14 ms·

Much fridge food ‘goes there to die’

114 points by EndXA 7y ago

leejoramo 7y ago
For my family, the simple trick of getting a smaller fridge cut down on food waste. This has worked great, even though, we are avid cooks who almost always make meals from scratch.
- specialist 7y ago
  +1 smaller fridge Changing how I eat greatly reduced my food waste. Now eating a lot of bulk foods with high soluble fiber. Porridge, beans, lentils, seeds. Instapot for the win. Uncooked (dry) stores very well. All my excess produce goes into smoothies, also greatly reducing my waste.
- mruts 7y ago
  I have a hotel fridge and I just mostly order out and throw out the leftovers. Maybe a big fridge would make it worse but I doubt it.
EndXA 7y ago
You can find the original study here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921344919303350 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092134491... Study highlights: > Institutional signals of food quality drive consumer food waste behaviors. > Food-related routines affect whether refrigerated food gets eaten. > Ambiguous date labeling decreases the odds that refrigerated food will be eaten. > Respondents are systematically over-optimistic that refrigerated food will be eaten.
- finaliteration 7y ago
  > Ambiguous date labeling decreases the odds that refrigerated food will be eaten. Honestly this is part of why I throw food out maybe more frequently than others do. The plethora of dates is extremely confusing. Pair that with the fact that I’ve had awful food poisoning a few times in my life and I end up tossing food out that’s probably still fine to eat, but I just don’t want to risk it.
  - MichaelApproved 7y ago
    Did you get food poisoning from home cooked food or when you were eating out? Find the pattern and avoid those situations. There's no need to be wasteful by blindly following those arbitrary dates. It's usually easy to tell when most food has spoiled by smelling or examining it. Another important aspect is making sure the food is cooked thoroughly.
    - DanBC 7y ago
      > It's usually easy to tell when most food has spoiled by smelling or examining it. Buy 100 fresh chickens from the supermarket. Then tell me which ones are contaminated with campylobacter just by smelling them. You can't. You can't. All smell tells you is when the food is rotting, but no-one eats rotting food because it smells foul and because it tastes foul. People get food poisoning because pathogens often are not detectable by smell or taste.
      - NLips 7y ago
        It disingenuous to ignore the parent's very next sentence, which recommends cooking food properly. It's estimated that the majority of raw chicken sold in the UK carries campylobacter, and a major factor in making sure it doesn't poison you is cooking the chicken through. No one is recommending eating raw meat and using your nose to tell whether that's OK.
        MichaelApproved 7y ago
        Thank you.
        phonypc 7y ago
        Granted the most charitable reading only implies their use for spoilage, in the context of food poisoning it's dangerous to recommend using your eyes and nose as tools. Even if followed by advice on thorough cooking.
        DanBC 7y ago
neap24 7y ago
I’ve been thinking this for a while, but always thought the problem wasn’t overestimation of food needs, but rather aversion to making more frequent grocery trips (pushing people to “stock up”.
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  I suspect it's mostly about planning, if you walk in the supermarket without knowing what you need then you will probably come out with too much.
  - benj111 7y ago
    It's quite a hard problem when you think about it. You're keeping track of potentially 100+ items, all need storing differently, all go off at different speeds, and you need to predict when you'll need more. You're basically running a shop in your head. Seen in that light, just as it's not advisable to try and run a business in your head, it shouldn't be advisable to try and run your kitchen the same way.
    - rdtwo 7y ago
      To solve the problem you would essentially need to keep a list of when things were put in and when they will spoil. But then you have the secondary problem of figuring out how to combine existing near spoiled ingredients into meals.
      - benj111 7y ago
        "combine existing near spoiled ingredients into meals." How do you think the Hawaiian pizza was invented? Edit: More seriously, a meal plan can help. Check the fridge to see what needs using, write a meal plan based on that, write a shopping list based on the plan. Not onerous when you get used to it.
  - MichaelApproved 7y ago
    Exactly this. Most people have enough of a routine that they can predict what they'll be eating for the week. Plan the meals for the week before you go shopping then make a list of what you'll need for those meals. Buy only from that list.
antidaily 7y ago
I've figured out meats. I can vacuum-seal, freeze and throw right into sous vide. Veggies and especially fruit have to be eaten almost immediately or they go bad (mold). I eat a lot of zucchini and carrots because they'll keep a while.
- MichaelApproved 7y ago
  > Veggies and especially fruit have to be eaten almost immediately or they go bad (mold). That seems like an exaggeration or maybe you're not storing them correctly. What do you buy and how do you store it that won't last several days to a week?
  - jerkstate 7y ago
    Mold is a common problem for small soft fruit that come in plastic clamshells, like blueberries and raspberries. Often it has a little mold right from the store. I try to wash these in water with a some white vinegar as soon as I get home from the grocery store and then right in the fridge.
    - MichaelApproved 7y ago
      And they last for several days in the refrigerator, right?
      - jerkstate 7y ago
        There can definitely be too much mold to eat right when you open it. You can usually return it, but for a couple of bucks it's a hassle. And if you don't wash it right away, even a small amount of mold will grow to more than you want to try to wash/cut off in a couple of days. I buy and eat a lot of fruit and my experience agrees with OPs, at least in some cases.
        MichaelApproved 7y ago
        > at least in some cases. So most of the time, fruits and vegetables keep for days and don't have to be eaten immediately, right? I'm being not picky because this is a conversation in a thread about how people throw out a lot of food. That waste is due, in part, to false sense of spoilage and OP was furthering that false sense.
k__ 7y ago
This doesn't surprise me when I see how big the fridges in the US are.
- bobthechef 7y ago
  I’m not sure why you were downvoted. In my experience, one reason why food goes to waste is because the further it travels back to the fridge the more likely it is to be forgotten. Of course, that isn’t the only reason and that process seems to be biased toward certain kinds of foods. Worth examining, though. Perhaps shallower fridges make sense.
exhilaration 7y ago
