A Conscious Kitchen
A Conscious Kitchen
By Sami Biro
Introduction: Food Waste in America
Americans throw so much away that could be recycled, and when we finally picked up on that, we began attempting to recycle our plastic, paper, and whatever else we can find. Still, the majority of garbage that could be recycled finds its way to the landfill. The same can be said about food- a lot of us have compost buckets or worm bins at our homes, but the vast majority of homes in America do not compost their food, and it ends up in landfills. Did you know that a head of cabbage could take 75 years to decompose in a landfill? Compare that to a functional worm bin which could turn that cabbage into soil in a matter of weeks. We have the "Three R's" to help us determine what to do with most garbage, but when it comes to food waste, it's either composted or thrown in the garbage. Of course, there's the occasional smart-ass who throws his banana peel out the window of his car and says "it'll decompose eventually."
In order to demonstrate some of the food waste going on in our country and to discuss potential options, I am going to focus this blog post in on cafeterias in America. Particularly, I will look at The Commons at Pacific Lutheran University, where I work as a server and also in the dish room. Every day, I see pounds and pounds of perfectly edible foods being composted, and even though my school tries to be conscious of our food waste, we are still perpetrators in the food waste cycle. In the media today, there is a grand emphasis on consumers reducing their food waste. I don't want to just add to the thousands of articles telling people to eat all of their food, and I don't want to try to tackle the entire food industry with a blog post. Instead, I want to focus on the restaurants, grocery stores, and cafeterias in our country. How can chefs and servers in kitchens like The Commons combat food waste?
Farmers harvesting crops have to choose the more beautiful fruits and vegetables to sell to businesses, so they end up throwing out a terrible amount of food. Not only do they throw out the ugly foods, but they also throw out other edible parts of plants such as the stems and leaves of various fruits and vegetables. All of this happens before the crops even make it to the produce companies. Once they get a hold of the food, even more is discarded. Carrots are shaved down to baby carrots, and the excess is tossed; produce that was bumped around a little during transit goes into the bin because of its bruises; organs, fat, and bones from animals go untouched. Then, the "good" food is shipped to cafeterias, grocery stores, and restaurants everywhere. Through this process, farmers and others working "behind the scenes" in the food industry contribute heavily to the 40% of food being wasted in the U.S.
By Sami Biro
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| This image of a landfill in Auckland, New Zealand, comes from Aurecon Australasia. |
Introduction: Food Waste in America
Americans throw so much away that could be recycled, and when we finally picked up on that, we began attempting to recycle our plastic, paper, and whatever else we can find. Still, the majority of garbage that could be recycled finds its way to the landfill. The same can be said about food- a lot of us have compost buckets or worm bins at our homes, but the vast majority of homes in America do not compost their food, and it ends up in landfills. Did you know that a head of cabbage could take 75 years to decompose in a landfill? Compare that to a functional worm bin which could turn that cabbage into soil in a matter of weeks. We have the "Three R's" to help us determine what to do with most garbage, but when it comes to food waste, it's either composted or thrown in the garbage. Of course, there's the occasional smart-ass who throws his banana peel out the window of his car and says "it'll decompose eventually."
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| The movie poster for "WASTED! The Story of Food Waste" found online. |
Food waste happens on many levels, though. It can't all fall on the consumers' shoulders to decide what to do with their food scraps. The entire food industry is riddled with food waste, from the farms, to the shippers, to the processors, to the grocery stores and restaurants. Every step of the way, we see more and more perfectly edible food being thrown into dumpsters. Sometimes, food expires and really does have to be chucked. Other times, food is thrown out simply because it isn't pretty enough. As I described in another blog post, a lot of the food we deem "inedible" is actually considered delicacies in some areas of the world, but we discard it anyway. From the innards of butchered animals to insects, and even to the very edible leaves of plants we eat, there are so many potential food items out there that we just throw away. Did you know that 40% of all food produced in the U.S. is wasted? Globally 1/3 of all food is wasted, according to the movie "WASTED! The Story of Food Waste." More than 90% of this food ends up in landfills.
In order to demonstrate some of the food waste going on in our country and to discuss potential options, I am going to focus this blog post in on cafeterias in America. Particularly, I will look at The Commons at Pacific Lutheran University, where I work as a server and also in the dish room. Every day, I see pounds and pounds of perfectly edible foods being composted, and even though my school tries to be conscious of our food waste, we are still perpetrators in the food waste cycle. In the media today, there is a grand emphasis on consumers reducing their food waste. I don't want to just add to the thousands of articles telling people to eat all of their food, and I don't want to try to tackle the entire food industry with a blog post. Instead, I want to focus on the restaurants, grocery stores, and cafeterias in our country. How can chefs and servers in kitchens like The Commons combat food waste?
