge of how to serve leftovers. We usually use leftovers in soup, quiche, chili, etc., but a lot of people don't know how to cook these days.

"Wouldn't it be smart for churches to make an issue of this?"

Yes of course it would be. Any civilized person, in church or not, should care about this.

But then again, no, of course it wouldn't be smart, simply because most Christians are guilty of over-consumption. It's much smarter to take a courageous stand against the 1% or 2% of the population that are gay; that won't ruffle many feathers in the pews.

Other countries can blow it out their ear!

Since when do Americans give a hoot in hell what people in other countries think?

Well, thus speaks the "ugly American". Maybe we don't care about what other countries think but we'd better care about what God thinks. I don't think he can be pleased with our arrogance, our greed, our waste, our destruction of his world, our gluttony. (One of the 7 deadlies, after all). I include myself in this as well. While I don't subscribe to the zero sum game thing entirely (live simply so others can simply live) it is nonetheless true that the world's resources are finite and God expects responsible stewardship from us.

(I do remember refusing to eat some disgusting thing as a kid and being told that kids in India were starving and offering to send them my chipped beef gravy on toast. My Dad's response was "don't be smart to your mother!")

Does anybody besides me wonder why restaurant portions are so obscenely huge? I mean, aren't they losing money by buying and serving way more food than the customer can or should eat? I have sometimes gotten a "doggie bag" and gotten two more meals off my entree.

And then, every time we have a meeting of some sort, especially at church, Scouts, etc., do we have to serve refreshments? Are people really going to drop dead from hunger if there's no goodies at the Bible study or brownie troop meeting? Aren't some of these meetings in the evening after people have already eaten dinner, supposedly?

I had a conversation with my teenage daughter (17) the other day. She said, Mom, maybe there's a good side to the high gas prices and the recession and all that. Maybe it will teach us not to be so wasteful, so greedy, so materialistic. Well, out of the mouth of babes! A good point, I think.

Restaurant leftovers clue #2: salads don't keep and soups don't transport. Eat them all on the spot.

However, they also reflect their German heritage in their size.

Excuse me? Ever been to Northern Germany? Even in down home Bavaria (where I was born) not everyone looks like they live on bratwurst and beer.

I mean really, that's a bit of a stereotype. The fact is that the Amish eat some pretty heavy and high calorie meals, and the fact that they intermarry within themselves so much has led to genetic medical issues.

And don't let anyone tell you they don't drink beer, either. Many of them do.

Dreh-Rod: "I meant to post last week the story -- either from the Times or the Wall Street Journal, can't remember which -- in which economists and others in India were grinching about US complaints that the rising middle class in India and elsewhere were causing food shortages and making the price of food go up in the US."

BUSINESS / WORLD BUSINESS
May 14, 2008
Indians Find U.S. at Fault in Food Cost
By HEATHER TIMMONS

Instead of blaming India and others for the rise in food prices, Americans should rethink their energy policy — and stop eating so much, say a growing number of Indians.

nytimes.com/2008/05/14/business/worldbusiness/14food.html

This same topic came up on May 8th in the Reformed Chicks blog. In that thread I raised a great deal of skepticism over the study. Here's what I said:

I assume that people are rational with their money and don't buy food, let it spoil, and then throw it away in large quantities. At least this is the way the world works among the people I know.

So when a study confounds my expectations I assume that the study is flawed and not the people being studied. For example how would they measure how much food is discarded versus purchased? Unless they are dumpster diving on a massive scale I doubt an accurate measurement is possible. My guess is that they tried to use a sampling technique and then extrapolated the sample to the larger numbers. Getting a representative sample and properly extrapolating it is hard, and small errors can yield big errors in the final study.

I will agree there is a great deal of wasted food. But this is largely in the distribution chain because food spoils. You only need to look in super market dumpsters to see a lot of food past its sell by date. But I'd rather they throw that away then try to sell it to me.

Since this is a pretty extraordinary conclusion I would expect people to not accept it without critically examining it. However, a story like this makes good copy so I don't expect that kind of critical review from the press.