One of the best tips I learned about reducing food waste is to freeze bread and avoid putting it into the fridge. Frozen bread stays fresh and can go directly into a toaster or toaster oven: Harold McGee replies: Good point to bring up! Bread and other lean baked goods are the exception to the rule that cold storage is good. Bread stales faster at refrigerator temperatures than at room temperature. So if you want to keep a loaf for a couple of days, a breadbox is better than the fridge. For much longer than that, the freezer is the best place. https://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/09/harold-mcgee-on-bread-and-baking/ https://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/09/harold-mc...
- stronglikedan 7y ago
  I can only get through a loaf every couple of weeks, so I keep a loaf in the freezer, and only slice off a couple slices at a time. Let them sit on a towel for 5 minutes, and they're as good as fresh without the need to toast them. Plus, it's easier to slice while frozen without smooshing it, and fresh sliced beats store sliced any day of the week.
  - mistermann 7y ago
    You cut it while frozen?
    - hanniabu 7y ago
      He keeps a circular saw in his kitchen
      - ben509 7y ago
        ... that's not normal?
        mbrock 7y ago
        This is why I do my cooking in the workshop so I can use the table saw. A crosscut sled with a stop block is hard to beat for cutting many toast slices to the same width. And of course there’s no better potato peeler than a lathe.
jerkstate 7y ago
There are some things that people just get a lot better at with life experience, like managing your food. When I was younger my fridge was full of moldy takeout containers. Now I use a meal planning app that generates a shopping list for me (plus other staples that we go through like hand fruit, bread, milk etc.) My grocery bill for home cooked breakfast, lunch and dinner 5-6 days a week for a family of 4 is about $200 a week. I think it's kind of high, but we mostly eat fresh meat, veggies, and fruit, not much grain or processed food, and we waste almost no food. We do spend on average an hour a day preparing lunch and dinner, but that's usually family time where we're all in the kitchen talking. One of my favorite feelings is after putting everything away from a grocery shopping trip and seeing my kitchen and refrigerator full of healthy food that I know will nourish my family for the upcoming week. edit: App I use is eMeals, I tried several and this is my favorite so far, we are on the Paleo plan right now but they have maybe 8 or 10 different plans and you can switch pretty much at will. If anyone else has one they love please let me know!
- lambic 7y ago
  Which app?
- Limb 7y ago
  Mind sharing the name of the meal planning app?
  - obelos 7y ago
    Not the OC, but I've used https://www.plantoeat.com/ https://www.plantoeat.com/ for a couple of years now, cooking for a family of five. It's a wonderful tool, especially for only $5 month.
- graeme 7y ago
  Also interested in the app
vnorilo 7y ago
While thinking about this I feel most of my fridge graveyard is because I'd rather eat something else. That's horribly entitled and now I feel bad.
mensetmanusman 7y ago
Instacart has helped our family because we can have 2-3 deliveries a week with fresh produce. Before, it was such a hassle to bring kids <5 yrs old shopping that we would stock up...
juskrey 7y ago
Much of the vaccines storages are going to die and are regularly replaced just to die again, but if you keep highly optimized storage just for current purposes, you are screwed big time in the case of outbreak. Same here.
- pjc50 7y ago
  How does that analogy work? You're keeping your fridge overstocked in case of an outbreak of .. hunger? Unexpected guests?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
mcfunk 7y ago
An interesting related question -- can refrigerator design help to address this issue? We have one of those side-by-side fridges with more shelf depth than shelf width. The design results in food getting pushed far back where it is easy to miss/forget food that is there and difficult to access food without causing an avalanche of containers. I often wonder if our (rented) home had a different style of refrigerator if we would deal with less forgotten/spoiled foods.
- rdtwo 7y ago
  Honestly I don’t think there is any innovation in the appliance space. The companies take the same components slap a new face plate on them or a led display and sell the same shit at different price points. In 2019 I’m still not sure that you can get a PID controlled oven or fridge and that should be trivially easy to implement.
  - eurg 7y ago
    Modern fridges have temperature sensors, per-drawer ventilated air-cooling, auto-detection of when particular high-thermal mass un-frozen food (i.e. a turkey) is added and start quick-freezing, and provide alarms when door or cooling fail. Also, energy efficiency for the EU A+++ rated units is really good. And you get that already for the cheap units. So, it's a freezer, it freezes, and it doesn't send a post to Facebook. The only complaint I would have is their loudness. Modern extra-slow compressors are often (perceived) louder than previous-gen units. Also: given that even DIY ovens usually start with "get a cheap PID controller from e-bay", I doubt that commercial ones use anything else.
    - rdtwo 7y ago
      My fridge is modern but pretty simple. It’s really just a freezer with a vent that regulates fridge temps. It’s got some othe functions like defrost and seal warming but it’s a remarkably crude device
  - qes 7y ago
    Appliances, in my opinion, are a racket that artificially creates stratification among models to provide a variety of price points. That said, very few refrigerators out of the large number of available models (many more than say dishwashers or clothes washer/dryers) have the same interior layout. Even two nearby models from the same manufacturer with minor feature differences will have significantly different layouts, to the point that you can't just choose to get a fridge with or without feature X without also choosing between differences in the likely more important aspect of layout.
ophsj 7y ago
Is this some American thing? Because I can say that I very, very, very rarely throw away food. I throw away like two minor things every year, and only because they are completely inedible. It's just so alien to me to think of people who regularly throw food away :/
kuon 7y ago
It took me (us as we are a family now) to get a good system to manage food. With a few exceptions, like going on vacation, I never throw away meat or fish, it's not that hard to manage, if I don't eat it within 1-3 days, I either freeze it, salt it or boil it. What you can do with what product requires a bit of experience, for example chicken must be boiled, pork and fish can be salted... It's much harder with vegetables, because they are not all equal, you might keep an egg plant for a month and another one for a week. I highly recommend fridges with a vegetable compartment that monitor humidity and keep temperature just above 0°C, you can keep a salad in good condition for weeks in it. For milk derived product, I think the date on the product is a big culprit here. You can eat yogurt weeks after the "best by" date. Same for cheese. The good thing is that it's easy to tell if a yogurt or cheese has turned bad. For cheese we don't eat quickly, I use a vacuum pump with a hard container. There are also some little tricks like putting old yogurt in front at the height of the kids.
