It’s just like an episode of Iron Chef where the challengers - a pack of celebrity chefs, food companies, NGOs, and experts - are taking on the Hunger Battle at Kitchen Stadium - or in this case, on Capitol Hill.
Today’s secret ingredient is...FOOD WASTE.
The House Agriculture Committee held its first hearing on food waste last week. Food producers, large food companies, NGOs, academics, and renowned chefs banded together to persuade lawmakers to address the 133 billion pounds of food that are wasted in the US each year. That’s just one country. Globally, an estimated 2.8 trillion pounds of food are wasted or lost annually.
While food loss often occurs between harvest and delivery (largely caused in developing countries by a lack of infrastructure and resources necessary to process and transport food before it perishes), food waste usually takes place in retail and consumer settings. Very plainly: stores and customers tend to throw food out.
795 million people on Earth do not have enough food to live healthy lives. That’s one out of every nine people on the planet. Almost half of all deaths in children under the age of five are caused by poor nutrition. Yet, we continue to waste food.
Food waste is a complex issue with myriad causes and contributors making it a difficult problem to solve - but we need to start trying.
Retailers often overstock and are then forced to dump expired products. This also means that the water and resources used to grow this doomed produce has gone to waste.
Consumers contribute to the problem by cooking and buying more than they can eat, and ultimately throwing spoiled leftovers out. There aren’t enough places to compost food waste. And people just don’t seem to like “ugly” foods - we’re refusing to buy or throwing away perfectly good food because it’s not pretty enough! Ugly carrots are the reason baby carrots were born; baby carrots are just ugly carrots shaved into smooth, little sticks.
The truth is, ugly foods taste the same and we can actually eat a lot of food waste. It’s food that shouldn’t be wasted in the first place, and that’s why the challengers of this special episode of Iron Chef are pushing back. And they’re not alone. Their battle on Capitol Hill is representative of a growing trend to reduce and reuse food waste.
Whole Foods Market, together with Imperfect Produce, started selling ugly fruits and vegetables earlier this year. Startups like Cerplus provide a platform for restaurants and businesses to buy “the uglies or slightly riper guys” from farmers and retailers who would have otherwise thrown them out. Back to the Roots rescues spent coffee grounds, using them in mushroom growing kits.
Last year, the chef and co-owner of Blue Hill, Dan Barber “upcycled” food waste at his pop-up restaurant wastED. Barber used all the bits and pieces of food we typically think of as garbage - think vegetable peelings and the water your canned chickpeas come in - to create dishes like the “dumpster dive vegetable salad,” which patrons enjoyed in the light cast by a candle made of rendered beef fat. Basically, he served what we’ve been calling “trash” at his Michelin-starred restaurant in New York.
The same can be done with meat. Celebrity chefs like April Bloomfield are encouraging people to eat “nose-to-tail,” wasting nothing. If they see fit to put tops, tails, and table scraps on our plates instead of in the bin, perhaps we need to give our trash a second chance.
The effort to reduce food waste needs to come from all sides. We, as consumers, can purchase and use food more responsibly and consciously. But retailers and governments can play a role too. In 2015, France adopted a law banning supermarkets from carelessly throwing unsold food into the garbage; instead, they must donate the food they would have destroyed or thrown out to charities who can distribute it to those who need it. In the United Kingdom, retailers coordinate to improve the sustainability of their supply chain and make up only 1.7% of the UK’s overall food waste.
Though the US has legal framework that supports food donations, it’s not perfect. The US still wastes more than 30% of its food. Hopefully, last week’s hearing will result in changes that reduce food waste - but we all have a part to play in seeing food waste eliminated.
By taking a more discerning look at the foods we call "waste," we can address our own hunger and world hunger. So, grab the ugliest carrot you can find and take a bite.