by Dan Masterton
It's narrated by the late Anthony Bourdain, who openly derides advocacy and trendy movements while admitting that his culinary background nonetheless insists on minimizing wastefulness.
The documentary follows a few different movements of food waste and diversion, from local grocery ideals to bread waste and brewing to overfishing and more.
Here's a few takeaways from this idiot:
Much comes down to branding, semantics, and aesthetics.
Things like bouillabaisse (damaged, unsellable fish turned into a stew) and prosciutto di Parma (waste meat from the pig) could have been waste items but became desirable, sought-after menu items when prepared and marketed carefully! We are often intimidated by foods that look or sound unappealing and may or may not ever try tasting them to see how delicious they can be.
Moreover, a limited imagination around use of produce impacts what we use and what we waste. For example, a cauliflower is almost half leaves, and those leaves are pruned away in harvest and delivery, and then rarely eaten. When it comes to animals, we think "nose to tail" and celebrate using all the elements of many slaughtered animals, but we don't necessarily apply this thinking to produce.
Restaurants, grocery stores, and people along the supply chain establish unnecessary discriminating standards for the appearance or utility of food. It leads to unnecessarily low amounts of produce reaching people's kitchens and tables.
I'm a pretty simple shopper, and the amount of produce we consume in our house is not too extensive. But I'm kind of curious what additional parts of produce and meats that I already enjoy might indeed be tastier than I ever thought.
Food is produced and consumed in a global market.
While it might not be efficient or wise to overproduce intentionally and export certain foods from places like the US, it is true that a global market is completely interconnected. When we overproduce, overconsume, and overwaste our food in the US, there is a net negative in other places in the world.
One idea is "Daily Table." They get excess from grocery stores, food pantries, and other places that may discard it in ways as preposterous as just chucking a bunch of edible, decent food into dumpsters. Instead, DT will sell the food in pop-up type storefronts along public transit routes in places that may otherwise be food deserts. They try to get smaller amounts and sell it all the way through rather than ordering and stocking perennial excess of fixed items.
Mainstream grocery stores meanwhile are angling on maximum consumption, putting out more food than customers could ever use and eat. Their success largely hinges on getting people to buy as much as they can. Additionally, stores discard shelf-stable items whose "use by" or "best by" dates stamped by manufacturers have passed, with most folks assuming that it's now dangerous to cook or consume. While this is true for raw meats and dairy and some other perishable items, it's better to simply use a "smell test" and look closely at items, rather than focusing on these dates that try to fuel sell-through and stock turnover along the supply chain.
I have to say that the push for quantity and volume is overwhelming. Over time, I have definitely identified the items my family burns through more steadily and set those as the few things that I'll buy in larger quantities (whether bigger containers at Meijer or a Costco allotment) or with greater frequency. Otherwise, I try to steer clear. One way that's helped me is shopping twice a week in smaller trips rather than trying to do one big trip every 7-10 days. It lets me aim to buy less, buy fresh, and think shorter-term about what will definitely get used at a definite moment or meal.
The food use pyramid provides basic, overall guidance on minimizing waste.
It's an elegant concept to help us think clearly and simply about how to utilize food components.
It starts with reducing production to levels closer to actual consumption rather than focused solely on capitalistic, profit-focused pathways. Then, surplus is directed toward those experiencing hunger, perhaps by funneling food to them at discounts or in free distributions. Scraps then should be used to feed livestock (this doc has an awesome journey through eco-feed production in the island-nation of Japan). What can't feed people or animals then ought to become part of rendering or energy creation in industries. Finally, otherwise unusable scraps ought to be composted, whether in your backyard or through municipal or community programs. Only tiny fractions of our food should make it to landfills and incinerators.
I had somehow never seen this diagram before, but it's impeccable. It need not get more complicated than this! And it provides a basic road map for how to think about food and divert the components.
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