US wastes "27% of food available for consumption"
This NYT article on global food wastage is timely -- just as the food riots have begun to break out around the world -- and shocking. Makes me want to become a freegan.
Link, Link to Wasted Food blog (via Core77)
You’d never know it if you saw what was ending up in your landfill. As it turns out, Americans waste an astounding amount of food — an estimated 27 percent of the food available for consumption, according to a government study — and it happens at the supermarket, in restaurants and cafeterias and in your very own kitchen. It works out to about a pound of food every day for every American.Grocery stores discard products because of spoilage or minor cosmetic blemishes. Restaurants throw away what they don’t use. And consumers toss out everything from bananas that have turned brown to last week’s Chinese leftovers. In 1997, in one of the few studies of food waste, the Department of Agriculture estimated that two years before, 96.4 billion pounds of the 356 billion pounds of edible food in the United States was never eaten. Fresh produce, milk, grain products and sweeteners made up two-thirds of the waste. An update is under way.
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How about "all you can eat" deals where they won't allow the take-home of leftovers? I'm not talking about ordering a bunch of food and asking for it all to go...Sonny's Barbecue wouldn't even let me take home a potato and a few pieces of okra!
I imagine this will change. You'd be surprised what incentives hunger and poverty are. And America is about to re-learn the lessons of the great depression.
it's scary to think what the gluttonous pigs would look like if they ate the extra 27%
I believe the Second Harvest folks are attempting to recapture some of that wastage...
Greetings
The "Gluttonous Pigs" reminded me: saw a TV show (Dirty Jobs?!?) with a segment on a farmer near Las Vegas feeding his pigs the edible waste from the casino buffets. Some MN schools also feeding pigs the discards from their cafeterias.
Closing the loop...
I wonder what the actual efficiency numbers were a hundred years ago. Before widespread refrigeration, before cheap high speed transport, before preservatives, before safety laws and threats of litigation?
It might be that a very large amount has always been ultimately wasted and our sophisticated economic tools only now make it apparent.
http://freegan.info/
(thanks Cory)
Wonder if we'll see Vagabonds like the Baroque Cycle description?
Greetings Takuan,
Before refrigerators when houses had ice boxes, I suppose people shopped more often - the storag was tiny but I'm betting much meat and produce had to be "trimmed" before serving or was just tossed after going rotten..
Of course, how much food poisoning resulted, spices after all were used in the early days to hide the spoilage
Don't become a freegan.
Trading is the essence of being human.
what price health? I will accept a great deal of "waste" if I know the food I give my child is safe.
Not that I don't find food waste appalling (curry -> stock -> compost heap/sheep) but that old saw about "finish your dinner, there are children starving in Belgium" (WWI) doesn't accurately reflect the problems of food distribution.
Also, many times food shortages occur in areas of good fertility because there's a war raging and crops cannot be sown or harvested due to the dangers.
That being said, waste of any sort, food, fuel et cetera, is swinish and uncouth.
First: it´s just as bad to eat food that you don´t really need, when it just makes you fatter and sicker, wouldn´t you agree?
That said, eliminating food waste is all about matching supply to demand - real demand, not U.S. style overeating. 100 years ago, you would harvest the vegetables you needed (but of course potateos rotted in the cellars) and turn the butchered swine into food that would not rot: salted sausages, sausage of the blood, dried ham and so on.
Today, the simple challenge of cooking on the basis of the actual content of the fridge instead of buying new groceries is too much for many, I´m afraid.
That's ridiculous. Everyone knows Chinese leftovers are good for almost 2 weeks.
I sense a contest: Truthfully now: What is the longest time anyone has ever kept Chinese leftovers and lived? Re-cooking counts, not just nuking.
Most of what Americans eat is garbage anyway. That being said, I agree that it is not only just as bad to eat more than you need...it is worse! Obesity is a huge drain on our national (planetary) resources. I have a hard time coming to terms with the number of products that are marketed to diabetics. (NOTE: it is wonderful that there are healthy products available to help control blood sugar levels, that is not my point.) The idea that the market for these products is large enough to make their widespread advertising and prominent product placement in stores viable is something that I have a hard time wrapping my brain around.
#7 POSTED BY WARLORD , MAY 18, 2008 8:49 AM
Of course, how much food poisoning resulted, spices after all were used in the early days to hide the spoilage
In early days? It still happens today. And there's nothing wrong with it.
What amazes me is how much Americans are obsessed with "freshness" while not understanding the concept of what to do when food supposedly goes bad.
For example, tomatoes. If one is bruised and in a produce bin, it will most likely stay there until it's time to toss it. When in reality, if you're making a sauce or anything that requires a tomato be pummeled, it is perfectly fine. Use it in a soup.
And as someone who has only recently learned how to cook, I'm amazed at the obsession with getting "fresh" items for use in cooked meals. I think the best cooks out there learn to use all kinds of basic ingredients to their maximum potential. In fact that's the benefit of learning how to cook. Buy something to use for one thing, and then when it ages a bit learn how to use it in another day.
You know folks, soups are made in restaurants primarily to find a use for items that can't be sold/eaten as-is.
Does anyone know if there are any major food chains that recycle or redistribute their so-called "bad" food? I've passed by Starbucks at night in NYC and have often seen shopping bags neatly filled with salads and such that didn't sell from the day before; why aren't those donated to City Harvest (NYC food reclaimer)? I mean, Starbucks is all over the place.
I guess the homeless will have their personal counsel sue the donor
I've been living in an Anarchist community center as the sole tenant and kind of space watcherover for the past two months now. I moved out yesterday into a squat, but a forth of the space is rented by a freegan group who has a free bike workshop. Free Help, Free Parts, Free Bikes. They generally site 50% or more, as the statistic of wasted food.
Half of US food goes to waste (From Freegan.info)
This last week has marked the annual dumpster Christmas, when the students at NYU all bugger off for the summer and leave behind everything they could not shove in a suitcase, duffel bag, or in their cars. There will be a really really free market at St. Mark's Church soon, till then our pantries are filled with non-perishables till next year, my belly is filled with free beer, we got new TVs, new printers, new stereo equipment, food upon food and more food for the next few weeks till everything that can will go back, new rugs... you get the idea. We have an entire garage overflowing with this stuff.
I personally make sure to give away all the wasted food at my job, giving away free coffee that would otherwise be poured down the drain, reusing espresso grounds that overflow into a bin when I fill up the portafilter, give away the soup at night, the bread, the bagels.
I've been living off free dumpstered bagels and nuts for months.
My bike is a cannibal of old bike parts from the street.
I haven't read little brother yet but maybe in the sequel the kids become libertarian socialists.
A lot of restaurants would dearly LOVE to Second Harvest their stuff...however because this country loves to support their lawyers, they can't. If FancyPants Cafe donates the 40 gallons of soup to the soup kitchen, and one person gets sick, FancyPants Cafe goes out of business because they get sued.
It sucks...you should see the amount of food we wasted when I was in Culinary School...we couldn't even cook in our kitchens to take over to the shelter, we had to go there to cook.
There are food riots around the world, and still we waste.
Gosh I was a freegan and never even knew it.
"Does anyone know if there are any major food chains that recycle or redistribute their so-called "bad" food?"
Yes, that is what Second Harvest is. Though I am sure participation varies quite a bit from place to place. What I see the most are various breads, the ones that suburbia doesn't want like whole wheat, and also anything odd like gourmet foods or odd ethnic foods.
I agree with Technogeek. A lot has changed since 1995. Folks like Second Harvest and other food gathering places have really ramped up their sources and logistics to get this food used.
I worked at a Event Planning outfit in 2001 and even the excess food from events was sent to outfits like Second Harvest. You have to plan it in advance, but everything was taken care of by those people and the food went directly to people who could use it.
It's all very shocking, but given the articles focus on the sins of Americans, wouldn't it be more powerful to know how their 27% waste compares to the rest of the world? If, say, the EU countries average 10%, this is huge news. If they EU countries also average 27%, it's a different story with different implications.
-1 for sensationalism without documentation.
#15 Jack,
The reason that I don't pick the bruised food is because I'm not going to make a sauce out of it. Apples, tomatoes can be turned into a sauce, but right around the corner is the Ragu, Musselmann's, or a number of pie fillings. Unfortunately, apple sauce, spaghetti sauce and pies are not made like grandma used to make.
http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?id=b3bce9db-c788-46ee-9ee3-15ee80879e92
I've seen fast- food joints where the policy is to soak all the unused food so as to make it, if not inedible. certainly unpalateable. apparently this is done to prevent any chance of someone getting free food, either employee friends or homeless.
I know Japan composts huge amounts of good produce for minor visual imperfections. Remember when you walk by any fruit counter all those behind the perfect facade.
This is part of why I started a worm bin in my kitchen-- I felt guilty if I bought vegetables and didn't eat them or ate only part of them, but I'm trying to train myself to eat vegetables more often. The worms eat what I don't-- usually things like broccoli stalks, strawberry tops, and potato peels. In a while, I'll have compost to feed my pepper plants.
If you're having a banquet catered, you can often call a local shelter and they'll take any leftover food still in the catering dishes. My Tri-Beta initiation's leftover Italian went to the shelter, and they were happy to have it. I think that decreases the chances of litigation.