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| The Commons' attempt at having a classy logo |
Food Waste at the Commons
I don't intend to rip my job apart since I still need to work there for another four months, so instead, I will use The Commons to outline what currently happens in cafeterias across the country. It isn't my duty to change an entire food system or to bash The Commons, it is merely my job to make you, my lovely audience, think a little bit. Using The Commons as a model, I hope to demonstrate the different ways that food is wasted in kitchens and grocery stores across America.
Food Waste at the Farm and Industrial Level
When I go into the "veggie walk-in," our refrigerator for vegetables and fruit, I see row upon row of perfect produce. There are the heart-shaped Driscoll strawberries, the completely identical potatoes, the tomatoes that are exactly the size and shape of a baseball, and more. Where do the imperfect foods go? They sure as hell don't come to The Commons. They all end up in a landfill or, hopefully, a compost bin. Thousands and thousands of perfectly edible potatoes that just happen to be a bit too lumpy are rotting in a ditch somewhere when they could have easily been served for dinner last night.
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| Why do we find these carrots more appetizing than bigger ones? It makes no sense. |
Food Waste at the Chef Level
I would never presume to call myself a chef (I can't even count on both hands how many times I have burnt mac 'n cheese) but I do work the burger station at The Commons meaning I'm making and serving food for students. I whip out those frozen burger patties for them, fry up the chicken strips, and hook them up with a ton of fries. Unfortunately, I also throw out the ugly lettuce leaves and dry chicken that I know no one wants to eat. Food waste at the chef level is far less than food waste at the industrial level, but we still throw out so much food that could be re-purposed or served.
Food Waste at the Consumer Level
The majority of the food that ends up in our compost bins actually comes from the consumers. When I work in the dish room, all I do for four hours is scrape leftovers off of the students' plates and dump them in the compost. Of course, I also scrub all of the dishes clean, as well as all of the heavy pots and pans that were used to make the food (you're welcome). I see full sandwiches without a single bite, entire salads, four slices of pizza (why did they grab four slices if they weren't hungry let's be honest), and more. Everyone always complains about our small portion sizes, but most people don't finish their "tiny" portions anyway. By the end of a shift in the dish room, we have usually filled at least one compost bin as full as it can be. That's not even including the to-go boxes students take home and forget in their refrigerators.
Over the summer, we had a group of 500 visitors come through The Commons for three meals a day, for five days. I worked triple shifts for their event, which meant I was in the dish room from 6:30 a.m. until 10:30 p.m. This group of people completely derailed our attempts to waste less food. Every single one of them would ask for food, then ask servers to give them "a little more," and "a little more," and "a little more, please," until they had an overfilled plate of fries, three apples, two sandwiches, and whatever else they felt they needed. At the end of the meal, they would bring their fifteen plates each to the dish room and guess what? They couldn't even eat half of it. I threw away more food that week than ever in my life, and I still get nightmares about it to this day. Not only did the dish room have to throw away a lot of food, but so did the chefs. These visitors were extremely picky and would pick and choose which toppings looked best or which pieces of chicken seemed tastiest. The chefs ended up tossing more of their "imperfect" foods than normal. In these kinds of situations, none of our regulations and guidelines about composting or reusing food could be adequately followed, and that was because of the consumers.
Nothing can happen at the chef level unless the consumers allow it, and if the consumers won't eat the slightly limp lettuce leaf or the chicken breast that spent a little too long in the oven, then the chefs won't be able to serve it. At the chef level, we can try to minimize waste by composting food, re-purposing it to be used in a different dish, but consumers can be oh so picky. So what can a chef do?
Over the summer, we had a group of 500 visitors come through The Commons for three meals a day, for five days. I worked triple shifts for their event, which meant I was in the dish room from 6:30 a.m. until 10:30 p.m. This group of people completely derailed our attempts to waste less food. Every single one of them would ask for food, then ask servers to give them "a little more," and "a little more," and "a little more, please," until they had an overfilled plate of fries, three apples, two sandwiches, and whatever else they felt they needed. At the end of the meal, they would bring their fifteen plates each to the dish room and guess what? They couldn't even eat half of it. I threw away more food that week than ever in my life, and I still get nightmares about it to this day. Not only did the dish room have to throw away a lot of food, but so did the chefs. These visitors were extremely picky and would pick and choose which toppings looked best or which pieces of chicken seemed tastiest. The chefs ended up tossing more of their "imperfect" foods than normal. In these kinds of situations, none of our regulations and guidelines about composting or reusing food could be adequately followed, and that was because of the consumers.
