Hospital Food Waste

hospital-food.JPGHospital food waste is a seldom discussed issue. More than most venues, some hospital waste is unavoidable. Many patients can’t eat or don’t have an appetite, for good reason. But still, hospital room service and cafeterias create plenty of avoidable food loss.

To cut waste, some hospitals are using the ValuWaste program. The system, produced by Portland’s LeanPath, Inc. allows hospitals to understand and then reduce their waste. While hospitals are figuring out how to be more effiicient, they are hiring companies like Washington, D.C.’s Envirelation and North Carolina’s Brooks Contractor to collect and compost their food waste.

U.S. hospital waste is rarely written about, but anything budget related in Britain’s publicly-funded health system receives plenty of press attention. This story in The Guardian reports that 1 in 10 hospital plates go untouched. And according to this piece, hospital food waste increased by roughly 20 percent from 2005 to 2006.

In this article, Conservative Party MP Stephen O’Brien charges that £34 million is lost due to wasted food while there was a 13 percent increase in the number of Britons leaving the hospital malnourished. Sure, there’s some politics being played by the opposition party, but the situation reminds me of how America wastes more than $100 billion of food while more than 30 million Americans don’t have enough to eat. 

 

August 9, 2007 | Posted in Institutional, International | Comments closed

Star Power

Wasted Food reader Brian recently commented that making food waste awareness trendy would really reduce squandering. In my mind, trendy = celebrities. As I mentioned in my response to that comment, I’m picturing Brad and Angelina leaving a restaurant with doggy bags as photographers snap away.

Barring that miracle, who else would take up this issue? We could probably get Ed Begley, Jr., but a little more star power wouldn’t hurt. Maybe Leonardo DiCaprio, seth-rogen.JPGwho sure acts like he cares about the environment, is our guy.

Seth Rogen, star of the hit movie “Knocked Up,” can be convinced? In a recent New York Times piece, Rogen and his Canadian compatriot Evan Goldberg, an Executive Producer of “Knocked Up,” were asked why there are so many funny Canadians. The conversation spilled into the differences between the U.S. and its northern neighbor: 

 GOLDBERG: Every Canadian just cannot believe the portions of food.
ROGEN: Oh, yeah, that’s another thing.
GOLDBERG: It’s the most astounding thing, it’s just double. It’s double what you should get.  

OK, so it’s really Goldberg, not Rogen, who makes the observation, but Rogen definitely agrees. It’s a start.                

August 8, 2007 | Posted in Restaurant | Comments closed

Nova Scotia News

A few blips from Nova Scotia crossed my desk last week. This article gave a behind-the-scenes look at fast food restaurants there. From reading it, I learned that the Canadian province has three distinct waste streams–trash, recyclables and organics.

Some restaurants may be scandalously combining the three, but at least it’s an exception to the rule. Way back in 1995, Nova Scotia barred food and other organics from landfills, effective as of November 30,1998. To enable food diversion, the Atlantic province provides centralized compost facilities, and more than 70 percent of Nova Scotians have curbside organic composting service.

In another article, Ralph Martin, the founder of the Organic Agricultural Centre of Canada, discussed abundance on Nova Scotian farms.

When it has come to food production in the past, farmers have focused too much on quantity, Martin said, which has resulted in over production. “It’s been leading to a lot of wasted food, in my opinion.”

Nova Scotian farmers, like their American counterparts, are literally growing food waste. Unlike the U.S., though, Nova Scotia has a system in place to prevent organics from reaching landfills.

August 7, 2007 | Posted in Farm, International, Waste Stream | Comments closed

The Weekly Waste Word

Here’s a new feature on Wasted Food. Barring any breaking news, I’ll post a quick tip or fact about home food waste every Monday.

This fact confirmed what I’d long feared–as much as 30 percent of the egg white stays with the egg shell. While I came across this message on a hint sheet for restaurants, the info may be useful for home cooks. The guide advises buying pre-shelled eggs (which would also reduce packaging waste). If you’re cracking the eggs yourself, you can put a little time into scraping that last bit out of the egg.

Since I just learned this from the same restaurant guide, here’s a bonus tip:

Never store tomatoes and lettuce in the same container or close to each other. Tomatoes emit a gas that will turn lettuce brown.

 

Announcer (in full public radio voice): This has been “The Weekly Waste Word,” brought to you by the Don’t Quit Your Day Job Guild and the Department of Shameless Self-Promotion, who proudly present the Replate Trash-Top Unit 2.0 

August 6, 2007 | Posted in Household, The Weekly Waste Word | Comments closed

Waste not welcome

This piece provides a little culinary exploration into the origins of traditional African American foods and a bit of watermelon history. In it, there’s a nice nugget about thrift:

Nothing was ever wasted in the African American kitchen. Leftover fish became croquettes (by adding an egg, cornmeal or flour, seasonings and breaded then deep-fried). Stale bread became bread pudding, and each part of the pig had its own special dish. Even the liquid from the boiled vegetables was turned into “pot likker” which was used as a type of gravy or as a drink in and of itself.  

I think the same can be said for any ethnic group or family struggling to make ends meet. Whether or not that skimping continues as the group moves up the socio-economic ladder, is another question. It’d be interesting to see how prevalent this aversion to waste remains in the African American community. If I had to guess, it probably varies a great deal depending on the economics.

The second best thing about the article: now I know the meaning of pot likker, not to be confused with my all-time favorite food, pot stickers.   

August 3, 2007 | Posted in History and Culture, Household | Comments closed

Any ideas?

Yesterday we were talking about Indiana, today it’s Brazil. Earlier this week I got an e-mail from a friendly Sao Paulo industrial design student named Luiz Augusto Moreira. Luiz tells me that food waste is a serious problem in Brazil, as well.