The figures in most of the developing world are much worse. India throws away well over half of its food. Takuan @5 hit the nail on the head: refrigeration and (gasp) plastic and other packaging keep rich countries' food fresher longer than anywhere else.
Of course, refrigeration etc. define what foods we eat. Storage has always defined our diets. The reason we eat grain is because it can be siloed. Potatoes conquered the world because they can be kept over a long winter. Apples ditto. Ham was developed as a method of preservation. Wine is preserved grapes, cider preserved apples, beer and Laphroiag are preserved barley. Today we think nothing of eating bananas in February, and we're minutes away from every cut of meat, every vegetable, regardless of season.
Modern food distribution in rich countries is a masterpiece of scientific and business logic. Waste in distribution is surely at an all-time low.
Throwing away excess PREPARED food is truly wasteful. But most food waste is stuff that's gone off. If you want to see food go off spectacularly, hit the tropics.
A few years ago I was in charge of vetting charities to receive donations from the employees' charitable donations fund at a large health insurance company. I corresponded with several organizations that provided food to shelters and disadvantaged people. They all told me that they would rather have donations of money rather than food. I recall the reasons being:
1) donated food requires labor for inspecting, sorting, storing.
2) spoilage
3) Inappropriate or unusable items donated
4) with cash they buy just what's needed, when needed, cheaply in bulk.
5) planning.
That year, Gleaners' Food Bank got a large donation from us because they made a great case for their efficiency.
I understand that Second Harvest is organized to move donated food to where it's needed and they do a good job at that, but if it wasn't for donated labor that would be a very inefficient way to get calories in people's bellies.
I recently read a stat that suggested "Americans consume 3770 calories per person per day, way more than the rest of the world". this from the people at VegSource.com (not sure where they got the info).
I realized this consumption was simply impossible, and suggested to my daughter that 1/4 to 1/3 of those calories were likely produced, shipped and purchased, but then tossed before being eaten.
seems i was right.
I reclaim food all the time. yesterday I was grocery shopping as a produce clerk was removing perfectly good red peppers from the display and throwing them into a compost box to make room for the next shipment. I asked her to make me a bag and put a fair price on it. she packaged 15 peppers and priced the bag at 99¢. I made stir-fry with them and will roast the rest for soup later today.
I actually don't have a problem with food being composted or fed to livestock, but a have a HUGE problem with the amount of fossil fuels that transported the food going to waste simply for cosmetic reasons.
The exact same could be said for regions that suffer through drought and then foolishly implement rationing rather than allowing water prices to reflect actual scarcity.
The lesson learned is the same as it ever was: if prices are manipulated and distorted to obfuscate the reality of scarcity and need, people will misallocate and malinvest their resources accordingly -- the consequence of which is increased waste and scarcity: a vicious cycle. This is the core principle of the economic calculation problem.
Down with garnish. Seriously.
27 (and others): Let's not forget about canning, drying, pickling, etc. which were commonly done with excess crops in days past. Not so much anymore.
More people should keep a few chickens,been done since the dawn of time,they love leftovers, most cities have a problem with keeping a few chickens though.
Laphroiag are preserved barley
Lies! Laphroiag is preserved peat bog.
- Don't buy food you don't like.
- Don't buy more food than you can eat before it spoils.
- Freeze anything that's going to be cooked anyway, like vegetables and meat. It won't spoil and you can use what you need, when you need it.
- Freeze some of your milk or buy smaller containers.
- Keep a few fruits on the counter so you'll see them and eat them; keep the rest in the fridge so they'll last longer.
- Bananas: buy some yellow and some green, so you'll have some now and some later.
- Keep dry goods (cereal, noodles, flour, nuts, raisins, sugar, etc.) in sealed jars or air-tight containers. That'll protect them from bugs and staleness.
- Keep opened jars and bottles of sauce and wet goods in the fridge. Some can last a year or more. Check the lids for mold, of course, and try not to open too much at once.
- Don't feed your kids or pets more than they can eat. Give them small meals and let them ask for more if they're still hungry. (My mom always, always gives the dogs too much...)
Food should operate on an as-needed basis. Grocery stores are basically overstocked. Can they seriously sell all the food they have? Because I've never seen them run out of more than one or two things at a time. Sure it's convenient that they have everything, all the time, but what's it costing us in waste?
#15 and #18 - I think there might be a bit of a misunderstanding / myth around the legal risks of donating food. It's understandable because of all the lawsuits we hear about in the media, but I believe that if a restaurant or grocery store is willing to follow certain rules, they can confidently donate food. They are protected by the Good Samaritan Act
I learned about this on wastedfood.com - check out this post for example: http://www.wastedfood.com/2008/02/18/corraling-food-donation-myths/
I do notice it includes spoilage in that estimate, perhaps the estimate should be revised to only calculate food fit for human consumption.
The homeless might be willing to eat anything but that doesn't mean you can give them rotting foodstuffs.
Also the problem with preventing waste is transportation logistics.
Town A might have too much food but getting it to Town B which hasn't enough would cost more than the value of the food and so it becomes cheaper to throw away the excess food.
That said I don't why supermarkets couldn't simply mark down the items with cosmetic blemishes to cut back on what they throw away.
Ah yes, the same old "Americans are wasteful pigs" argument again. That's crap. I worked in the food service industry for many years. Nobody I knew wanted to throw away the food. Most people are aware of the waste, and they hate it. #18 Legotech is exactly right. The reason why the restaurants, the warehouse grocery stores, the grocery stores, and etc don't put the food to good use is because they are forced to, for fear of being sued out of existance.
I have asked grocery produce managers to save me the sub-par veggies- they won't, and it kills them to throw it away, they say it. But they just can't! Same reason most dumpsters that I see are locked, is so no-one can dumpster dive, get sick from something, and sue them out of existence.
Everybody hates the situation as it is, everybody except the people who set up this situation. Who benefits? Nationally, who benefits from a nation where the citizens have lost control of how they get their food? Who benefits from a nation of citizens that have lost nearly every civil liberty they had? Who benefits, nationally, and globally? Start asking yourself these questions.
Don't buy more food than you can eat before it spoils.
If I run out of vegetables or fruit before my weekly grocery store run, I have to drive an extra five or ten miles. Nor can I predict spoilage. Even if I refrigerate everything, greens turn to dust in a couple of days when the humidity bottoms out. Grocery shopping can't be a science because the real world doesn't have controlled laboratory conditions.
This isn't anything new. 60 years ago, my grandfather used to have a pig farm in Secaucus, NJ. He and his brothers would run garbage trucks into NYC and collect restaurant garbage to feed to the pigs. Years later in the 1980s, he would "dumpster dive" at the local supermarket for extra edibles; he didn't need to (he was worth close to $1 million), but he had lived through the Great Depression and couldn't pass up the opportunity to get perfectly good food for free.
#1, With unemployment still under 5% and the "recession" not actually being a recession (no negative growth), I can safely say that Americans are not going to relearn what it is like to live through the Great Depression. If you think that the current mild economic down turn rates anything even close to the Great Depression, you need to find a history book.
I have two problems with this article. The first is the implication that US food wasted is out of whack. This number means extraordinarily little unless it is put in context of other places. Is this number high or low? Has superior storage methods resulted is less spoilage, or has greater wealth resulted in people more accepting of waste? We can't tell because meaningless statistics have been tossed around without any sort of context.
The second question one needs to ask, is how much is food consumption really effecting world price There is the implication here that it is food consumption that is causing prices to rise, but is this actually true? I would be willing to bet, but unlike in this article admit that I have no evidence, that the vast majority of the rise in food prices stems from energy prices combined with a series of crop failures that all lined up.
If you really want to point I finger, I would suggest pointing it at energy prices. High energy prices encourages converting food into fuel. Even more importantly, high energy prices make the cost of transporting and storing food rise. Toss in some failed crops through natural and human made disasters, tack on the cost of trade tariffs, and you have a recipe for high food prices.
There is a silver lining to all of this. These prices might force use to iron out some of the insanity in our agriculture policy. It is pretty hard to justify sugar tariffs in the US to protect the corn industry (corn syrup) when US corn prices are not only pissing off Americans, but having far greater negative effects on other countries (Mexico).