Nothing can happen at the chef level unless the consumers allow it, and if the consumers won't eat the slightly limp lettuce leaf or the chicken breast that spent a little too long in the oven, then the chefs won't be able to serve it. At the chef level, we can try to minimize waste by composting food, re-purposing it to be used in a different dish, but consumers can be oh so picky. So what can a chef do?
The Solution?
Like I said, I am not a chef. I don't have the ingenuity to figure out how to re-purpose food. I only know what we already do in The Commons to reduce food waste, and I know that these practices can easily be done in most kitchens. First, I would like to share the Food Waste Pyramid found online and described in "WASTED! The Story of Food Waste." Then I will discuss where The Commons' practices fit into this pyramid, and what can be done by kitchens across America to avoid wasting food.
The Commons and the Pyramid
As I discussed before, we try to limit portion sizes to reduce the source of the food. If you don't have any leftovers, there's nothing left to throw out. Common sense prevails in The Commons.
We reuse a good amount of our scraps in The Commons to feed students. The other day some of my tomato slices were looking a bit too soggy to put on a burger, so we turned them into soup instead. All of the ends of our loaves of bread end up chopped into little bits and turned into croutons or bread pudding, which we then serve to the students. Even the chicken breasts that are left over at the burger station get cut up, seasoned, and put on the salad bar so people can add them to their salads. Once the stations close, we set our leftovers out so the staff can prepare themselves a meal before the very last bits get composted. Still, we do not donate our food to food pantries or anything like that.
Next, we compost everything. Theoretically none of our food scraps end up in the trash, although I'd say there is some kind of margin of error there. Each station has compost buckets (which are actually pickle buckets that we reuse in case you were wondering) and the dish room has large compost bins in it (as seen in the image to the right). In our kitchen, we really do try to waste as little as possible, but our efforts are sometimes all for nothing when we see how much food still ends up in our compost bins.
We at The Commons tend to skip on feeding animals or turning our food waste into energy, but I'm not entirely sure that's our fault. Once it reaches the compost bins, it could theoretically be taken to a farm to feed animals or turned into some kind of energy, but that's for the higher ups to decide.
What Can Kitchens Do?
If a kitchen has resources and the desire to reduce waste, they should look at the pyramid above to decide what to do with their extra food. Personally, I see the pyramid as a list of steps that should be taken, and they should be taken in that order. The pyramid shows what we should do with most of our food, and what we should try to avoid entirely if possible.
1. Kitchens should try to reduce how much food they produce, if they can. Don't make 20 lb of pasta if you know you're only going to serve 10 lb.
2. Extra food could be reused to make other dishes or donated. Individual kitchens can decide for themselves how they wish to go about this. Instead of throwing all of your mushy tomatoes into a tub and calling it "scraps," companies could actually add "home made tomato soup" to the menu and make their reused foods sound delicious. The ends of loaves of bread could then become "hand-cooked croutons." The opportunities are endless. Not only would this reduce waste, it would reduce costs. Rather than having to buy more chicken to make chicken Caesar salad, use the chicken that didn't sell yet and create your own topping.
3. Scraps that should not be offered to humans, such as the shells of peas or pieces of bread that fell on the ground, could be sent to farms to feed animals. Even farmers can get in on this. Entire fields of dead plants that have already produced their crops could end up being food for cattle or pigs.
4. Excess food could be used to create electricity or turned into fertilizer. I don't understand the specifics (shocker. I'm not a chef or a scientist) but an article from Indiana Public Media has a few good ideas to share.
5. Compost whatever cannot be used at all. I have worked at countless restaurants that don't have any kind of compost system. Some of them don't even recycle. One of the first steps that kitchens and grocery stores across America can take is adding a few compost bins (and recycling bins if they're really that behind). That may present a financial burden for some smaller kitchens, but CostEvaluation.com can fill owners in on the costs. Chain restaurants and grocery stores should be able to do this easily enough.
6. Ruin the environment by incinerating the leftovers or sending them to the landfill. Obviously, this should only be a last resort, but most kitchens send the majority of their food waste to the landfill unintentionally when they throw it in the trash.
Conclusion
We, the consumers, can't exactly take our food scraps to a nearby farm and give the pigs there a nice meal. We also can't take our leftover dinner to a nearby food pantry, hoping it will be given to a family in need. In terms of what the consumers can do, we can mostly just eat everything we make before it goes bad, eat "from head to tail," or compost our extra food. The food industry is another matter altogether. Since I am neither a chef, a scientist, nor a farmer, I can't tell farmers to use all of their money to find ways of reducing waste. That isn't fair. I also can't tell big food companies to sell imperfect foods. There simply isn't a big enough market for slightly bruised bananas and awkward looking zucchinis. What I can do, however, is encourage other kitchens like the one I work in to be a little more conscious of where their food waste ends up. Does it help feed people? Does it get to spend the next century in a landfill? The choice is up to you.
