After all of our holiday parties, I know that I find that we have a ton of food leftover. It makes you realize how much food we waste on a daily basis. According to the author of American Wasteland, we waste enough food each day to fill up the Rose Bowl. (If you have never seen the Rose Bowl, it seats 90,000 people. It is a fairy big stadium.) Not only is this wasting your hard earned money, it is also wasting energy! According to the University of Texas, Americans waste 2% of the annual energy consumption of the United States (which equals around 350 million barrels of oil every year). The question is how we can change this.
First of all, you need to plan ahead. You can choose if you want to plan a week ahead or a whole month. In your planning, make sure you plan for leftover days too! Now, once you know what you are eating, you can make a shopping list. Make sure that you check your refrigerator and cupboards before you leave, so you don’t pick up what you already have in your home. Also, by planning ahead, you know exactly what you need for the week and/or month. You will know if buying in bulk will actually save you money or if you’ll just end up throwing away what you don’t need. (However, if you have a big enough freezer, you can freeze what you don’t use for another meal.) You will also save yourself time and fuel but not having to make several trips to the grocery store to get what you need.
If you find that you have bought some things that are going bad on you, there are always secondary uses for them. For example, you can turn your old bread into croutons or even bread pudding. You can make a frittata with your unused vegetables. Just add the vegetables with eggs, cheese, and herbs. You can use any of your overripe berries, bananas, melons, or other fruit to make smoothies. (You can also freeze these overripe foods for later use too!). Some other items you can freeze instead of toss include extra waffles and pancakes, leftover coffee, and leftover chopped onions or peppers.
It is also very important to understand your food labels. The “use by” date indicates the last day an unopened item is at peak quality for taste, texture, nutritional value, etc. The “sell by” date is when a product should be removed from the shelves. According to ShelfLifeAdvice.com, the following food items are good for:
- Milk: If properly refrigerated, milk will remain safe, nutritious, and tasty for about a week after the sell-by date and will probably be safe to drink longer than that, though there’s a decline in nutritional value and taste.
- Cottage cheese: Pasteurized cottage cheese lasts for 10-14 days after the date on the carton.
- Mayonnaise: Unopened, refrigerated Kraft mayonnaise can be kept for 30 days after its expiration date or 3-4 months after opening.
- Yogurt: Yogurt will remain good 7-10 days after its sell-by date.
- Eggs: Properly refrigerated eggs should last at least 3-5 weeks after the sell-by date, according to Professor Joe Regenstein, a food scientist at Cornell University.
Hopefully, with a little extra thought, we can eliminate some of the extra waste coming out of our homes. Any unused nonperishable items that you’re not going to eat (such as an unopened box of granola bars) should be donated to a local food bank. If everyone in America followed these tips, just imagine how much food and fuel we’d save!
Make sure to visit Green Earth News’ Green Is Grand section for more on eco-friendly living!
Related posts:
{ 1 trackback }