glup 7y ago
Three things I have found that help to cut down food waste (and times pent at the grocery store): - Develop a notion of cadence: how much food could you get through in a given interval (3-7 days), and how will this be affected by visitors, eating out, and travel. This might seem obvious but it's not — a lot of people have a "stocking up" mentality — if I buy a lot now, I won't need to go to the store for a while--that leads to suboptimal nutrition, more trips to the store, or eating out more b/c the fridge is empty. Using a standardized interval makes it much easier to learn adjustments. - Develop an inventory of "endgame" meals that are less perishable that you can always have on hand so you can maintain your cadence. Examples: Halloumi (grilling cheese, good for months), tacos (canned beans; refrigerated tortillas, cheese, peppers and onions are good for weeks), pasta (olive oil and parmesean). Things like charcuterie, esp smoked and jarred meats, and fermented foods were originally invented by peasants to last for a long time and they still have their use, whether you are peasant or not. By contrast, there are "opening" meals like fresh seafood, which really should be eaten on the same day as the trip to the grocery store. - Have so many food-safe containers on hand that any leftovers get stored without a second thought. Then your endgame meals get pushed back.
- r00fus 7y ago
  So much good advice there. I have noticed that (esp. when I'm dining alone at home) I can get into the rut where a) I didn't go to the store and then b) order takeout creates an a->b->a vicious circle. Developing a habit of going to the store (even if you don't feel like it) and getting some of those less-perishable items so you have endgame options is key. One thing I've found helps is to get really comfortable cooking. First I plan a bit getting a recipe (this is best done @work or on the way back. I stop over at a store. Finally, at home, I pour a small glass of wine/open a beer, turn on music or a podcast (or netflix) and walk through my recipe. This clearly takes time investment, so it's important to go through the habit so you can 1) be comfortable with it and 2) optimize it for you. Rewarding myself with desirable activities as part of the meal-prep is great. Taking pix and sharing what I made is also fun (even if it's bad - can be a good laugh).
ciconia 7y ago
I think the main reasons why so much food is wasted are the same reasons why so much water, petrol and electricity are wasted: all of those have become commodities in endless supply, literally streaming out of a pipe (well, a distribution pipe in the case of food) at the push of a button; and all those things are in fact too cheap (the price for the end user does not reflect the cost of production and of externalities like CO2 emissions, health and environmental damage). In my analysis, one of the best ways to reduce waste and over-consumption is to stop subsidies for agriculture, water, oil etc, and let prices reflect the real cost. Of course, in a growth-based economy this kind of change would never happen. But other solutions are also possible, even in the current system. Our family of four is slowly transitioning to sustainable consumption, starting from food and hopefully becoming fully autonomous someday with regards to water and electricity. One of the changes we've made is buying higher-quality products in smaller quantities, preferably from local sources. Another change is to try and close the waste loop. Any food not eaten by us will go to our dog and cat, and eventually to our chickens, who provide eggs, meat and soil fertiliser. Further optimisation is achieved by using dry toilets - our bodily waste is composted on site, the carbon is sequestered and eventually turns into soil. I strongly believe that "closing the loop" like that can be practiced on a much larger scale, even on a national scale.
- chillwaves 7y ago
  The pricing should penalize over-consumption. Let's say the first 10 gallons of gas per week are taxed at a certain rate, the next 10 gallons a higher rate and so forth.
  - new2628 7y ago
    Why the downvotes, this is an insightful (if inconvenient to some) point.
    - pessimizer 7y ago
      Why do you find the point insightful? A defense will work better than a lament.
mixmastamyk 7y ago
We have little to no food waste. Here’s what we do: - Wait until the food is 90+% gone before going to the grocery again. On the last day we might eat out once. - Eat fresh food first, frozen/canned last. - lots of containers for leftovers, they get gobbled in 24-48 hours. - Walk to the local market when a few in demand items run out, like bananas, baby spinach, or coconut/almond milk.
edoo 7y ago
I was raised on the concept that we are lucky to have an abundance of food and that there are people going hungry in the world. In my house almost no food goes to waste. I would feel like a scumbag if I was throwing out food.
mr_tristan 7y ago
It sure seems the size of the refrigerator itself is significant: if you have tons of space, you just store more, and it's easy to lose track of. Basically, a smaller fridge might comes with lifestyle changes, but, also a much smaller cognitive load. If you can't store that much, you don't have to recall when you bought it, or what you still have. In our house, a lot of food waste is in cooked or par-cooked food, which comes without a label, stored in a container. I'd be very curious, but I do notice that the US wastes a ridiculous amount of food (~30% I've read in recent articles). We also have the largest refrigerators. Of course, I seriously doubt you'd ever get any kind of regulation on refrigerator size in the US. But, it would be interesting to see how that compares with label changes. My suspicion is that in the US, the effects from label dates isn't that great. We just have too much stuff.
- esotericn 7y ago
  Having a large fridge seems super daft to me. A large freezer - now that's a lifesaver. Buy in bulk or cook batches and win the game. But a fridge? Once you go beyond N days of food per person, you're literally wasting food! It's impossible to use the space for the most part other than some condiments.
  - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    Soda? Beer? Cheese? Preserves? Lots of things have long shelf-lives and want cooling. Its not all about leftovers and vegetables. And even vegetables have their place. We preserve (can/freeze) garden produce. Where to put it between harvest and processing? The fridge.
    - esotericn 7y ago
      Heh. I guess I forget that soda is a thing. Doh :P
spodek 7y ago
Restore home economics to school, along with reasonable lunch time and recess. People think packaged food is more convenient or cheaper. Cooking from scratch isn't more expensive or time consuming. Not knowing how to cook and shop is expensive and time consuming. Here's a great guideline for "best by" and other dates: if the product has one, don't buy it. I don't think I've bought a product with one in several years.