Rossindetroit: you are so right. You would not BELIEVE the crap people "donate" to nonprofits all the freaking time. We are frequently just a waystation to the landfill. Not just food, either; we receive "donations" of ripped, soiled clothing, children's car seats that are broken and thus illegal to use, "computers" that are covered in black gunk and fail POST, three-legged chairs, mattresses that look like people have bled to death on, etc. etc.
i've been a freegan for about 5 years. roadkill is another tasty way to reduce capitalist consumption. dumpstering large amounts of food has it's own challenges. big tomato scores become pasta sauce. bananas turn into bread. lots of fruit gets dehydrated. you can pickle damn near anything, though not all of it tastes so hot. often dumpster scores get split up and distributed to other punk/activist houses.
the vast majority, however, goes into big public meals at a nearby park where homeless folks hang out. food not bombs has been going steady here (EVERY sunday) for a little over 2 years, though it's been going on and off since the mid 90s. i like FnB because it sidesteps capitalism and gov't bureaucracy completely, and is really easy to replicate. the non-profit model has it's place, but why bother in situations when a decentralized, ungovernable solution is even easier?
also, a bit of personal bullshit - the freegan.info folks are lame. people have been doing this shit for a long time before they made a website and started giving tours. i don't have a problem with that aspect, but their vegan moralism has got to go. it's fucking silly. "yeah we want to reduce waste, but we're just gonna leave all the meat and cheese in the dumpster. it would be immoral to eat it!" please. i was a vegan until i started peeking in dumpsters and realized how stupid it is to place abstract value judgements on what is, essentially, a practical approach to reducing waste. if you don't wanna eat dumpster meat, fine, just don't waste my time proselytizing about it.
also, i just slept through food not bombs. i never said i was perfect.
actually, that's my only beef (pun intended) with freegan.info. other than that i pretty much live like them. though much more sedentary. and with a beautiful cantenna.
Where's the comparison to other countries or break it down by state or county. Not to mention time period! For all we know 27% is the absolute least amount of food that's ever been wasted in any time or place. This article is meaningless without some comparisons. "Waste" is relative.
It also fails to consider reality. If I'm eating and gaining weight I'm wasting food. If I'm eating in preparation for a marathon I'm wasting food. Are you saying all food should be distributed by the government by a personally designated amount so each person has just enough food to continue to exist and do their government assigned jobs? Preposterous nonsense. If I earned the money to buy my food and I choose to throw it in the garbage then that is my business. One could argue that food would go to waste if I didn't buy it, but at least by buying it the people who produced it got paid.
@38 - If your greens dry out or wilt, sometimes you can save them by cutting off the base and putting them in water, like flowers, in the fridge. This works really well for lettuce and celery. (It takes me a loooong time to go through celery.) The cells are basically still alive, just dormant from the cold and drying out from lack of water. You can rehydrate a lot of fruit and veggies by putting them in water a couple of hours before eating them, assuming they're just dry and not rotting.
Or you can just eat salad at the beginning of the week and cooked vegetables at the end.
I just took a second look at that chart and realized that was /month. Gawd. Even per year that seems excessive. Most of that *must* be pre-consumer waste. We eat meat almost daily and there's no way we throw out more than 1-2 lbs/month. We toss maybe 4L of milk a year. Could the waste be, I dunno, composted? Turned into ethanol? Burned for energy?
Antinuous, you can predict spoilage pretty well if you pay attention to your habits. Emma and I almost never have anything spoil: just plan your quantities and make good use of the fridge and the freezer--they are controlled environments. We make a grocery trip every eight days now, it seems, and usually calculate things so we'll run out of fresh fruits and vegetables on shopping day.
Stratosfyr, an addition to your note about mold: If you find mold on a lid or on part of a surface of, say, cheese, just remove the mold and use what's left. A little mold simply means that a little of the food should be composted or trashed.
Also, when it comes to judging what's bad, your nose may be more important than your eye: if something looks a little off, it may be fine, but if something smells a little off, you may want to get rid of it.
The people that are wasting food because they don't know how to can, or dehydrate, or re-use leftovers are the sheep of this nation. There has been several generations of effort devoted into turning this nation into a nation of mindless sheep. They spend their time reading People magazine and believing all the rhetoric (left, right, communist, vegan, Purpose-Driven, etc etc) that they are told. They do things like recycle because they think it is the moral thing to do to "save the earth", when in fact recycling harms the environment far more than a simple landfill would, and it is tremendously expensive, and the only reason it can go on at all is because the government spends millions of dollars in subsidies propping it up.
There's all kinds of rhetoric going on, from all sides. Few people are looking at the bigger picture. Rindan, you are 100% wrong when you say we aren't going to go through another depression. We are, and it's going to be worse than anything we've ever known in the history of this nation. It's going to start in September. You don't believe me? Look here: http://www.leap2020.eu/GEAB-N-18-is-available%21-Seven-sequences-of-the-impact-phase-of-the-global-systemic-crisis-2007-2009-_a999.html
Look here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aW9PulYpjGs
During the Great Depression, we had a nation of people who could make do for themselves, who were ashamed not to work, who knew how to can and dehydrate and use herbs, and make something out of nothing. Today most people we meet are absolutely clueless, they don't have the skills nor the character to make it. It's the people who read blogs like this, and who are the driving force behind MAKE magazine and the do-it-yourself revival, and folks that can think that have a shot at surviving.
People waste food in America because they are forced to, or because they are too brain-dead or hypnotized to care, or because they don't know any better, they are not awake. The food wasting isn't the problem, it is a symptom! We need to be looking at the bigger picture!
During the Great Depression, we had a nation of people who could make do for themselves, who were ashamed not to work, who knew how to can and dehydrate and use herbs, and make something out of nothing.
Except I don't want to live on goose grease and potato flakes. Dried herbs and canned greens lose much of their nutritional value and flavor. If you know a way to preserve arugula or maché, I'm all ears. For millennia, people ate only what could be easily preserved. I'm not willing to go back to that diet.
"The exact same could be said for regions that suffer through drought and then foolishly implement rationing rather than allowing water prices to reflect actual scarcity."
Because only the rich need water?
No Antinous, it's not like that. People in the Great Depression didn't live on goose grease and potato flakes! Hw slly! Tht nly gs t shw hw gnrnt mst ppl r tdy f th fd tht s rnd thm, nd hw t gt t.
I have no idea what mache is, but for arugula, you grow it! Of course, in a great depression, you won't be able to get a Big Mac. But there IS food in the wild, for those who know how to get it. People didn't eat "only what could be easily preserved", tht's slly. They ate wild greens, and other wild foods, and many, many things can be preserved. There are few foods that can't be preserved in some fashion. Y bvsly hv n d wht dt ndpndnt f th lcl grcry str nd pp-cltr trnds cn b lk.
Zuzu: I bet that is an awesome article, but it is only available to subscribers. Can you give us a rundown please?
This morning I threw away some leftover sandwich meat. It smelled fine, but I knew it was a week old and it looked a little 'slimy' to my recently-awoken brain.
I decided, as I always do, that saving $2 isn't worth even a 0.01% chance of spending the next two days explosively shitting out my insides. Further, food is as much about the mind as it is about the taste buds: I can't enjoy a sandwich if I know it was prepared with sketchy meat.
And so the food was wasted. I don't feel the least bit bad about it. I'm a rich (by global standards) north american making rational economic decisions, and those tell me not to care.
There's no moral crisis here. Nobody on this planet is starving because we waste too much food; they're starving because of the incompetence or malice of their governments.
Food is getting more expensive for the poor of the world not because we're wasting record amounts, but because natural gas derived fertilizer costs have doubled in a few years, as has the price of the fuel used to harvest, process, and transport it.
Water is a basic human right. It is a dire thing that it is being turned into a commodity. It is part of a vast plan, to control populaces by controlling their water supplies and other basic needs. That is why this depression is coming, it is a final step to controlling the populace of the United States. Food will be rationed, and hoarding will be punished. In the Philippines, hoarding is punishable by death.
I have no idea what maché is, but for arugula, you grow it!
And for the billions of people who live in densely packed cities? Or the ones with a really short growing season due to living in Siberia or Saudi Arabia? They only get fresh produce for a couple of months out of the year? Your advice would be great, if I lived in Rivendell, but I don't. Also, calling people 'brain-dead', 'hypnotized', 'silly' and 'ignorant' is not a very effective way to win converts.
@51, 53: you're high. All you hippies foraging in the woods are going to starve come winter. I DO know a great deal about the food history of the US, and other places, and the scenario you describe is pure fantasy, as is your grasp of people's motives. "Vast plan", uh huh. Sky's falling too, any minute now.
Food waste happens on all levels of the food distribution chain, from the field to the fork.
However, one of the most notable points of waste is within distribution centers and supermarkets. And the reason isn't a concern about freshness, health, lawsuits, or any of the excuses that have been brought up here.
It's about shelf space. A huge-scale, industrialized food distribution chain makes shelf space very valuable. If a new shipment of apples comes in before the old ones are sold or shipped off, what are you going to do? You only have so much space to store apples, and you're certainly not going to keep the older batch at the expense of the newer ones.
So you pitch the older ones, even though they're still in their prime, still perfectly healthy, attractive, etc. It's simply too /expensive/ not to throw them away, because the shelf space is more valuable than the food itself. The cheapest option is to waste, and so it happens constantly.
This is what happens when huge-scale capitalism intersects with food. Ironically, this supposedly super-efficient free market system actually incentivizes waste.
But huge-scale capitalism operates on a style of tight distribution that was impossible just a couple of decades ago, so gross overshipments of the kind you describe are much less likely than before, not more. Companies can't afford to chuck their inventory in the trash. Those apples are dollars, and there are hugely complex systems in place to ensure that they don't get throw out.
I seem to recall a few years back during the dot-com bust when all these grocery distribution websites popped up, and they were surprised to see just how clever their professional competition was. Like most people -- like most people here in fact -- they assume that grocery stores are run the same way great-grandpa's mercantile was back in 1913, and they'd be easy to supplant with their whiz-bang Flash applications. But no.
