Category Archives: Household

Mindless Wasting

I’ve been reading Mindless Eating, Brian Wansink’s fascinating book examining how and why many of our food decisions are subconscious ones. Wansink, director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab, studies the psychology of eating. I’d recommend perusing his past experiments at FoodPsychology.org. While his work focuses on getting people to eat less–a strategy I admire but […]

February 7, 2007 | Also posted in Restaurant | Comments closed

The task (force) begins

This past week marked the beginning of a new venture: the first meeting of the tentatively-named North Carolina Food Waste Task Force. The group stemmed from a food waste seminar organized by some folks at the N.C. Dept of Pollution Prevention and Environmental Assistance and the Carolina Composting Council. We met last Tuesday at the Inter-Faith […]

January 22, 2007 | Also posted in General, Restaurant, Supermarket | Comments closed

Sell-by Stuff II

Wasted Food reader Ed was curious about sell-by dates, so let’s talk a bit more about them. While it varies by store, most supermarkets pull items the night before or on the morning of the sell-by date. Lance Parchment, Whole Foods’ Southeast region prepared foods assistant coordinator told me they cull products the night before […]

January 4, 2007 | Also posted in Food Safety, Supermarket | Comments closed

Sell-by Stuff

Wasted Food reader Brian raises an interesting question: Is there a rule-of-thumb estimate for how long past the sell-by date items stay good? After looking through my interview with Angela Fraser, a food safety expert at N.C. State University, I can generalize that most foods are fine one week past the sell-by date.  Of course, this […]

January 2, 2007 | Also posted in Food Safety, Supermarket | Comments closed

Trimming Our Wastes

Happy New Year! With New Year’s resolutions flying left and right, the first of the year seems like an appropriate time to urge you to limit your household food waste. There’s plenty of room for improvement, about 25 percent of the food that enters our homes is thrown away uneaten (William Rathje, whose Garbage Project tallied Tucson trash, measured […]

January 1, 2007 | Also posted in Stats | Comments closed