- phonypc 7y ago
  >Here's a great guideline for "best by" and other dates: if the product has one, don't buy it. I don't think I've bought a product with one in several years. This doesn't make sense to me unless our locales differ greatly in labelling practices. Virtually everything but fresh produce comes with a date. Even independent butcher shops close the wrapping paper with a date sticker.
  - spodek 7y ago
    I challenged myself to avoid packaged food for a week. It went so well that I continued, in the process learning to cook from scratch. I was surprised to learn that it took less time, cost less, tasted better, and led me to see packaged food as unnecessary. I wrote a bunch of posts on it since I felt my ignorance and inexperience kept me from a better life and wanted to make the experience available to others http://joshuaspodek.com/avoiding-food-packaging-2 http://joshuaspodek.com/avoiding-food-packaging-2
- NoodleIncident 7y ago
  Bottled water has an "expiration" date. You must live somewhere with vastly different regulations.
vallismortis 7y ago
A lot of produce is already molding by the time it gets to the shelves, it just isn't visible to the consumer. I would love to see that problem fixed.
davidw 7y ago
It's like that joke: saving leftovers makes you feel good twice; once when you put them away, and the next time when you pull them out and realize you dodged a bullet by not eating them. My wife certainly treats the fridge like 'write only media' at times.
nrjames 7y ago
Good thing my parents keep it around and eat it anyhow. My dad once made me a sandwich with mayo that had "expired" nine years earlier.
- mikelyons 7y ago
  What's wrong with eating 9 year old mayonnaise?
  - nrjames 7y ago
    It was kind of crystalized and ew.... I just shudder thinking about it. To the point of the article, however, I didn't get sick.
danans 7y ago
A basic traditional trick to minimize waste is to repurpose yesterday's leftovers into today's entree. Nearly every culture has a version of this, from Asian fried rice to American casserole.
dcolkitt 7y ago
I'm pretty guilty of food waste. In particular fresh produce. But to be honest I'm unrepentant about it. The health benefits of a diet high in fruits and vegetables are just enormous. I'd much rather over-buy than under-buy. If someone in the household ends up eating junk food because there was no fruit/veggie option, that's a disastrous failure condition. The solution is to make sure that we never run out of fruits and vegetables, which necessarily entails keeping excess inventory that will eventually be thrown out. Is this financially wasteful? In a very narrow sense, sure. Yet even in just economic terms the health benefits from a diet high in fruits and vegetables overwhelms any grocery bill considerations. At the end of the day produce is much cheaper than insulin.
- ticmasta 7y ago
  certain aspects of nutrition are best met with fresh vegetables, and definitely taste desires, but supplementing with frozen fruits and veggies can be just as healthy, reduce waste and let you stock up in-season for later in the year. It's pretty hard to freeze leafy greens for a nice salad though...
  - dcolkitt 7y ago
    That's an excellent point about freezing. And we certainly do keep the freezer stocked to the brim with frozen options. Like you alluded to the biggest challenge is the taste factor. Eating veggies over junk food is already enough of an uphill battle willpower wise. Especially with kids in the house. Combined with the inconvenience of dethawing, they're just not that popular. I wish American super-markets would stock a wider range of fermented vegetables. In terms of long-term preservation, I find fermentation to be more appealing than freezing for most cases. Frozen veggies typically just taste like a flatter version of their fresh counterparts. Whereas fermented veggies have a unique taste that's appealing all on its own.
moosey 7y ago
My partner and bought a CSA share, and the entire food planning for each week is based on that CSA share. Often times, food is prepared on the weekend, and we eat only left overs all week. We also have a small garden outside. Between the two, we have little need to buy anything but proteins, all of which are vegan, and perhaps a few additional food items like bread. Our food waste and costs have dropped dramatically, but we did have to make a 'sacrifice' of choice. Each week, the food that is produced for consumption in the house is decided not by us, but by what is produced and distributed by the farm. Due to this process, we might have lost choice, but we have gained, surprisingly, variety. To expand on this idea: I think that the prevalence of choice in our supermarkets (example: fresh fruit in the middle of winter, wtf?) is massively inefficient, and should be reconsidered. Of course, when human society decides to get its collective act together and fight climate change, the point is moot. The entire 'choice regime' is dependent on high density fuels, and energy density will make these choices for us if/when carbon based fuels are made more expensive.
- dllthomas 7y ago
  You get back a little bit of choice if you pickle some of the produce.
tmaly 7y ago
I try to batch cook 1-2 large meals that everyone in the family likes. This lessens the likely hood that food would be wasted. I have also made it a habit of freezing half the meet or seafood when I buy in larger quantities. It is good to label when you freeze something as there is still a shelf life. I remember several years back there was a post on HN about a food expiration database that showed true dates food was good until. Many times the sell by date is not the same as the good until date.
bash-j 7y ago
Maybe supermarkets and their suppliers could stop selling bulk quantities at a huge discount? You can sometimes be paying double the price per kilo for the smallest packet, so you end up picking up the bigger packet thinking you're saving money, but how much will end up spoiling before you get around to using it? Supermarkets also often have specials where if you buy multiple packets you save a few dollars.
Wowfunhappy 7y ago
I live by myself and I eat very little. When I have to throwaway food, it's often because I wasn't able to purchase small enough portions in the first place. One example is eggs. They only stay good for 2–3 weeks, and I can't buy less than a half dozen. If I decide to make pancakes one morning (which I do occasionally, but rarely), that's one egg. I'll maybe find a use for one or two more before the batch goes bad. :(
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  Perhaps buy a smaller variety of foods, and make more items from from those, especially basic scratch items such as eggs. Boiled or scrambled eggs are a fast easy meal, and can be made in units of 1. My solution generally is to have standard stock meals and buy for those. There can be variety, though it's around the basics. And eating within a range rarely proves fatal.

