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We've managed to eliminate a ton of food waste (and cost) by simply not buying frozen or bulk foods. Paradoxically, whenever we buy food like this, it always co
by bane 7y ago
We've managed to eliminate a ton of food waste (and cost) by simply not buying frozen or bulk foods. Paradoxically, whenever we buy food like this, it always comes in boxes that are much too large to use at once and inevitably will end up forgotten at the back of the freezer or pantry until we throw it out later.
Now we buy maybe 2 or 3 days worth of food at a time and our fridge basically just has raw ingredients and a few condiments in it. Usually a package of never frozen meat (beef or chicken mostly) and a few fresh veggies and mushrooms for side dishes (many of them keep well or even better outside of the fridge). The most prepackaged thing we eat these days is on pasta night, and that's just for the sauce out of the jar and some premade noodles. The rest of the sauce is fresh chopped veggies and it makes a delightfully chunky sauce. A favorite side dish is mashed squash in lieu of mashed potatoes.
It takes time to cook a nice meal, and if it's possible to get the time (it's not easy!) I think everybody should do it. The frozen and bulk foods never resulted in a meal half as good. One nice side effect, if we increase the portions a bit, we get a quality packed lunch from the left overs.
Our meals also have dramatically increased the volume of fresh vegetables and are definitely much more healthy than anything we used to eat. Are we trying to reduce waste? Not really, just trying to cook and eat better, but the side effect is great (and much cheaper as well!) It's also a nice change in daily routine to stop at the grocery a couple times per week.
Our fridge went from slam packed full to mostly empty and we eat far better.
- agumonkey 7y agoIt has even been talked in mainstream news. Supermarkets tricks are made for you to buy more than necessary. A very sad side effect of short term capitalism thinking.
- 2T1Qka0rEiPr 7y agoParticularly if you live alone. Typically you can't buy fewer than 6 sausages in the UK, or in Germany finding anything less than a 2.5kg bag of potatoes can be tricky.
- ncarroll 7y agoIn Germany, I find that this is one of the (many) beauties of shopping at the farmer's market. If I need 3 carrots and 2 onions and 6 potatoes, that is very easy at the Samstagsmarkt. Buying sausages or meat from the butcher or the meat counter at the grocery also supports the purchase of the exact (smaller) quantities I need.
- agumonkey 7y agoalso, quality over quantity..
- majewsky 7y agoAt Rewe or Kaufland you can usually buy loose potatoes. The price per weight is higher than for the 2.5 kg bags, but if you only need 1 kg, it's still cheaper.
- emj 7y agoIt takes ~15min-60min to cook, serve and eat a meal, that is time that you can spend together. It has never been hard to find the time to do that, is this really a problem people have? (But I do live very close to a nice little store ~2 minutes, that do help.)
- sfifs 7y agoHow many kids do you have & what kind of a job?
- emj 7y agoDoes it really matter, my question was why would you not cook food yourself? I'm not offering a model that other people should copy. From experience cooking daily for 8 people is not that much worse than for 2 people, it's just a different kind of project both have hurdles and highlights. Not going to lie, being able to take time off each day to take care of your kids really did help with time but it mostly it was to socialize and being less of a eat-work-sleep machine. Ordinary day now is, breakfast 0600-0730, work things 0730-1630, cook and take care of kids 1630-2100, other things 2100-~0100.
- GuiA 7y agoFor many it is hard to find that amount of time in their day, due to modern work schedules and conditions (eg commute, expectation to keep working at home). But it is a little insane that we have built a society where most cannot afford to take an hour to prepare and enjoy a meal, yes. In France, as recently as a couple decades ago, it was common for people to leave work at 12p, pick up their kids from school, have lunch at home, bring them back at school at 1.30p and be back at work at 2p. But that’s been quickly going away with increasing work hours, increasing distances between home/school/workplace, etc.
- emj 7y ago1½ hours to get kids and make food sounds about right for me, but doing that for lunch AND dinner would be really hard. For me personally "For many it is hard to find that amount of time in their day" really strange, what is that is being prioritized instead?
- siruncledrew 7y agoWhat made a difference in cutting food waste in Amsterdam was having to adjust to using physically smaller refrigerators than the average size found in US/Canada. When going to the grocery stores in the US, I never had to think “Will I have enough space to fit all this food?”, which actually resulted in buying a lot of stuff that wasn’t always needed (eyes are bigger than stomach at the supermarket). In Amsterdam, shopping trips were more frequently needed, but the food that was bought was also smaller in amounts and less weight, so it wasn’t that big of a deal in the end, and less food ended up being wasted. (Having to bike or carry food by hand is also a bigger incentive to carefully plan resources vs. loading up the entire trunk of a car). :^)