Civil Eats

The holiday season is a time for gifts, decorations and lots and lots of food. As a result, it’s also a time of spectacular amounts of waste. In the United States, we generate an extra 5 million tons of household waste each year between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, including three times as much food waste as at other times of the year. When our total food waste adds up to 34 million tons each year, that equals a lot of food. With the holidays now upon us, the Worldwatch Institute offers 10 simple steps we all can take to help make this season less wasteful and more plentiful.

“Family, community, love, and gratitude are all unlimited resources,” says Worldwatch President Robert Engelman. “Unfortunately, food and the energy, water and other natural resources that go into producing food are not. The logical strategy is to let ourselves go in enjoying the unlimited conviviality and communion of the holidays, but to avoid wasting the limited resources. Even simple shifts toward sustainability—and reducing food waste is an easy one—can have major impacts when multiplied by millions of people.”  Read More

I’ve long believed that chefs can radically reduce food waste by planning better, prepping less food, and donating leftovers, in that order. Other strategies, such as “tray-less dining,” help in “all you care to eat” settings, such as college dining halls. I recently decided to put my beliefs to the test. In doing so, I realized the limitations of my good intentions and how tough it can sometimes be to put ideas into practice. Read More

American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food (and What We Can Do About It) is an odorous odyssey through our fouled-up food chain. From farm to market to plate to garbage can, journalist Jonathan Bloom exposes a culture that promotes a grotesque amount of waste. Read More

Throwing out suspicious food in our refrigerators is, for some, an inconsequential part of the day. But how many of us stop to think where this food actually goes? It doesn’t miraculously return to the land. Cities like San Francisco and Seattle, where city mandates and requirements have increased mindfulness surrounding food waste, rouse their residents to make composting a priority. The cost benefits to such a waste management initiative? There are many: People pay less for their garbage disposal, are incentivized to follow their city-wide programs, and ultimately help to decrease methane emission into our atmosphere, by allowing oxygen-reliant bacteria to digest organic compost material into water and carbon—as opposed decomposition into methane, which happens in the anaerobic environment of landfills.

But, because food waste is measurable at all levels of the food chain—production to consumer waste—the crucial question to consider is why we’re compelled to waste and what’s to be done to fix the crisis rather than compensate for it. Jonathan Bloom’s investigation into the topic is the subject of his new book American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food (and What We Can Do About It). In it, he seeks to understand the American sociology of waste as a result of our national food narrative, our opportunity waste and the landscape on which food has become devalued. When we evaluate the American habit of wasting food—a half of a billion pounds of food every day, 160 million dollars a year—the neglectful numbers become too large to ignore. Read More

The Cooking For Solutions event in Monterey always offers a dizzying array of well planned activities, all promoting that the public take a second to think about the issues that surround our current food system, particularly our seafood. But deeper into the layers of after-hours food galas, wine tasting tours, and celebrity chef demos is the Sustainable Foods Institute, two full days aimed at members of the media, brimming with information from the heavy hitters at the forefront of our food industry. At times mind numbing with content, this year’s packed agenda presented countless topics to report. After taking some time to absorb the speeches, presentations, panel discussions, and statistics, some re-occurring themes emerge, but mostly an overlying presence I just can’t shake is how much food waste occurs within all tenants of our food system, both in the ocean and on the land. Read More

Few things in life give me as much pleasure as clearing out the refrigerator and finding tasty dishes to make using just what I have on hand. I love the challenge of creating a resourceful meal and often stumble upon new flavor combinations because of my fierce determination to use up all of the perishables before they are relegated to the compost bin.  Sometimes, though, the great fridge sweep leads me back to classic dishes that are both simple and delicious. With some leftover chicken, summer’s preserved tomatoes, wilting spinach and a bag of masa (a pantry staple) I conveniently have all the fixings for enchiladas—a dish that is not only easy but feeds hungry friends on the fly as well. Read More

As we look to incorporate ways, as individuals, to live the change that many of us voted for, let’s start by thinking about Thanksgiving. Lately, I can’t stop obsessing about three timeless holiday classics which will surely be under consideration during this year’s meal: leftovers, the economy, and cranberry sauce. Read More

Food waste is everywhere you look (and it’s still there if you choose not to). Farmers decide to leave entire fields unharvested when the prices are unfavorable. Supermarkets toss produce that’s the wrong shape or slightly bruised. Diners leave behind half-eaten entrees. There’s probably wasted food lurking somewhere in your fridge. Read More

Rio Thomas is leading a small squad of volunteers through the damp, early morning fields of Alm Hill Farm at the outskirts of Bellingham, Washington. Their voices hushed by the gray sky overhead and limbs still stiff from sleep, this silent band treads carefully across rows of lettuce and strawberry beds before reaching their target – precisely lined-out rows of snap and snow peas with pods dangling loose and sassy like earrings from a gypsy’s ears. Thomas issues instructions to pick only the ripe pods, leave the young ones, and fill their harvest buckets at will. Read More