Chapter 3 - Waste

Several years ago, the BBC had an article with a list of the most dumped (wasted) foods: bagged salads, bread, fruit, pasta, and cheese. It made me wonder what the most dumped foods in America were, and what the comparison was between American dumped foods and British dumped foods (and German and French and Italian and Spanish and assorted Asian and Australian....). In poor countries, the largest food waste comes during the production of food, but in countries like the US and Great Britain, it comes at the consumer stage - we buy food only to throw it away!
There is a difference between "food loss" and "food waste".

Food loss includes food that is converted from edible to inedible during the manufacturing process, thus reducing the edible food available (this includes contamination of food) or is diverted for non-food purposes, such as biofuels.

Food waste is when food prepared for human consumptions is thrown away at the production, retail, and consumer levels. The average household dumps 1/3 of the food it buys.

Food loss in the US, per person per year, is 410 pounds in food processing and 240 pounds in the home. Apples are the most wasted food in the home - people buy apples, then don't eat them. Granny smiths top the list of most wasted apple, making it the #1 most wasted food. Consider this the next time you buy apples. 15% of the food Americans buy find their way into the trash uneaten - and often, not even opened to be eaten - $43 billion of wasted food. Averaging the results of several surveys, 93% of American adults admit to buying food they then threw away uneaten.

Think about it. If we have time to watch TV, play computer games, or wait in lines for a Big Mac or a tub of KFC, we have plenty of time to plan our meals and reduce our food waste foot print. It is utterly shocking the amount of food thrown away in First World countries, when there are so many hungry people. Having a Resilient Permaculture Kitchen will alter that number downwards.

Having a properly set up kitchen will save time and, eventually, money, allowing you to eat healthy, plan meals quickly, reduce waste, have fewer leftovers, and use what leftovers you do have. Those of you who are going along on this should still be working on your inventories and food usage studies, and learning basic cooking skills if you don't already have them. Up next are examples of exactly what benefits you will get from a Resilient Permaculture Kitchen, along with some tips to consider as you work on your inventories and such.

Mind you, setting up this kind of kitchen is time and labor-intensive and may be somewhat expensive, especially if your primary kitchen equipment consists of a microwave, refrigerator, toaster, can opener, coffee maker, and blender; and your skills consist mostly of taking already-made-up dishes from the refrigerator and popping them into a microwave or toaster, and your blender is used to make frozen margaritas

Investing in your food education, your equipment, and determining what your favorite foods and combinations of foods are up front will save you a lot of time, frustration, and money for the rest of your life.

Doing all of this will help you when confronted by choices in the supermarket, saving you time when you go shopping. You won't have to stand in the aisles trying to decide if you like mango puree, nor will you be throwing it away if you remember after you get home with it that you never liked it. You'll have the skills to buy fresh fruits and vegetables at their peak, not spoiled or rotting ones, and not under ripe ones that will over ripen because you forgot about them: food you will just throw away. All of this will save you time in the store, money at the register, and reduce food wastage once you get home.

You'll probably join a CSA and pick up your food in minutes from a delivery site - getting fresh, local, healthy food from people you know - who will also share with you their meal planning tips based on the food in your delivery - saving you planning time.

Having spent the time to learn what your favorite foods and combination of foods are will reduce your planning time because you'll have an already made set of meals from which to choose. That set of meals will determine what foods you buy at the store or through the CSA or food coop - reducing shopping time and money at the register and food wastage at home. You'll know what meals you can have on the table in less than 10 minutes, what ones will take half an hour to make, and you'll know when to start longer meals so you can do other things during the waiting times. In short, you will have created your own personal family cook book.

The cooking skills you acquire will enhance the meals you prepare, allowing you to make better food you personally like in a shorter period of time, and with less waste. You may even be able to reduce the amount of leftovers you have. You can set aside one day a month to prepare the bulk of your entrees and can or freeze them so all you need to do is heat them later - fast, delicious, home-cooked meals, and thereby reduce your meal prep time throughout the month and provide you with meals to share with either unexpected guests or as gifts for rites of passage (such as a new baby) or ill friends who need some extra nutrition.

All the time, effort, and money you put into a Resilient Permaculture Kitchen will benefit you, your family, your friends, and your community because you'll be eating healthier, tastier food, buying less food, and producing less waste. Setting your kitchen up properly frees up your time for other things in your life, saves you money to spend in other areas, and feeds you better. Win-win, however you look at it. But - you have to invest the time into this project before you can take advantage of all the benefits it brings. In short, those benefits are: Saving money, less food wastage, better food, healthier meals, and faster meal preparation, and to some extent, disaster preparedness.

About Meat and Poultry

If you are Vegetarian or Vegan, you can skip this part.

For domesticated livestock, such as chickens, geese, buffalo, cow, rabbit, sheep and pig, buy from local farmers and ranchers because you will want to know how the animals were raised, what they were fed, and what medications they were given and why. Today, our meat comes in packaged potions and you cannot get that information off the labels. If you had the land you could raise your own chickens and geese, a couple of sheep, pigs, mini dairy cows just because then you would be in total control of you meat sources. Try as much as you can to not buy imported meat or poultry.

For ALL of your food, consider; Do you know the producer? - If yes, chances are you will buy from them before buying something trucked in from somewhere else.

Next, consider the season – is this food in season locally? If yes, buy local to encourage local farmers and ranchers. If no then ask yourself, do you really NEED it, or simply want it? Can you substitute something else?

Note: “U-Pick” places today are not like they used to be. Some years ago you’d go to a U-Pick farm and spend hours harvesting their crop and you’d get to keep – for your labor – 1/3 of what you harvested for free. They’d keep the other 2/3 to sell to people who didn’t want to pick the fruit or vegetables or nuts, or use the harvest to make canned goods or other products to sell.

Today at the local U-Picks, you pick the food, they weigh it and sort it, and let you have half of what you harvested at the going rate at a farmer’s market. It’s not worth it to spend the time harvesting if you only get to have half of what you harvested and still pay full price for it, so while the idea of U-Pick places is good, until they change back to their old practices, it really isn’t worth the work to frequent them. Just too expensive for what you get from them.

You should still buy from roadside farmer’s stands and the farmer’s market, There are foods there to buy locally and seasonally because the flavor is superior to anything imported. There may be other foods that you will want to buy that must be imported, such as Vidalia onions, peppercorns, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, macadamia nuts, coffee, black tea and that is okay if you are okay with that. Just keep in mind the costs.

But those costs can make you comfortable because by your doing so, you are supporting a global economy, helping establish fair trade and sustainable agriculture and animal husbandry practices throughout the world. A global economy is as important as buying local because it means raising the bottom level of the standard of living all around the world – and when that lower level rises, there will be more people who don’t have to worry about surviving today, they can instead focus on surviving tomorrow, next week, next century – and that is a Good Thing. It's something having a personal Resilient Permaculture Kitchen can help implement.

So buy your spices, coffee, and teas from ETHICAL importers, and your potatoes, peaches, plums, and meat locally, supporting both the local economy and a global economy that will, with persistence, pay off ecologically in the long run.

Grow as many herbs and vegetables as you can, because it's less expensive for you to do so, because it's tastier and faster to pluck your dinner as you walk in the door. As a suburbanite, it is important to integrate your political, spiritual, and practical philosophies in your life, and there is no better place to begin than in the kitchen.

End Chapter 3