114 points by EndXA 7y ago

For my family, the simple trick of getting a smaller fridge cut down on food waste. This has worked great, even though, we are avid cooks who almost always make meals from scratch.

specialist 7y ago
+1 smaller fridge Changing how I eat greatly reduced my food waste. Now eating a lot of bulk foods with high soluble fiber. Porridge, beans, lentils, seeds. Instapot for the win. Uncooked (dry) stores very well. All my excess produce goes into smoothies, also greatly reducing my waste.
mruts 7y ago
I have a hotel fridge and I just mostly order out and throw out the leftovers. Maybe a big fridge would make it worse but I doubt it.

EndXA 7y ago

You can find the original study here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921344919303350 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092134491... Study highlights: > Institutional signals of food quality drive consumer food waste behaviors. > Food-related routines affect whether refrigerated food gets eaten. > Ambiguous date labeling decreases the odds that refrigerated food will be eaten. > Respondents are systematically over-optimistic that refrigerated food will be eaten.

finaliteration 7y ago
> Ambiguous date labeling decreases the odds that refrigerated food will be eaten. Honestly this is part of why I throw food out maybe more frequently than others do. The plethora of dates is extremely confusing. Pair that with the fact that I’ve had awful food poisoning a few times in my life and I end up tossing food out that’s probably still fine to eat, but I just don’t want to risk it.
- MichaelApproved 7y ago
  Did you get food poisoning from home cooked food or when you were eating out? Find the pattern and avoid those situations. There's no need to be wasteful by blindly following those arbitrary dates. It's usually easy to tell when most food has spoiled by smelling or examining it. Another important aspect is making sure the food is cooked thoroughly.
  - DanBC 7y ago
    > It's usually easy to tell when most food has spoiled by smelling or examining it. Buy 100 fresh chickens from the supermarket. Then tell me which ones are contaminated with campylobacter just by smelling them. You can't. You can't. All smell tells you is when the food is rotting, but no-one eats rotting food because it smells foul and because it tastes foul. People get food poisoning because pathogens often are not detectable by smell or taste.
    - NLips 7y ago
      It disingenuous to ignore the parent's very next sentence, which recommends cooking food properly. It's estimated that the majority of raw chicken sold in the UK carries campylobacter, and a major factor in making sure it doesn't poison you is cooking the chicken through. No one is recommending eating raw meat and using your nose to tell whether that's OK.
      - MichaelApproved 7y ago
        Thank you.
      - phonypc 7y ago
        Granted the most charitable reading only implies their use for spoilage, in the context of food poisoning it's dangerous to recommend using your eyes and nose as tools. Even if followed by advice on thorough cooking.
      - DanBC 7y ago

neap24 7y ago

I’ve been thinking this for a while, but always thought the problem wasn’t overestimation of food needs, but rather aversion to making more frequent grocery trips (pushing people to “stock up”.