@ Fnarf: I'm not high, I've never used illegal drugs in my life. I hate pot, nd ht pthds, nd ll thr drgs nd drggs. ht hpps, t.
I know good & well what it would take to survive in the wilderness, or survive if the economy collapses. hv th strng flng tht y dn't hv cl, nd tht f th lctrcty wnt t fr tw wks nd thr wr sm srt f ntrl dsstr lk Ktrn (fr xmpl,) y'd b p th crk wtht pddl, dpndnt n hndts nd th gvrnmnt fr yr nds. Fnny, cn't sy th sm fr m nd my hshld.
Don't believe me, I don't care. Go ahead and laugh. We will all know one way or another by this time next year, probably sooner.
The contention made by Kevin Phillips is that over the past 25 years, the calculations for the leading economic indicators, specifically CPI (consumer price index), the GDP, and the unemployment rate have been tweaked in order "to create a false sense of economic achievement and rectitude, allowing us to maintain artificially low interest rates, massive government borrowing, and a dangerous reliance on mortgages and financial debt even as real economic growth has been slower than claimed." Phillips does not lay the blame at any particular political faction, stating that this process was abetted by Republicans and Democrats alike in an effort not to rock the boat.
Consumer Price Index
- Nixon: Separated "core" inflation rate from the headline inflation rate. Core inflation excludes food and energy prices.
- Reagan: Substituted housing prices with "owner equivalent rent" in calculation of CPI, masking high housing prices.
- Bush I: Proposed new calculations for inflation to lower inflation numbers
- Clinton: Implemented Bush's proposals.
- Bush II: Created experimental CPI calculations that resulted in even lower figures. Stopped publishing M-3 money supply numbers, which captured rising inflationary impetus from bank credit activity.
GNP/GDP
- Johnson: Created the "unified budget" which combined Social Security with other federal outlays to mask deficits.
Unemployment Rates
- Kennedy: Re-categorized people who have given up on looking for jobs as "discouraged workers" rather than "unemployed".
- Nixon: Unsuccessfully requested that the Labor Dept publish only the lowest of the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate and the un-adjusted rate.
- Reagan: Categorized military personnel as "employed" instead of "outside the labor force".
- Clinton: Excluded discouraged workers from calculation of the overall workforce. Decreased monthly household economic sampling from 60,000 to 50,000. a disproportionate of those excluded were from the inner cities.
If the economic indicators were to be calculated based upon the criteria from 25 years ago, they would be as follows:
Unemployment Rate: 9 to 12 percent
Inflation: 7-10
Economic Growth: little economic growth since 2001
Some very disturbing and sobering figures.
Anything scarce and rival and fungible is a commodity. This includes potable water.Prices are simply the emergent signals between peer-to-peer market actors used to coordinate their mutual exchange of resources for the mitigation of scarcity; without prices people cannot coordinate amongst themselves.
Just because we believe everyone ought to have clean drinking water doesn't help everyone actually have clean drinking water. (i.e. the difference between prescription and description; or between normative analysis and positive analysis respectively.)
What does help everyone to get clean drinking water is high signal-to-noise and low latency communication between people to mutually coordinate the use of a scarce resource -- i.e. price signals.
@#54, Antinous:
Yes the people that live in the cities would be in a very bad spot. They would have to find other ways to take care of themselves. It's going to be very, very bad.
s fr mkng prsnl rmrks- t's th trth. mrc s cltr s flld wth hypntzd, brn-dd ppl. Hw wll t hlp f sftn th trth nd sy tht s jst s gd s B, nd tht rlly ll pnts f vw r ql, nd tht ntllctlly brn-dd s jst s gd s wk nd wr? Tht's crp.
And I'm not looking to get converts. I quit that a long time ago, when I found that the truth is too hard and too precious to give to idiots, that people who need the truth but won't accept it will only beat you over the head when you give it, and that the people that will accept the truth will find it for themselves without my trying to "convert" them. All I'm doing is speaking my opinion, nothing more. If you don't like it, I don't care, you're dead anyways.
#27 & #40 - thank you for supplying some logic to the debate.
@Zuzu- Thank you for the article rundown & link. I'm going to read that over & digest it better. Thanks!
I think most people waste food because their lives demand too much attention and work in too little time. Most I know don't get "enough" sleep, how can they put even more time into precisely managing their food? The largest part of the waste comes as a byproduct of convenience.
Regarding a economic depression: what are the potential economic consequences - intended or not - of an attack by the USA on Iran that sets the mid-east ablaze? An old and true saying: "The people are three meals away from revolution".
On another note, a shift in public opinion that food self-sufficiency is desirable and inevitable and above all now "normal" (rather than the province of survivalists and Mormons)might see all those silly urban/suburban lawns turned to crops. It's fun to grow your own food to some extent so long as it isn't total necessity, ie: "work". Perhaps I'll put the front yard to corn this year.
Rindan
#1, With unemployment still under 5% and the "recession" not actually being a recession (no negative growth), I can safely say that Americans are not going to relearn what it is like to live through the Great Depression. If you think that the current mild economic down turn rates anything even close to the Great Depression, you need to find a history book.
Yes, yes, now go back to sleep. I'm sorry I disturbed you. You do know that governments lie don't you? True unemployment is over 8%. And if you think this is a "mild economic down turn" you're delusional. Current predictions are that the subprime meltdown will increase the ranks of the homeless by 25%. Bernake is bailing the water out of his tiny little boat like mad but it will not save him, or us. We are headed for a very hard recession, the possibility of a severe and global depression is real.
If Cheney manages to attack Iran then I guarantee a deep, global depression far worse than the great depression. Oil will spike to 200$ a barrel and never look back, gas will hit 10$ a gallon easy. Knowing that everything you do and everything you eat revolves around cheap oil just imagine what your life will be like. Now imagine what it will be like for your children.
Go back to sleep, American Idol is on.
@58, gee, you just threw out your only good excuse!
Seriously, if you think the whole world is going to collapse any minute now, what makes you think you're going to be able to run out and forage in the woods? If you're even slightly successful, what's to stop bad guys with heavy artillery taking it all away from you almost immediately?
Do us all a favor, though, and don't mistake the UPS dude for the apocalypse like some of your predecessors.
Survivalists calling everyone else idiots have a piss-poor track record in the real world, you know. People have been making your argument -- world ending Thursday!!! -- for AT LEAST 200 years in this country. It's something of a national trait. You're as wrong as the rest of them, and I don't need to wait til "next year or sooner".
but, but if there were a global depression, people like cheney and bush who are already wealthy would become obscenely wealthy! Surely they think of the nation first!?
@#64, Noen:
EXACTLY!!!
I smell jealousy from the whole world :D. And paranoia...
These people talking probably haven't stepped foot in the U.S., but think they know what's what? Nice...
Doesn't this put the lie to the whole "biofuels are taking the food of our plates" scare?
It's essentially a "boom-bust" business cycle where all of the "boom" is malinvested in death and destruction; and we've barely seen the tip of the iceberg of this "bust" correction. Remember the stagflation caused by Nixon completely abandoning the pretense of the Bretton Woods gold standard in order to "afford" the Vietnam War? This is worse.
jealousy? of what pray tell? (be careful)
@#65 Fnarf:
#1, What makes me think I can just run out to the woods & survive? Because I know my surroundings, I know what is in my area, and I know my skills and my supplies.
#2, I don't own a gun, don't believe in using them myself, and won't get one, ever. I have many reasons for that. What's to prevent someone from taking away what I have? Nothing but God. But, that falls under the category of "truths I don't hand out to people who will just mock them."
My my, jst dn't sm t ft n yr lttl bx, d ? 'm nt hpp, nt hgh, nd nt gn-ttng nt! Gt ny mr stpd lbls?
#2, If different groups that you care to label "survivalist" have been saying the same things for 200 years (which I highly doubt, I think you're making a stupid generalization), what does that have to do with me? I'm not them. All I'm doing is adding up the evidence of what is going on around me, and saying that the economy is about to collapse, and this nation is filled with ill-prepared sheeples that won't be able to cope, etc. I'm not the only one saying it. I didn't say the world is ending "Thursday-" you're generalizing and trivializing, and you're not even bothering to take in what I'm saying. Y'r jst trll!
@noen & Lilorfnannie
Glad to see there are other reasonable people out there who understand the truth: This has all been a plot by the Germans since before the world wars... Their insidious Haber–Bosch process that we've all become dependent on has caused nearly 100 years of prosperity all over the world... but they've been planning on that.. they're now leading the world in solar & wind energy and in 100-200 years when oil & natural gas starts to run out they'll control the world!!
Isn't there maybe, just possibly, a middle ground between throwing away good food and being forced to eat noisome offal? I'm just sayin'.
Nice try "spoon" but I wasn't born yesterday.
ya know, less baiting makes less anger makes better conversation.
It all goes to intent, your honor.
Spoon
You are misreading me and injecting a bit of your own issues into what I say. Please note that I make use of words like "if" and "possibilty". Words that Lilorfnannie does not use.
Lilorfnannie
I'm not in your camp, you sound a bit shrill to me. I'm saying there is a possibility of Very Bad Things happening but you sound to like you're saying it's a done deal and also some kind of conspiracy.
