Sunday, March 22, 2009

Reducing Food Waste

I've reading recently that the average household throws away between 13% and 33% of the food they buy. Dan and I are particularly aweful. Even though I plan menus for the week, we end up eating out, and therefore throwing away the food that we were supposed to eat that night.

We also spend a great amount of money eating out (not to mention on the food we are throwing away). I spent yesterday morning totalling up how much we spent eating out in the last year eating out. I am not brave enough to share the actual amount, however, if we didn't eat out last year we could have went on a cruise in the Bahamas...twice. If we didn't eat out, we could have had a down payment on a house. If we didn't eat out, we would probably each weigh about 13 pounds less!

This week I am making a bigger effort to use up leftovers and cook the food I buy. I bought considerely less at the store this week. I'm going to make dinners depending on the need to use up items, using the items that will go bad quickly first.

On a side note, after researching food waste today, I found many articles on how bad it is for the environment because it doesn't probably decompose in the landfill because of lack of oxygen. I always thought it did decompose easily because food is organic.

1 comment:

Charlene said...

I thing veg. and fruit decompose. they are good for compost. It does cost a lot to eat out but you guys dont buy steaks and such. it cost to fix food too. I 'v been ssaving my left over vegs and making soup. I just made a real good ministromi soup with my left over cabbage from Paddys day and I had cooked it with a lot of carrots and potatoes. All I did was add a can of tomatoes and very little salad mac. and a can of beans that I rinsed and drain. mmm. I'v been eating on it for 2 days and finally put them in little containers and froze them , then i took them out of the containers and vacumed packed them and put on the date. wa la I can have my soup whenever. mom