The other night on the Food Network there was a special show focusing on wasted food in our country. Bobby Flay and three other Food Network stars were charged with exploring the pitch-out stuff from restaurants, food markets and farms to see how extensive the discarded item problem is. The visual amount was amazing and the criteria for not being able to use certain produce, meats, and poultry is so minor when it is perfectly safe and usable. The lesson was driven home when these chefs retrieved some of it to create a variety of apparently wonderful dishes. Food is rejected because of minor blemishes, a broken wing on a chicken and current customer taste, such as for cow's tongue, and such less than popular animal parts. The photographs of piles of tomatoes that wouldn't be accepted at market made me realize how stupidly spoiled (you bet, that's an intended pun) we Americans are. TV visuals and advertising charities now let us know how children in the world are starving for lack of such as a blemished tomato and squash. It was noted that we contribute to this as we pick through the produce in the market looking for perfect specimens, little realizing that our very handling of them (thus bruising) promotes turning them into discards by future handlers. So out the door they go into the garbage pile.
I can't think of a good way to end this. Except with a period.
The combination of poor economy, food waste due to the reasons you note, and a growing interest in self sufficiency and recyling have been fueling the ranks of "dumpster divers". Google the term and see what you find!
ReplyDeleteThere was a guy on the show whom they interviewed who claimed to be a "dumpster diver" and he showed them all the good places to go for good "diving". But it would take a lot of divers to absorb all the waste that was illustrated, not to mention what other consequences would occur if all of us haunted the back doors of local restaurants.
ReplyDeleteI shall think twice, however, about manhandling the produce set out at my local Safeway so as to avoid bruising.