tonyedgecombe 7y ago
I suspect it's mostly about planning, if you walk in the supermarket without knowing what you need then you will probably come out with too much.
- benj111 7y ago
  It's quite a hard problem when you think about it. You're keeping track of potentially 100+ items, all need storing differently, all go off at different speeds, and you need to predict when you'll need more. You're basically running a shop in your head. Seen in that light, just as it's not advisable to try and run a business in your head, it shouldn't be advisable to try and run your kitchen the same way.
  - rdtwo 7y ago
    To solve the problem you would essentially need to keep a list of when things were put in and when they will spoil. But then you have the secondary problem of figuring out how to combine existing near spoiled ingredients into meals.
    - benj111 7y ago
      "combine existing near spoiled ingredients into meals." How do you think the Hawaiian pizza was invented? Edit: More seriously, a meal plan can help. Check the fridge to see what needs using, write a meal plan based on that, write a shopping list based on the plan. Not onerous when you get used to it.
- MichaelApproved 7y ago
  Exactly this. Most people have enough of a routine that they can predict what they'll be eating for the week. Plan the meals for the week before you go shopping then make a list of what you'll need for those meals. Buy only from that list.

antidaily 7y ago

I've figured out meats. I can vacuum-seal, freeze and throw right into sous vide. Veggies and especially fruit have to be eaten almost immediately or they go bad (mold). I eat a lot of zucchini and carrots because they'll keep a while.

MichaelApproved 7y ago
> Veggies and especially fruit have to be eaten almost immediately or they go bad (mold). That seems like an exaggeration or maybe you're not storing them correctly. What do you buy and how do you store it that won't last several days to a week?
- jerkstate 7y ago
  Mold is a common problem for small soft fruit that come in plastic clamshells, like blueberries and raspberries. Often it has a little mold right from the store. I try to wash these in water with a some white vinegar as soon as I get home from the grocery store and then right in the fridge.
  - MichaelApproved 7y ago
    And they last for several days in the refrigerator, right?
    - jerkstate 7y ago
      There can definitely be too much mold to eat right when you open it. You can usually return it, but for a couple of bucks it's a hassle. And if you don't wash it right away, even a small amount of mold will grow to more than you want to try to wash/cut off in a couple of days. I buy and eat a lot of fruit and my experience agrees with OPs, at least in some cases.
      - MichaelApproved 7y ago
        > at least in some cases. So most of the time, fruits and vegetables keep for days and don't have to be eaten immediately, right? I'm being not picky because this is a conversation in a thread about how people throw out a lot of food. That waste is due, in part, to false sense of spoilage and OP was furthering that false sense.

k__ 7y ago

This doesn't surprise me when I see how big the fridges in the US are.

bobthechef 7y ago
I’m not sure why you were downvoted. In my experience, one reason why food goes to waste is because the further it travels back to the fridge the more likely it is to be forgotten. Of course, that isn’t the only reason and that process seems to be biased toward certain kinds of foods. Worth examining, though. Perhaps shallower fridges make sense.

exhilaration 7y ago

One of the best tips I learned about reducing food waste is to freeze bread and avoid putting it into the fridge. Frozen bread stays fresh and can go directly into a toaster or toaster oven: Harold McGee replies: Good point to bring up! Bread and other lean baked goods are the exception to the rule that cold storage is good. Bread stales faster at refrigerator temperatures than at room temperature. So if you want to keep a loaf for a couple of days, a breadbox is better than the fridge. For much longer than that, the freezer is the best place. https://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/09/harold-mcgee-on-bread-and-baking/ https://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/09/harold-mc...

stronglikedan 7y ago
I can only get through a loaf every couple of weeks, so I keep a loaf in the freezer, and only slice off a couple slices at a time. Let them sit on a towel for 5 minutes, and they're as good as fresh without the need to toast them. Plus, it's easier to slice while frozen without smooshing it, and fresh sliced beats store sliced any day of the week.
- mistermann 7y ago
  You cut it while frozen?
  - hanniabu 7y ago
    He keeps a circular saw in his kitchen
    - ben509 7y ago
      ... that's not normal?
      - mbrock 7y ago
        This is why I do my cooking in the workshop so I can use the table saw. A crosscut sled with a stop block is hard to beat for cutting many toast slices to the same width. And of course there’s no better potato peeler than a lathe.

jerkstate 7y ago

There are some things that people just get a lot better at with life experience, like managing your food. When I was younger my fridge was full of moldy takeout containers. Now I use a meal planning app that generates a shopping list for me (plus other staples that we go through like hand fruit, bread, milk etc.) My grocery bill for home cooked breakfast, lunch and dinner 5-6 days a week for a family of 4 is about $200 a week. I think it's kind of high, but we mostly eat fresh meat, veggies, and fruit, not much grain or processed food, and we waste almost no food. We do spend on average an hour a day preparing lunch and dinner, but that's usually family time where we're all in the kitchen talking. One of my favorite feelings is after putting everything away from a grocery shopping trip and seeing my kitchen and refrigerator full of healthy food that I know will nourish my family for the upcoming week. edit: App I use is eMeals, I tried several and this is my favorite so far, we are on the Paleo plan right now but they have maybe 8 or 10 different plans and you can switch pretty much at will. If anyone else has one they love please let me know!

