Does Eating Out=Throwing Out?

This past week was week one of my five and a half week challenge of making an effort to waste significantly less food.  As expected, my breakfast routine hasn’t changed, but going to either the dining hall or lower Farinon each day has been a bit of a change.  Going to help myself to food is a much more conscious decision now; I ask myself if I will realistically eat everything that I am putting on my plate.  Further, if I don’t know how something might taste, I’ll either take a small amount to taste or ask a friend how it is.  Most meals, I finish everything on my plate or am well within my 25% rule.  There was one day I definitely didn’t stick to my 25% rule though.  Sunday night, I went to dinner before a math exam.  Between my mind being preoccupied with that and the fact that I was not a fan of the nachos I chose to eat, I ended up throwing about half of them out.

As I mentioned in last week’s post, going out to eat presents a lot of opportunity for food waste between big portions and not taking food home.  So when I had a team dinner scheduled at a local restaurant with my cross country team, I knew I would have to think ahead in terms of what I ordered and if I would eat it in the near future if I didn’t finish it at the table.  I ordered chicken parm.   I didn’t finish it there since it was a large portion, but I wrapped it up and had the leftovers for dinner on Monday night.  This was good in a few ways.  Not only did I waste no food from Friday and then not go to the dining hall on Monday, this shows I can go out to eat and enjoy myself, but not be wasteful in the process.

Researching the environmental implications of my behavior change, I found this neat graphic (of course backed up by research) titled, “21 Shocking U.S. Food Waste Facts & Statistics”.  Quite a few of the statistics are about saving money (which are no doubt shocking) but some of the shocking facts about wasting food included: wasting 25% of all freshwater used in the U.S.;300 million barrels of oil a year; 33 million tons of landfill waste; and 2.5% of the U.S. energy budget.  Granted a large portion of this comes from industrial food processing, but the other statistics about how much money is wasted by households from wasting food definitely suggest that the households have a significant environmental impact as well.  Reading this and seeing all the other available resources and articles about food waste really show me that the habit I am trying to change is a habit that has a significant environmental impact.

 

http://www.mnn.com/food/healthy-eating/blogs/21-shocking-us-food-waste-facts-statistics