I live in urban Minneapolis, I live on disability. If things really get as bad as you say I'm dead meat aren't I?
There are economists I trust a whole lot more than that GEAB site you link to. They are making dire warning but are no where near as shrill as you sound. You are just this side of Alex Jones which makes me doubt the veracity of your sources.
Again, I think we're headed for a deep recession. I think the possibility of a severe depression is high but not certain.
there's a question: do we have a duty to make our intent plain?
Now that you mention it, how much bait are we wasting?
I know we're burnin' daylight at this point...
speaking as a past master baiter, how much you want to bet that if bad economic times come, all of a sudden, rules against distributing perfectly good food will fade away?
You call it bait, we call it sushi.
leave my family out of this. Damn, have to go dig a hole.
later
@ Noen:
Fair enough. I respect that, I respect your opinion. And yes, you would do well to get some measure of independence because it will be very very bad for you, I'm sorry. :-(
I don't appreciate being called "shrill" though, it's a rather typical label for a woman that has something to say. Very annoying. People seldom listen to a woman when she has something important, but unpopular, to say.
I don't know who Alex Jones is.
Yes I use definite words, saying it "will" happen. I have my reasons for thinking so. I agree with Naomi Wolf's message in "The End of America" completely, except for I am not as optimistic as her about this ship getting turned around. I 100% do not believe it is going to happen, for many reasons that I did not mention here. But I applaud her courage in trying.
You people are so funny.
I agree with most everyone's posts, but few have really explained why it happens. It is society...bigger faster, better, ect..
My parents have a vegetable garden, right now they have about 75 tomato plants. That'll probably yield upwards of 35-50 gallons of tomatoes. They eat a lot all summer long, give them away to neighbors and can the rest. Anyone who believes the bland worthless vegetables you buy in the grocery store are "real" you are fooling yourself. As far as I'm concerned you might as well give me genetically modified food if it can taste better than the real thing trucked half way around the world. NOTHING compares to a fresh off the vine fruit or vegetable. If you haven't grown it and eaten it, then you truly do not know what it really tastes like. I'm not vegan/fregan or any of that crap. I just like good food.
And what goes bad in the field? It gets thrown back into the field and becomes compost for next year. Is that waste? Is that bad? Sure if I order a large pizza eat one slice and throw the rest away, that's bad and wasteful. But there will always be some waste. Anything less than 5% would be amazing to me. (in terms of full life cycle, field to store to plate to trash).
Lilorfnannie
If different groups that you care to label "survivalist" have been saying the same things for 200 years (which I highly doubt, I think you're making a stupid generalization), what does that have to do with me? I'm not them. All I'm doing is adding up the evidence of what is going on around me, and saying that the economy is about to collapse, and this nation is filled with ill-prepared sheeples that won't be able to cope, etc.
Maybe not 200 years but 20 for sure. People have been saying exactly what you've just said for a long time. Fnarf is making some good points.
Of course he could be wrong, so could you. We could all be wrong. You know why? Because we just don't know, that's why. "Adding up evidence" from something you found on the internet just isn't the same as knowing. If that were true then the Reptilian mothership should be landing any minute now.
On the other hand if I had like, actual money I would be buying land, mostly because I like that kind of life style. If I had money I'd be trying to create options for myself just in case. But I don't and like I said, if the worst comes to pass I'm f*cked.
But as Takuan once said, there'll be plenty of meat walking on the sidewalks so there's always that ya know. Maybe we should share some recipes.
I don't appreciate being called "shrill" though, it's a rather typical label for a woman that has something to say.
You've been called shrill because your comments are insulting, not because you're a woman.
#51 "People in the Great Depression didn't live on goose grease and potato flakes!"
No, we rubbed goose grease on our boney little chests to fight off colds, and we ate potato soup with lots of dumplings. We also helped weed the garden, and we stayed out of the kitchen and off the back porch on canning days. There were chickens too....
You're going to love it
I was totally getting my food ideas from The Little Rascals.
Little Orphan Annie
I don't appreciate being called "shrill" though
I get the phrase from Brad DeLong, he has a blog called Shrillblog where he recounts the silliness of todays political landscape. Claiming the world will be plunged into a deep depression in Sept. counts as shrill. Even if you're right.
I don't know who Alex Jones is.
Google is your friend.
Also good economic blogs:
The Bonddad Blog
http://www.bonddad.blogspot.com/
Economist's View
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/
Paul Krugman
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/
All guaranteed Not Shrill. Amazingly, none require a paid subscription either.
procrastination, procrastination
Is makin' me late
Is keepin' me waitin'......
funny how reading and posting here is so much more appealing than finishing that fence....
I grew up with a vegetable garden, dude (also chickens, cows, sheep, etc...). It's not much different than what you get from the store. Don't believe the hype!
depends on the store. I'll agree somethings average out but the few really tasty exceptions make it worth it.
just thought about what I'll eat over the weekend.
Sources of it: Asia, Europe, North,Central and South America, Africa... maybe just traces of spices for some of those but in terms of variety: I eat better than any emperor in human history.
Now looking at what I could get grown locally and in season.
Whimper.
just thought about what I'll eat over the weekend.
Sources of it: Asia, Europe, North,Central and South America, Africa... maybe just traces of spices for some of those but in terms of variety: I eat better than any emperor in human history.
Now looking at what I could get grown locally and in season.
Whimper.
The corn was my favorite. White, sweet corn that you can't find at Walmart!
Another anti-American guilt trip. Perhaps if Haiti, Bangladesh and Egypt had better economic policies and free-er markets, and their peoples were able to create wealth more efectively then there wouldn't be as much poverty and then maybe there wouldn't be riots.
It should be noted that the US is by far the largest contributor to the food aid program, with oil-rich Middle East countries (which are causing the problem in the first place) contributing almost zero.
The reason for high food prices is simply high energy prices. The solution is to break dependence on OPEC and to plant more, not less, Ethanol-producing crops. This would transfer wealth from oil-rich despots to third-world farmers and would stop the financial jihad.
The 27% waste figure is certainly overstated. Taking my own family as a minor example I don't see much waste at all. Any waste is most likely inedible skins, peels and a small amount of outdated food. In other words, the waste is not "food" at all.
Lilorfnannie, cut words like "hate" and "stupid" from your posts, and more people will listen to you.
On the list of useful economists on the web:
Robert Reich's Blog. Krugman has his moments, but he's your basic New York Times Democrat.
Antinuous, don't dis beans and rice--and especially wild rice, if you can get the native Canadian sort, not the boring Californian paddy-grown blend. Also, a pressure cooker is a very useful thing for folks who want to cook cheaply, quickly, and well.
This US food-bashing is getting ridiculous. Wasting 27% is not all that unheard of for a first-world country, especially the richest country in the world.
Get off of your computer and head down to the nearest bakery. Go right before it closes. Now watch as the employees throw away dozens of kilograms of bread.
Or go ask your local grocery store owner how much food they have to throw away because it's passed its sell-by date.
Now welcome to living in the top 5% of the world. This is reality.
The only viable alternatives to fossil fuels are: nuclear fission, solar thermal collectors, and deep-drilling geothermal.
Failure of most developing nations to develop can be attributed to some combination of the following: 1.) agricultural subsidies in the USA and EU undercutting global prices and precluding development of domestic infrastructure, 2.) concentration of power into corrupt autocratic regimes inherited from colonialism, 3.) economic sanctions and blockades, either by the UN or through the WTO quotasDear Masamune-san
But is it a desirable reality?
My nearest grocery store puts their meats on sale rather than throw them out when they go bad. It's usually less than half price.
They have the best meats of any grocery store in the area and getting them at half price is great.
Zuzu,
I've heard that before about Biofuel using up fossil fuels. Thanks for mentioning that its to produce fertilizer. That actually makes sense, although I'm skeptical.
Fertilizer is pretty easy to come by, I'm not sure fossil fuels need to be involved at all.
Do you have a source (reliable, not funded by the oil industry) for this info? I'm not married to Biofuels, I just haven't really seen anything credible against them.
Thanks!
@60 LilOrfnAnnie
Blockbuster just called. They said that if you'll bring back their copy of 12 Monkeys, they'll cut you a break on the late fee you still owe on Fight Club.
Food waste is frustrating and sad.
I DO prefer fresh food. And it is not easy to predict when food will spoil if you are buying it from certain supermarket chains. There's only one near me, pretty much all the greengrocers have closed down and the local farms have been sold and turned into residential developments... Oh, that's another direction entirely.
But the point is, this one supermarket chain sells produce that often rots within a day or two. It is a wonder how they do it, because it looks fine in the store. So I will hop in the car and drive to the natural market to buy fresh produce, but I can't do it every day. Wish there was a nice market within walking distance, but there ain't. Wish I lived in Cali where the produce is all gorgeous, but I don't.
To the fellow who only just learned to cook, but is telling us that spoiled food is fine, well I'm not accepting any dinner invitations from him. Seriously DO NOT FEED SPOILED FOOD TO CHILDREN. Young kids do not have the same tolerance for decaying food that adults have. Women, as a rule, have a much keener sense of smell than men do. There's a reason for this, it is called keeping your young alive.