I'm not excited about a presidential candidate telling me what I can and can't eat, what I can drive, and how much air conditioning I can use.

Like the "guns and bitterness" comment, I think this goes back to the fact that Obama is, basically, an elitist who thinks he knows better than I do.

I think it's less than helpful to suggest that obesity has to do with wasteful habits.

Whether it's helpful or not, there does appear to be a connection between wasteful collective behavior and obesity, in that you rarely see obesity in developing countries. You see malnutrition and starvation, and painfully thin people, but you don't see obesity like you do in the land of the drive-through cheeseburger and chicken-fried, high-fructose corn syrup.

American's consume more energy than anyone in the world, so its only natural that we waste more too. In both our bodies and our transportation, we eat more calories, we put more calories in our cars, we waste more calories than anyone in the world. It's enough to make you sick.

MI, do you know anyone with an emotional eating disorder? Athletics and self-discipline are, of course, a good solution to a normal tendency to overeat, but for people who have eating disorders "athletics" become a way of forcing the body to purge, and "self-discipline" becomes anorexia. Pro-anorexia websites abound with "thinspiration" messages meant to reinforce the notion, aimed especially at women, that overweight=worthless and that with the proper amount of self-control, anyone can achieve the coveted "starvation-chic" look.

And I can't think of anything more 'wasteful' than bulimia, but it's not usually associated with the obese.

Well, MI, technically it's not "athletics" but "compulsive exercise," which is essentially a guilt-ridden form of constant and body-punishing exercise linked to excessive fears about overeating. I found this explanation informative (add the usual)

something-fishy.org/whatarethey/exercise.php

You know, if we ate more and as a result there was less food for people in developing nations, the demographic nightmare that some rather paranoid people on these message boards are worrying about might not happen. Unintended consequences and historical ironies and all. Just sayin'.

I don't think eating everything on your plate is as conducive to obesity, as is WHAT and HOW MUCH you put on your plate.

At home, I do make my kids eat everything on their plate -- if they want dessert, that is. Dessert, by the way, is a SMALL treat -- I have little teensy bowls for a petite scoop of ice cream, or a small homemade cookie, etc.. Not the six-pound slab of cheesecake that you get in a restaurant!

However, I don't put a whole lot of food on their plates. I think the rule of thumb is a tablespoon of food per year of age, which is about 1/2 the size of the "kids portion" at Friendly's! And finishing a reasonably-sized plate of broccoli, grilled chicken and brown rice is not like finishing an oversized portion of deep-fried crap.

Now, my children tend toward the picky-and-persnickety end of the spectrum; if I had the sort of child who inhaled anything and everything I might take a different approach. With my kids, getting them to at least TASTE new foods and learn to eat what is placed before them without wailing that they don't LIKE green beans is the primary goal.

I also found that back when I didn't insist on actually eating their dinners, they would HAUNT me for snacks constantly -- and the snacks they wanted were never raw veggies or fruits. Now, our rule is the only snacks after 4 pm are veggies (baby carrots, sliced bell peppers, celery, etc.) and if they become mysteriously stuffed after eating one bite of dinner, that is fine -- but the kitchen is closed and nothing further is served until 7 AM breakfast. This pretty much eliminated the 7:30 pm whining that they are hungry! As a bonus, they have now become pretty good eaters. They don't really like most veggies, but they have accepted the fact that they have to eat them; and they will usually try new foods with minimal fuss, because they know they won't be allowed to leave the table until they have taken *one bite*. I don't force them to finish if they don't want to, but they often choose to so they can get their little treat.

I see a lot of our friends letting their kids get away with not eating anything at all at dinner, and then giving in to them and letting them have cereal, crackers, cookies, pudding, etc.. before bedtime. Well, of course the kids are not going to change their ways anytime soon!

It seems that the poor people in this country could stand to eat a little less. I have seen some very fat "poor people."
Of course, whether they are poor or not is relative. These people tend to have microwave ovens, refridgerators, TVs, and sometimes even cell phones. But they need help, and how come we're not doing more? Meanwhile real poor people in the world outside the US live on landfills and eat scraps. No problem with obesity there.