lambic 7y ago
Which app?
Limb 7y ago
Mind sharing the name of the meal planning app?
- obelos 7y ago
  Not the OC, but I've used https://www.plantoeat.com/ https://www.plantoeat.com/ for a couple of years now, cooking for a family of five. It's a wonderful tool, especially for only $5 month.
graeme 7y ago
Also interested in the app

vnorilo 7y ago

While thinking about this I feel most of my fridge graveyard is because I'd rather eat something else. That's horribly entitled and now I feel bad.

mensetmanusman 7y ago

Instacart has helped our family because we can have 2-3 deliveries a week with fresh produce. Before, it was such a hassle to bring kids <5 yrs old shopping that we would stock up...

juskrey 7y ago

Much of the vaccines storages are going to die and are regularly replaced just to die again, but if you keep highly optimized storage just for current purposes, you are screwed big time in the case of outbreak. Same here.

pjc50 7y ago
How does that analogy work? You're keeping your fridge overstocked in case of an outbreak of .. hunger? Unexpected guests?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

mcfunk 7y ago

An interesting related question -- can refrigerator design help to address this issue? We have one of those side-by-side fridges with more shelf depth than shelf width. The design results in food getting pushed far back where it is easy to miss/forget food that is there and difficult to access food without causing an avalanche of containers. I often wonder if our (rented) home had a different style of refrigerator if we would deal with less forgotten/spoiled foods.

rdtwo 7y ago
Honestly I don’t think there is any innovation in the appliance space. The companies take the same components slap a new face plate on them or a led display and sell the same shit at different price points. In 2019 I’m still not sure that you can get a PID controlled oven or fridge and that should be trivially easy to implement.
- eurg 7y ago
  Modern fridges have temperature sensors, per-drawer ventilated air-cooling, auto-detection of when particular high-thermal mass un-frozen food (i.e. a turkey) is added and start quick-freezing, and provide alarms when door or cooling fail. Also, energy efficiency for the EU A+++ rated units is really good. And you get that already for the cheap units. So, it's a freezer, it freezes, and it doesn't send a post to Facebook. The only complaint I would have is their loudness. Modern extra-slow compressors are often (perceived) louder than previous-gen units. Also: given that even DIY ovens usually start with "get a cheap PID controller from e-bay", I doubt that commercial ones use anything else.
  - rdtwo 7y ago
    My fridge is modern but pretty simple. It’s really just a freezer with a vent that regulates fridge temps. It’s got some othe functions like defrost and seal warming but it’s a remarkably crude device
- qes 7y ago
  Appliances, in my opinion, are a racket that artificially creates stratification among models to provide a variety of price points. That said, very few refrigerators out of the large number of available models (many more than say dishwashers or clothes washer/dryers) have the same interior layout. Even two nearby models from the same manufacturer with minor feature differences will have significantly different layouts, to the point that you can't just choose to get a fridge with or without feature X without also choosing between differences in the likely more important aspect of layout.

ophsj 7y ago

Is this some American thing? Because I can say that I very, very, very rarely throw away food. I throw away like two minor things every year, and only because they are completely inedible. It's just so alien to me to think of people who regularly throw food away :/

kuon 7y ago

It took me (us as we are a family now) to get a good system to manage food. With a few exceptions, like going on vacation, I never throw away meat or fish, it's not that hard to manage, if I don't eat it within 1-3 days, I either freeze it, salt it or boil it. What you can do with what product requires a bit of experience, for example chicken must be boiled, pork and fish can be salted... It's much harder with vegetables, because they are not all equal, you might keep an egg plant for a month and another one for a week. I highly recommend fridges with a vegetable compartment that monitor humidity and keep temperature just above 0°C, you can keep a salad in good condition for weeks in it. For milk derived product, I think the date on the product is a big culprit here. You can eat yogurt weeks after the "best by" date. Same for cheese. The good thing is that it's easy to tell if a yogurt or cheese has turned bad. For cheese we don't eat quickly, I use a vacuum pump with a hard container. There are also some little tricks like putting old yogurt in front at the height of the kids.

glup 7y ago

Three things I have found that help to cut down food waste (and times pent at the grocery store): - Develop a notion of cadence: how much food could you get through in a given interval (3-7 days), and how will this be affected by visitors, eating out, and travel. This might seem obvious but it's not — a lot of people have a "stocking up" mentality — if I buy a lot now, I won't need to go to the store for a while--that leads to suboptimal nutrition, more trips to the store, or eating out more b/c the fridge is empty. Using a standardized interval makes it much easier to learn adjustments. - Develop an inventory of "endgame" meals that are less perishable that you can always have on hand so you can maintain your cadence. Examples: Halloumi (grilling cheese, good for months), tacos (canned beans; refrigerated tortillas, cheese, peppers and onions are good for weeks), pasta (olive oil and parmesean). Things like charcuterie, esp smoked and jarred meats, and fermented foods were originally invented by peasants to last for a long time and they still have their use, whether you are peasant or not. By contrast, there are "opening" meals like fresh seafood, which really should be eaten on the same day as the trip to the grocery store. - Have so many food-safe containers on hand that any leftovers get stored without a second thought. Then your endgame meals get pushed back.