To the fellow who grew up with gardens and says the difference between what you can grow at home and what you can buy at the store is hyped, I have three hypotheses: that your parents were lousy gardeners, that the stores you frequent are pretty high end, or that your senses of smell and taste are pretty feeble.
For all that we are throwing food away, there is plenty of food poisoning. According to the CDC, "While the food supply in the United States is one of the safest in the world, CDC estimates that 76 million people get sick, more than 300,000 are hospitalized, and 5,000 Americans die each year from foodborne illness. Preventing foodborne illness and death remains a major public health challenge."
Food poisoning is no joke. I had a run in with E. coli 0157:H7. It was mild, compared to what could have happened, but it is not an experience I care to repeat.
And for all the chest-beating about the dumpster diving life I'm reading here, everyone posting seems to manage to have a computer and access to the internet. So dumpster diving is not, for the posters here, a necessity, but a lifestyle statement.
If you dig it, knock yourself out. I've scavenged plenty of things that I use everyday from bulk trash. But I don't think that gives me the right to be high and mighty about it. Dumpster diving is not a moral high ground, it's just a less than conventional way of getting stuff.
5 worm bins here. Nothing goes to waste. Grow vegetables any way you can. I'm checking to see if I can have chickens.
True. What would probably kill me isn't so much E. coli, but the thought that after millions of years of human evolution, millions of years of my ancestors' clambering and clawing their way up the food chain, I'm the one that dropped the ball badly enough to be eating out of a dumpster.
I mean, couldn't you just die.
Food poisoning is no joke.
I had campylobacter. 106° fever. Probably got it from the hospital cafeteria. Just say no to rotting meat.
Lilorfnannie, there's nothing about your arguments that requires that they be presented in this rude, adversarial fashion. The simple-minded social stereotypes can also be dispensed with, as can your lack of respect for your fellow commenters.
sounds like the vegan conspiracy.
Dear Pipenta
Perhaps some here use web cafes, free public library or other in-common internet portals. It does not necessarily follow everyone here is well to do or even secure.
I had campylobacter.
Yeah, so did I, in 1992. No fun at all. I could have easily died from it. The fun part is, no one knows where I got it -- it incubates for a week or so. My guess is a greasy spoon in Providence, RI, but it could have been anywhere.
If you're really keen on recreating the conditions of a hundred years ago, I suggest you sit down and read a year's worth of a small town newspaper first. Say, Winona, MN, 1902. You might be surprised what people lived with.
So dumpster diving is not, for the posters here, a necessity, but a lifestyle statement.
Having been homeless it's not something I care to repeat but yes, necessity at times, though not always. The shelters had food and I was lucky to not be a drug user nor alcoholic so I could go to a dry shelter. Not that I'm judging, everyone's story is different.
As it is today I sometimes have to go to the food shelf though I try not to. Their stuff isn't all that great, it's mostly starch and canned goods and various gourmet or ethnic items the suburbs don't want. Choice is a privilege you know, or maybe you didn't. I can feed myself ok, not great but ok. But in a panic or a major depression I'm screwed. Maybe that's why I sometimes get emotionally hijacked around this issue. Sorry about that.
how many here would skip a meal every second day to afford web access? I'll go first: Hell yeah!
Warlord @8: Don't believe the story about spices being used to cover the flavor of spoiled food. Have you ever tried to do that? You can still tell it's spoiled. Millions of years of evolution have left us unable to ignore that particular set of signals.
Jack @15, you wouldn't want to loosen the food safety regulations for restaurants. However, having those laws in place means that food that hasn't been maintained in legally mandated conditions can't be given away. All you can do is package it in ways that make it easier for dumpster divers to get hold of it.
Squeeziecat @29, many of the groceries where I shop will have a rack in one corner full of downpriced older produce. I love it when they have a dozen containers of mushrooms that have been pulled for not being immaculately white any more. I take them home and cook them in a little butter, or just microwave them in their own juices, and can or freeze the results.
Zuzu @30:
In many parts of the world, for every percent rise in food costs, people starve to death. They don't have the luxury of keeping cognitive transaction costs around as pets.I see you weren't raised in a desert. Three days isn't enough time for the market to correct itself, but it is enough time to die of thirst. Also: if water is scarce and you don't ration it, people and crops will die. Even if the time required for the market to readjust were to human scale, which it isn't, market forces would be inadequate to address this problem. If water is scarce, letting its price rise doesn't make there be more water.You should see what food prices would look like if we priced water to reflect actual scarcity.
No. This isn't a small, tidy problem that yields to simple economic theories. How long does it take to reconfigure patterns of agriculture and animal husbandry? At least a year. Almost certainly more. And that's if the first idea you try turns out to be workable, and the years in which you try it have reasonably stable, predictable weather. Now add in the time it takes for markets and storage and distribution systems to readjust to the new inputs.How long does it take humans to starve to death? On no food at all, two or three weeks. What is wasted thereby? All the resources that have been expended to feed, clothe, transport, educate, train, and otherwise provide for said humans to date. What other damage is done? Starving humans are unproductive, they're prone to disease, they make short-sighted decisions, their long-term health and sanity may suffer, and they have less healthy children. Will an unregulated food market reflect these hidden costs? It will not.
Let me repeat what I've said before: the invisible hand of the market is not to human scale.
Belinda68 @35: I believe you're right about the lawsuits. Most "common knowledge" about the incidence of lawsuits is hogwash put about by corporate-funded "tort reform" disinformation campaigns.
Will @46: Antinous lives in an extremely dry area. Pray consider the possibility that he's telling the truth. Furthermore, if you're that good at exactly calculating times and amounts of food, where were you getting all that stuff that went into your compost heap in Minneapolis? It can't have all been yard waste; Emma kept a "to be composted" bin on the kitchen counter.
Lilorfnannie @47, 51: Where did you get hold of that amazing load of codswallop? Are you sure you're the only smart person here, and all the rest are sheep who've never, ever thought about this stuff?
A useful rule of thumb for online arguments: when someone says something that particular, consider it a strong possibility that they're referring to something specific.Potato flakes are cheap and filling, and in their dry form keep well. Goose grease is a butter substitute that keeps well, requires no special equipment to process or extract, and is available to the poor in regions where there are wild geese.
And you're the one lecturing us sheeple on the availability of food in the wild? In many parts of the country, mache and arugula are common weeds.Only in a very theoretical sense. The amount of wild acreage it takes to feed hunter-gatherers is very high, the calories expended finding food are a nontrivial consideration, and in some seasons there's almost nothing to be had no matter how hard you look. There's a reason our ancestors took up agriculture.Wrong. People who have to work for a living can't spend their days roaming the countryside in search of bits of wild salad greens -- and that's assuming they have access to countryside at all. Almost everything can be preserved in some fashion, but unless you're living on a well-furnished farm, many of those fashions will be unavailable to you.Speak sweetly to others. You never know when you'll have to eat your own words.Fnarf @55: He's no hippie. Other than that: what you said.
Zikzak @56: More people ought to listen to you.
Fnarf @57: Zikzak knows whereof. Supermarket shelf space is a tightly contested commodity.
Lilorfnannie again @58:
I don't think so. There are too many basic facts you've never heard of. I doubt you could cope at all.What I do think is that if we ever suffer a fast-moving catastrophe, it will be important for everyone with a lick of sense to stay away from the countryside for a few weeks, until the guys like you have cleared out. You aren't safe to be around.
Zuzu @59: Right. Because I always believe what I hear from Kevin Phillips.
Yes, they can. Cooperative water systems antedate the invention of currency, capitalism, and the market economy by a millennium or more.What helps everyone get clean drinking water are cooperatively built water systems. Someone who's thirsty doesn't need market signals to tell them that water is desirable, and no rise in the price of water has ever convinced people to do without it.Lilorfnannie @60:
Wipe the grin off your face. It's not going to happen. But if it does? Have fun out in the suburbs when the police stop patrolling.I got yer state of nature right here. Now pipe down and behave yourself.Oh, you headless chicken. You complete and utter fraud. You don't care, and that's why you've come to someone else's weblog, registered an account, and written your opinions (as forcefully as you could manage) in an open forum.Takuan @63:
The medium-range economic consequence is that our currency goes through a hyperinflation, then collapses. The longer we overspend, the less our dollars are worth.The immediate consequence of invading Iran is that all the other countries unfold their lawn chairs, bring out an ice chest full of cold drinks, and settle back to watch the show. It has the usual ending: a thoroughly traumatized minority of the invaders stagger back out again with nothing but the shirts on their backs. You think Russian geography fights on the side of the defenders? Russia gets conquered a lot oftener than Iran does.
Fnarf @65: (applause)
Noen @90: Now, Brad DeLong and Paul Krugman -- them I'll listen to.
Will Shetterly @98:
Will, you shouldn't say that. It'll make everyone think you're a crackpot.Fnarf @111: What did happen in Winona in 1902?
Takuan @113: Yes, of course I would.
I always thought that moderators should neither be seen nor heard. Hmm, a moderator who is willing to engage in discussion? Sounds dangerous to me. (But, then again, I expect moderators to be impartial and neutral... Ahh, silly me.)