Banco de Alimentos, a non-govermental organization that recovers food for the hungry, says 39 million kilograms of food are wasted every day. Meanwhile, 75 million Brazilians are hungry, more than double the U.S. figure–and Brazil has a third fewer people than the U.S! 

As an aside, if there were a way to do so online, I’d have already purchased one of these hot t-shirts benefiting Banco de Alimentos.

Anyway, Luiz is interested in developing a product that would reduce food waste. I told him I’d post his query for discussion. So…any ideas for this well-intentioned student? It can be for anywhere in the food chain, from farms to family dinners. Submit your thoughts as comments below.

Because Luiz mentioned that he was intrigued by the Replate scheme that urges people to leave their leftovers atop trash cans for the hungry to eat, here’s my (far-fetched) idea: Since the main concerns with Replate are the food going bad sitting out in the sun and the potential mess when rodents get into the food, how about designing a sealed, refrigerated trash-top box. It’d be solar powered, of course! I’m picturing a pizza box size container with a door on top to insert donations. In keeping with Replate’s name, the box could even feature an affixed white plate inside.

August 2, 2007 | Posted in International | Comments closed

Choices and Waste

It’s a big week here at Wasted Food for Indiana food banks. I just read this interesting discussion of food waste at shelters.

In this behind-the-scenes look at food pantries, the director of the Second Harvest Food Bank of East Central Indiana discusses how letting shelters choose what food they want instead of receiving a pre-bundled bag of goods can avoid waste: 

…pre-packed food was vulnerable to becoming wasted food. If a family could not use flour, the flour might be left in the trash behind the pantry. If members were diabetic and got fruit in heavy syrup, they were not able to eat it. Families, poor and rich alike, have cultural and personal preferences and situational needs.

I had heard of shelters having to throw away bread because they get so many baked goods, but I hadn’t considered this kind of preference-caused waste. It reminds me of the Federal School Lunch Program’s requirement that students take all elements of the meal, even if they throw it away five seconds later. 

I was at a meeting of the N.C. Food Diversion Task Force today at the headquarters of Inter-Faith Food Shuttle, a Raleigh food recovery group. During the meeting, I learned that 8 percent of what the Food Shuttle recovers isn’t used. I’m not sure how much choice they give clients, but using 92 percent of what you collect ain’t bad.

Plus, enlightened souls that they are, they have a local pig farmer collect most of the leftovers, and they compost the rest.

 

August 1, 2007 | Posted in Food Recovery | Comments closed

Theft Wastes Food

I can’t think of an odder or sadder reason for wasted food than this: this weekend, metal thieves stole copper piping from refrigerators at Indiana’s largest food bank.

This is front page news in Indianapolis, as Gleaners food bank had to throw away $464,000 of food that spoiled after spending the weekend without refrigeration.

Among the items lost: 3,482 cases of dairy products, 1,860 cases of half-pints of milk and 48,743 cases of produce. In all, 54,892 cases of frozen foods were in jeopardy, including 233 cases of deer meat and 63 turkeys.

After watching the local TV news report, you realize just how selfish this act was. In addition to the precious metal, the thieves stole food from hungry people’s plates. Gleaners food bank supplies more than 400 shelters.

Even stranger–this is third time Gleaners has been robbed in the last two months. If there is a silver lining to the robbery, it’s that this barbaric theft is bringing out the best in people.  

 

July 31, 2007 | Posted in Food Recovery | Comments closed

Making a list and checking it twice

Americans don’t eat about 25 percent of what they bring into their home. (That number comes from an interview I did with William Rathje, the former director of the University of Arizona’s Garbage Project.)

How do we waste a quarter of the food we bring home? A decent chunk of that comes from buying too much food at the store. How does one avoid buying too much? Don’t shop hungry. I prefer to go right after hitting the all-you-can-eat Indian buffet.

Another tip is to make a list and stick to it. On that front, I just came across this SmartShopper Organizer. For those of you who aren’t listmakers, this might be the answer. It has voice recognition software, meaning your entire family can speak their orders into the machine. Fortunately, you can scroll through and delete items like the Fruit Loops Cereal Straws your kids try to sneak on the list.

After making your edits, you can print out a list that’s broken down by category. As I’m writing this, I can see my own list on a high-tech index card. I know, I know–so “old school.”  I’m not sure I can justify the expense of going digital, as I’m pretty good about making lists. Maybe if I could program the SmartShopper to make dinner…

July 30, 2007 | Posted in Household, Stats, Supermarket | Comments closed

Eating Disorders and Waste

I imagined writing a breezy, Friday-friendly post, but this entry on eating disorders sparked my interest.

Karen Koenig, an expert in the psychology of eating, writes that people can’t change their unhealthy eating practices without first changing their underlying beliefs about food/body/weight. (I have a similar belief that people won’t stop wasting food until they change their attitude about food value and wastefulness.) In relation to trying to stop eating when you’re satisfied, she writes:

If you irrationally believe that you shouldn’t waste food, you must finish everything on your plate, and more is better, you’ll need to reframe these beliefs to make them rational.

Is it irrational to think food shouldn’t be wasted? Is there a lack of reason behind this idea? If so, I’ve totally lost my mind. 

Now, I’m certainly no expert on eating disorders and I agree that a person’s health is more important than a half-eaten drumstick. In addition, I can empathize with people struggling not to eat too much/too little and understand how trying to rectify that problem could result in some food waste. But does that mean that, as she writes, “…it’s okay to waste food?” 

Finally, I agree that the “clean your plate” mentality can be harmful. Yet, instead of saying waste is fine, how about advising folks to take less on their plate and/or save the leftovers? What do you think?

July 27, 2007 | Posted in History and Culture | Comments closed