Word Count: 2636
Like I said, I am not a chef. I don't have the ingenuity to figure out how to re-purpose food. I only know what we already do in The Commons to reduce food waste, and I know that these practices can easily be done in most kitchens. First, I would like to share the Food Waste Pyramid found online and described in "WASTED! The Story of Food Waste." Then I will discuss where The Commons' practices fit into this pyramid, and what can be done by kitchens across America to avoid wasting food.
The Commons and the Pyramid
As I discussed before, we try to limit portion sizes to reduce the source of the food. If you don't have any leftovers, there's nothing left to throw out. Common sense prevails in The Commons.
We reuse a good amount of our scraps in The Commons to feed students. The other day some of my tomato slices were looking a bit too soggy to put on a burger, so we turned them into soup instead. All of the ends of our loaves of bread end up chopped into little bits and turned into croutons or bread pudding, which we then serve to the students. Even the chicken breasts that are left over at the burger station get cut up, seasoned, and put on the salad bar so people can add them to their salads. Once the stations close, we set our leftovers out so the staff can prepare themselves a meal before the very last bits get composted. Still, we do not donate our food to food pantries or anything like that.
 |
| Everything you need to know about industrial compost bins can be found at People Powered Machines |
We at The Commons tend to skip on feeding animals or turning our food waste into energy, but I'm not entirely sure that's our fault. Once it reaches the compost bins, it could theoretically be taken to a farm to feed animals or turned into some kind of energy, but that's for the higher ups to decide.
What Can Kitchens Do?
If a kitchen has resources and the desire to reduce waste, they should look at the pyramid above to decide what to do with their extra food. Personally, I see the pyramid as a list of steps that should be taken, and they should be taken in that order. The pyramid shows what we should do with most of our food, and what we should try to avoid entirely if possible.
1. Kitchens should try to reduce how much food they produce, if they can. Don't make 20 lb of pasta if you know you're only going to serve 10 lb.
2. Extra food could be reused to make other dishes or donated. Individual kitchens can decide for themselves how they wish to go about this. Instead of throwing all of your mushy tomatoes into a tub and calling it "scraps," companies could actually add "home made tomato soup" to the menu and make their reused foods sound delicious. The ends of loaves of bread could then become "hand-cooked croutons." The opportunities are endless. Not only would this reduce waste, it would reduce costs. Rather than having to buy more chicken to make chicken Caesar salad, use the chicken that didn't sell yet and create your own topping.
3. Scraps that should not be offered to humans, such as the shells of peas or pieces of bread that fell on the ground, could be sent to farms to feed animals. Even farmers can get in on this. Entire fields of dead plants that have already produced their crops could end up being food for cattle or pigs.
4. Excess food could be used to create electricity or turned into fertilizer. I don't understand the specifics (shocker. I'm not a chef or a scientist) but an article from Indiana Public Media has a few good ideas to share.
5. Compost whatever cannot be used at all. I have worked at countless restaurants that don't have any kind of compost system. Some of them don't even recycle. One of the first steps that kitchens and grocery stores across America can take is adding a few compost bins (and recycling bins if they're really that behind). That may present a financial burden for some smaller kitchens, but CostEvaluation.com can fill owners in on the costs. Chain restaurants and grocery stores should be able to do this easily enough.
6. Ruin the environment by incinerating the leftovers or sending them to the landfill. Obviously, this should only be a last resort, but most kitchens send the majority of their food waste to the landfill unintentionally when they throw it in the trash.
Conclusion
We, the consumers, can't exactly take our food scraps to a nearby farm and give the pigs there a nice meal. We also can't take our leftover dinner to a nearby food pantry, hoping it will be given to a family in need. In terms of what the consumers can do, we can mostly just eat everything we make before it goes bad, eat "from head to tail," or compost our extra food. The food industry is another matter altogether. Since I am neither a chef, a scientist, nor a farmer, I can't tell farmers to use all of their money to find ways of reducing waste. That isn't fair. I also can't tell big food companies to sell imperfect foods. There simply isn't a big enough market for slightly bruised bananas and awkward looking zucchinis. What I can do, however, is encourage other kitchens like the one I work in to be a little more conscious of where their food waste ends up. Does it help feed people? Does it get to spend the next century in a landfill? The choice is up to you.
Word Count: 2636
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