Oops, let me amend that previous non-editable post:
"I always thought that moderators should neither be seen nor heard" except in postings, guidelines, or t&c's of *official, declared* policy.
where were you getting all that stuff that went into your compost heap in Minneapolis?
All that stuff? Though we've gotten more efficient in the last twelve years, even in those days, the composting tended to be things like the trimmed ends of asparagus and broccoli and mushrooms, which, yes, we could've made into soup if we were being super-efficient. The compost heap itself included leaves and weeds and branches, coffee grounds and grapefruit rinds and egg shells, and we never turned it for maximum efficiency--we just dumped things in there and let nature work--so the Minnesota heap must've seemed more impressive to a city dweller than it actually was.
I dunno about Antinuous's dry area, but Tucson's not exactly the rain forest. Out of curiosity, don't you have a compost bin? In Arizona, ours is more of a mummifying bin, but at least the coffee grounds aren't going into landfills. Do you use every bit of a carrot? Make decorations with corn cobs? I know Emma and I could be more efficient than we are, but we're really not nuts about this. Life's too short to be nuts about everything.
It'll make everyone think you're a crackpot.
Ah, I made my peace with that one a long, long time ago. If being to the left of Krugman makes me a crackpot, I'm looking forward to learning the secret handshake.
And Bush blames India and China for rising food prices.
http://www.merinews.com/catFull.jsp?articleID=133462&catID=1&category=World
I'm a reformed Dumpster Diver. It started when I was given two pigs. You always raise two pigs, not one. One pig will eat normally, two pigs will pig out. One aspect of DD is that it becomes addictive, the high point of the day. It's like every day is Christmas or your birthday. You have no idea what you will find. It might be 10 cases of yogurt, 5 frozen pizzas, 12 cases of beer, a case of top shelf spaghetti sauce with one broken bottle. Anything, in any quantity, may appear.
I moved to the inner city to remodel a home and took on a Caribbean room mate (we played rugby). He invited his less fortunate friends over and they left with armfuls of potato chips and candy and pizzas. Not healthful but who am I to judge someone (I wouldn't feed it to the pig!). After a while, I gave up the pet 600 pound country pig as I had too many irons in the fire. But I had a very, very, hard time passing a food store without taking a look out back. Most stores went to compactors so I was weaned off diving.
Will, you're missing Teresa's point. It's not that being to the left of Krugman makes you a crackpot. I'm probably to the left of Krugman. So's Teresa.
Statements like "Krugman...is your basic New York Times Democrat" make you look like a crackpot because they indicate very clearly that you're completely ignorant of the actual politics of the New York Times. To the extent that the New York Times has a discernable political center, it's well to the right of Paul Krugman. Your attempt at a zinger doesn't land a blow on Krugman or the Times, but it does make you look like one of those Birchers who used to dismiss Reagan as a communist.
There's nothing inherently virtuous about the political "center" and nothing per se wrong with having views that are at variance with it. But there's also nothing admirable about being ignorant of the political differences between various people and organizations nearer to the center. The rhetorical posture of "I'm so radical that all you other people look alike to me" is one of the ways that people of radical views needlessly cripple themselves. It's an excuse for not paying attention. You know better than that.
It's not the 27% wastage
It's the 80% of world resources you lot use.
In Minnesota, the compost heap composts you.
Zuzu, I owe you an apology for slighting Kevin Phillips. I was remembering his earlier work. Patrick has reminded me of Phillips' interesting later movement across the political spectrum; also, that he's the same Kevin Phillips who wrote The Cousins' War. I hereby formally smack my forehead. I'll have another look at that article.
MMBB, don't feel so bad about being unfamiliar with other models of moderation. "Live and learn" makes a good motto in online interactions.
Will Shetterly @119:
Actually, its total mass was probably less than the composting device I was then maintaining in my garden on Staten Island. As I believe we discussed at the time.An alternate translation of my remarks would be, "Will, it's one thing if you intend to sound that arrogant; but I fear you're doing it inadvertently."
Anonymous @120, I'm not sure where he thinks the opportunity lies. Our departed manufacturing base is not going to be selling them finished goods.
Fresh produce, milk, grain products and sweeteners made up two-thirds of the waste.
So we should be drinking spoiled milk and eating rotten grain and vegetables instead of throwing them out.
I'll pass.
Teresa,
While I appreciate that there is a large quantity of behind-the-scenes moderation on BB may I humbly suggest that, if you'd like to post a comment on a topic, you drop your position as Moderator. If you'd like to moderate, please drop your position as a poster.
You should realise that your position as a Moderator gives your posts have more power than the average BB poster and has a chilling effect on the discussion.
By commenting as a Moderator, especially in the long-form post in this discussion, you give the strong impression that you (and now it seems your husband) are the voice of Boing Boing (rather than the combined voice of all posters).
There is also the issue that if we challenge your opinions your power to edit, ban or disemvowell our opinions, skews the discussion unfairly to your worldview. This has happened quite a few times that I know of. You really shouldn't have it both ways.
oh oh sparkzilla, can I pull up a chair and watch as you attempt to school Teresa? I could use some entertainment right about now.
I have a not humble at all request that moderation discussion be done on the Moderation thread so kindly provided. It's there, talking here at length becomes threadjackery of the foulest degree.
Back to food waste; Error404: 80%? It is a disproportionate ratio, but I think you are in error here.
@127:
I dunno. Displays of pwnage like #116 attract and edify readers, if nothing else.
Not all restaurants discard unused food. In our town (Davis, California) most of the restaurant surplus is donated to the poor/homeless. (And it is not junk food!)
Even so, a lot of that goes to waste.
It is a travesty! Obesity (read excess) is waste.
Discarding food because it isn't pretty is also excess. I have no words to say how criminal this is.
[Didn't have time to read all the posts. Hope I have not been redundant here...]
Back on track:
Nothing too dramatic. My great-grandparents survived another harsh winter, when stored grain and potatoes and canned goods (my g-gf was a grocer) sustained them. In the summer they went on church picnics and played baseball. The overarching concern, as in all farm communities, was how big or small the harvest was going to be, and (as in all river communities) how high the river was, how thick the ice, and would the bridge stand up to it?
But farm life a hundred years ago was no picnic; nearly every day there's the story of someone getting maimed or killed by machinery or an animal or from cleaning their house with gasoline or wood smoke fumes in the house or a shotgun in the mouth or a snowdrift (my g-gf died in one, decades later, in Montana). Town life wasn't much easier, especially in the harsh winters.
Growing seasons are short.
People living today wouldn't like it much, I'm pretty sure. I'd love to time-travel back and see, but I wouldn't want to stay there. In Lilorfnannie's dream world, people live til about forty on average, and their work is hard, and most people live in a condition we would call "extreme poverty".
This should make everyone pause when considering the "bulk purchase" revolution of the likes of Costco, Sam's Club, and Wal-Mart.
Maybe 2 dozen jumbo eggs exceed your real need, and it's worth paying a little more to cut down quantity for quality and realtime need. Start making the retailers serve your real needs as consumers.
Then again, if you really are making a wedding cake every week, I applaud your masterful skills and patience!
Can't speak for other countries, but...
In the US, since roughly 1890, food distribution became [mechanized?] with the advent of trucks and planes. All that fueled an addiction to luxury foods, junk foods, and excess consumption. [You need only look at the ads from the various past decades to see the effect.]
We need -- now -- to OVERHAUL the entire mess.
I don't have any real answers as to how.
I'd like to see more urban bee-keeping.
"I'd like to see more urban bee-keeping."
Your wish is granted: http://www.nypost.com/seven/05192008/news/regionalnews/the_perfect_swarm_111498.htm
that's a relief!
Patrick @ 122, I was afraid we were going to have a disagreement about politics, but it seems to be about word use instead.
Uh, which does not make me more confidant! *g*
When I say "left of", I mean left of the boundaries set by the New York Times. You mean, if I read you correctly, left of its centrist-corporatist center, which is to the right of the US people. Krugman, as a New York Times liberal, is on the conservative side of the public.
At least, if my understanding of this country's political realities isn't entirely from Crackpotia, which it might be, of course. I like the polling data that says the US is to the left of Krugman and the DLC and the NY Times on issues like the war and universal health care, but what I see may be biased or misleading.
Am I wrong in thinking Krugman is the New York Times' leftmost boundary? Does the Times have regular columnists who could actually be called leftists? I haven't looked closely at the Times in years, so I may've missed something. Last I heard, they were busy hiring on the right to keep pushing their center that way.
Teresa, I'm going to have to spend a week monitoring our waste. I was just surprised when Antinuous said, "Nor can I predict spoilage. Even if I refrigerate everything, greens turn to dust in a couple of days when the humidity bottoms out. Grocery shopping can't be a science because the real world doesn't have controlled laboratory conditions."
In my experience, grocery shopping can be a science. Fridges and freezers are controlled laboratory conditions. During a typical week, I think what Emma and I discard in food fits in a two-quart container, and it's mostly coffee grounds and broccoli stalks, but I haven't been paying close attention.
And, oh, I know how I can lie to myself about things I don't pay attention to. So the compost monitoring begins today!
