Waste not – Want not

I just read a study in the New York Times that reports Americans throw away 27% of all their food. That’s one pound a day for every person in the United States! Wow!

My first thought was that this is another selling point for my personal chef service. How many times so we go to the grocery store with great intentions to prepare healthy meals but due to our hectic schedules the food ends up sitting in our refrigerators until it wilts or rots and we end up tossing it in the trash? It is a valid reason to hire a personal chef.

But, I must confess though my family is also a major contributor. I’ve got three zucchini sitting on my counter right now that will end up in the trash because I never got around to cooking them and I should know better. It would have been very easy to grate the zucchini and put it in a freezer bag for future use but I just never got around to it. My boys are constantly opening a new box of cereal before finishing the already opened one. The old one goes stale and is tossed. I currently have 4 teenage boys living in my house and I am ashamed every time I see the accumulation of weekly trash bags we take out.

I am making the commitment today to stop wasting food. I will shop more carefully. No more impulse spending. I grew up with very little extras in my kitchen and I think I have an unhealthy psychological need to have my cabinets and refrigerator bursting with food. Plenty of people have self medicated with Shopping Therapy, mine just happens to come in the form of food.

Today I’m going to clean out my cabinets and prepare a box for Harvesters. If you click the link you will find a list of drop of locations. Another really awesome thing about Harvesters is their FOOD RESCUE program that will “rescue” food from restaurants or cafeterias. They will pick up food that has already been prepared but not served and give it to people that need it. How awesome is that?

With rising grocery prices and food pantries struggling to keep their shelves full we could really make a difference by shopping carefully and donating – not throwing away our excess. We are wasting more than 1/4 of all of our food while there are still children in America going to bed hungry. It’s shameful and I am embarrassed that I have been a contributor due to nothing but my own laziness. I am a true believer that when we know better we do better and now I know better!