Call your local cooperative extension, every state university has one. ask the master gardeners what you can do to reduce food waste, community/school/hospital/etc. gardens need compost materials. They can usually also tell you where all the farmers markets are in your state. Buy local!
I've been using these vegetable storage bags in the fridge for about a year now, to keep veggies, especially greens, lasting longer. They really work:
http://www.reusablebags.com/store/evertfresh-green-bags-pack-medium-p-27.html
Rinse them out and they are reusable almost indefinately.
used them, they work, your link tells how:
"These ingenious green produce bags offer a natural way to absorb the enzyme producing gases that cause vegetables to deteriorate. Evert Fresh bags are made from low density polyethylene that is coated with a fine layer of natural clay containing high levels of a mineral proven to absorb ethylene gas. (When produce ripens it emits ethylene which speeds up the ripening / rotting process)."
they DO work
regarding spices for "bad" food, apart from masking stench - is it possible that the natural antibiotic effects of some herbs is at the figurative root of this?
Eat the fresh stuff first. Freeze or preserve what you don't eat. Grow a garden and form a relationship with your food. Individuals can make lots of changes to cut their food waste, like planning their meals & shopping. It's easy to point out someone else's waste. It's hard to make changes in your own habits.
The (German-owned, fairly downmarket) supermarket I used to shop at when I lived in a poor district of Edinburgh had a shelf along the wall, between the cash registers and the exit.
Food that was a day or two short of being out of date was placed there for customers to take home, for free. The pensioners tended to flock to the shop at the time that it would be set out. On a good day they could buy their bread and potatoes and get their meat for free.
I rarely took anything even when I was by at the right time. I'm rich*; it would be unfair.
----
* rich in the sense that never have I hungered that I did not have; but really, what better definition is there?
"Doesn't this put the lie to the whole "biofuels are taking the food of our plates" scare?"
Probably not. Biofuels (i.e. ethanol, et al.) are a new phenomenon. Wasting food is not.
------
"It's the 80% of world resources you lot use."
[Citation needed]
Tucson's not exactly the rain forest.
Palm Springs is in a different desert. To us, Tucson seems rainy and humid. The fridge can't really do anything about the humidity being 2%. It still gets air from the surrounding environment.
Antinuous, you're right--a very different set of challenges. Dried greens can make good soup, and you could bake with them, but that's all that occurs to me offhand. Do people experiment with keeping uncovered bowls of water in the fridge? Or is that just an invitation to mold or some other unpleasantness?
Makes me wonder if we'll ever get cheap fridges with humidity controls.
Your location has me thinking fondly of wind power and Joshua Tree Park now.
Dear Tak,
I've been broke. I've been hungry. Very.
I assume nothing.
I've gardened. Lots! But freeze and can everything? I didn't have a big freezer. And have you actually done any canning? That I have done. Then I discovered I could sell my surplus to a local independent grocer and convert the veggies into this stuff called money, which was much easier than canning and could then, at a later date, be converted into produce. Granted, that produce wasn't as nice as what I grew in my garden, but I generally liked it better than most of the stuff I'd canned.
Not better than my brandied peaches tho'. Those were wicked good.
Do people experiment with keeping uncovered bowls of water in the fridge?
I'll give it a try. I seem to remember Muad'dib saying that cold air takes up very little moisture, though.
#140 posted by martha_macarthur
But also be sure to not waste too much time/effort/gas moving the waste around as chemical fertilizer is much much better and probably a lot cheaper... Compost if you enjoy it (just like any thing else) but buy a few bucks worth of the good stuff if you really want your plants to grow.
Antinuous, have you seen clay water jugs that keep water cool via evaporation? I have a vague memory of seeing something similar for butter, maybe at a Ren Fest over a decade ago. Whether something along those lines would help with veggies in the desert, I dunno. Maybe misting them once in a while? It's an interesting problem. Apologies for assuming your circumstances were more common than they are!
http://www.globalenvision.org/library/7/1847/
pipenta@150: Then I discovered I could sell my surplus to a local independent grocer and convert the veggies into this stuff called money, which was much easier than canning and could then, at a later date, be converted into produce.
Tell me more about this "money" of which you spoke. We've heard tales of some who practice the dark arts of transmutation, but have no details. Does the grocer transmute your veggies into money for you? Could someone sufficiently trained in the arcane arts perform the transmutation himself?
mokey: I am the freegan.info people and we don't leave meat behind in the dumpster. A lot of the freegans are themselves vegans, though I am not and nor are a great many of the people whom they are acquainted with. We all eat from the same trough. I have 10 pounds of pork bratwurst that says otherwise to your claims.
Takuan for the win!
And it suggests something else that might work in Palm Springs: putting a damp cloth over vegetables in the crisper and spritzing that now and then. Turning a crisper into a bogger, I suppose.
Which got me googling crispers and humidity, and Refrigeration Tips: Keeping Vegetables Fresh was one of the first to turn up. If you asked me right now, I couldn't tell you whether our fridge's crispers have sliders to adjust for humidity, but I'll know shortly.
Chiming in with the chicken love here in Portland. Anything I don't eat either goes to the dogs (I feed them a homemade diet, so that reduces my dogfood costs) or to the chickens. Since the hens turn the waste into edible eggs I figure I come out ahead of the game.
#152 I'm not sure exactly what you mean by chemical fertilizers so I am replying blind.
Inorganic fertilizers are subject to leaching. Nitrogen is particularly susceptible to leaching. As well, chemical fertilizers can "burn" seedlings and young plants due to the presence of chemical salts within the commercial fertilizers. Overly heavy applications can build up toxic concentrations of salts in the soil and create chemical imbalances.
Organic material does more than provide organic nutrients. It also improves the soil structure and increases its ability to hold both water and nutrients. As microorganisms in the soil break down the organic material into an inorganic soluble form, a slow release of nutrients is provided over a longer period of time.
Heh...I just made 2 home made pizzas with home made half (organic) whole wheat, overnight risen crusts, topped with sauted peppers, onions and mushrooms and fresh mozzarella ladled over a home made sauce of long-simmered (canned) organic diced tomatoes seasoned with garlic and cognac. No waste here. Not one single, frakking crumb.
Buy somewhat less of the really, really, seriously good stuff and you won't waste anything.
@#159 posted by martha_macarthur , May 19, 2008 5:45 PM
Inorganic fertilizers work much much better though, one pound inorganic is better then 100 pounds of organic in growth potential. The leeching is an issue that we deal with because it's cheaper and uses less oil to deposit chemical fertilizer over crops then to use human/animal waste. Every hour spent maintaining a garden is an equivalent (assuming the gardener only make 20k a year) of $10 worth of labor... which doesn't sound so good when rice only costs $800 for a f'n metric ton. The short of it is that giant machines laying down chemicals (elements), and airplanes flying around to seed rice patties can -easily- do the work of 100 people, and unless you want everyone to go back to spending inordinate amounts of time on the land and constantly worrying about the next drought/famine which will end up killing a bunch of newborns here and there and skuttling the average human height down to 4'8" you should spend your time looking for industrial green practices and not wasting effort in wasteful homestead (read: archaic) practices
Organic nutrients like what? fertilizers are based on the three elements that are depleted when plants grow: nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus, the chemical fertilizers are based on ammonium nitrate/urea(organic) and potassium and phosphorus which is mined...
As a long aside: I help my grandparents with their quarter acer garden, and it's incredibly fulfilling work. I carry the organic waste up to the compost and help plant, weed, and pick their plants. It's very -very- enjoyable work (especially with family) and I recommend the hobby to anyone with a lot of time, patience, and determination, but I -know- that the majority of us would be completely unable to sustain themselves with the efficiency that giant machines have, and hundreds of thousands of workers specializing in all the different aspects of growing food... I would enjoy having a small garden myself, and have even toyed with the idea of doing the whole hydroponic thing in a closet while I'm still in an apartment (which could be used year after year with a real garden to start growing stuff indoors before planting outside) but I find it hard to believe that this would do anything but waste resources, I would do it for fun, for entertainment, I wouldn't delude myself into thinking that it would be good for the planet to something so horridly inefficiently.. I would only do it for my own personal satisfaction, and if I ever do it I'll know it was worth it, for me not the planet.
T J Bass, Half Past Human and The Godwhale...nebbishes
Inorganic fertilizers work much much better
A common misconception is that compostable materials are fertilizer. The bacteria that break down the compostables into compost need a huge amount of nitrogen to do it. So if, for instance, you were to just fold grass cuttings or chopped up leaves into your soil, you would actually be sucking nutrients out of it. Fertilizer is a must in the process.
#161
I find it ironic that you are concerned about babies dying and people being made shorter and then propose spraying petro-based chemicals from airplanes onto our food supply.
There are many options in agriculture even in mega-corp farm scenarios that are better than that. May I recommend the archives of UC Davis:
http://www.lib.ucdavis.edu/dept/bioag/research/bioag-lib-research.php
http://vric.ucdavis.edu/usesites/ressite.htm
They are forerunners in developing effective and safe IPM (integrated pest management). They also have excellent information regarding sustainability and I don't mean archaic homesteading, I was never referring to that.
Happy gardening!