r00fus 7y ago
So much good advice there. I have noticed that (esp. when I'm dining alone at home) I can get into the rut where a) I didn't go to the store and then b) order takeout creates an a->b->a vicious circle. Developing a habit of going to the store (even if you don't feel like it) and getting some of those less-perishable items so you have endgame options is key. One thing I've found helps is to get really comfortable cooking. First I plan a bit getting a recipe (this is best done @work or on the way back. I stop over at a store. Finally, at home, I pour a small glass of wine/open a beer, turn on music or a podcast (or netflix) and walk through my recipe. This clearly takes time investment, so it's important to go through the habit so you can 1) be comfortable with it and 2) optimize it for you. Rewarding myself with desirable activities as part of the meal-prep is great. Taking pix and sharing what I made is also fun (even if it's bad - can be a good laugh).

ciconia 7y ago

I think the main reasons why so much food is wasted are the same reasons why so much water, petrol and electricity are wasted: all of those have become commodities in endless supply, literally streaming out of a pipe (well, a distribution pipe in the case of food) at the push of a button; and all those things are in fact too cheap (the price for the end user does not reflect the cost of production and of externalities like CO2 emissions, health and environmental damage). In my analysis, one of the best ways to reduce waste and over-consumption is to stop subsidies for agriculture, water, oil etc, and let prices reflect the real cost. Of course, in a growth-based economy this kind of change would never happen. But other solutions are also possible, even in the current system. Our family of four is slowly transitioning to sustainable consumption, starting from food and hopefully becoming fully autonomous someday with regards to water and electricity. One of the changes we've made is buying higher-quality products in smaller quantities, preferably from local sources. Another change is to try and close the waste loop. Any food not eaten by us will go to our dog and cat, and eventually to our chickens, who provide eggs, meat and soil fertiliser. Further optimisation is achieved by using dry toilets - our bodily waste is composted on site, the carbon is sequestered and eventually turns into soil. I strongly believe that "closing the loop" like that can be practiced on a much larger scale, even on a national scale.

chillwaves 7y ago
The pricing should penalize over-consumption. Let's say the first 10 gallons of gas per week are taxed at a certain rate, the next 10 gallons a higher rate and so forth.
- new2628 7y ago
  Why the downvotes, this is an insightful (if inconvenient to some) point.
  - pessimizer 7y ago
    Why do you find the point insightful? A defense will work better than a lament.

mixmastamyk 7y ago

We have little to no food waste. Here’s what we do: - Wait until the food is 90+% gone before going to the grocery again. On the last day we might eat out once. - Eat fresh food first, frozen/canned last. - lots of containers for leftovers, they get gobbled in 24-48 hours. - Walk to the local market when a few in demand items run out, like bananas, baby spinach, or coconut/almond milk.

edoo 7y ago

I was raised on the concept that we are lucky to have an abundance of food and that there are people going hungry in the world. In my house almost no food goes to waste. I would feel like a scumbag if I was throwing out food.

mr_tristan 7y ago

It sure seems the size of the refrigerator itself is significant: if you have tons of space, you just store more, and it's easy to lose track of. Basically, a smaller fridge might comes with lifestyle changes, but, also a much smaller cognitive load. If you can't store that much, you don't have to recall when you bought it, or what you still have. In our house, a lot of food waste is in cooked or par-cooked food, which comes without a label, stored in a container. I'd be very curious, but I do notice that the US wastes a ridiculous amount of food (~30% I've read in recent articles). We also have the largest refrigerators. Of course, I seriously doubt you'd ever get any kind of regulation on refrigerator size in the US. But, it would be interesting to see how that compares with label changes. My suspicion is that in the US, the effects from label dates isn't that great. We just have too much stuff.

esotericn 7y ago
Having a large fridge seems super daft to me. A large freezer - now that's a lifesaver. Buy in bulk or cook batches and win the game. But a fridge? Once you go beyond N days of food per person, you're literally wasting food! It's impossible to use the space for the most part other than some condiments.
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  Soda? Beer? Cheese? Preserves? Lots of things have long shelf-lives and want cooling. Its not all about leftovers and vegetables. And even vegetables have their place. We preserve (can/freeze) garden produce. Where to put it between harvest and processing? The fridge.
  - esotericn 7y ago
    Heh. I guess I forget that soda is a thing. Doh :P

spodek 7y ago

Restore home economics to school, along with reasonable lunch time and recess. People think packaged food is more convenient or cheaper. Cooking from scratch isn't more expensive or time consuming. Not knowing how to cook and shop is expensive and time consuming. Here's a great guideline for "best by" and other dates: if the product has one, don't buy it. I don't think I've bought a product with one in several years.

phonypc 7y ago
>Here's a great guideline for "best by" and other dates: if the product has one, don't buy it. I don't think I've bought a product with one in several years. This doesn't make sense to me unless our locales differ greatly in labelling practices. Virtually everything but fresh produce comes with a date. Even independent butcher shops close the wrapping paper with a date sticker.
- spodek 7y ago
  I challenged myself to avoid packaged food for a week. It went so well that I continued, in the process learning to cook from scratch. I was surprised to learn that it took less time, cost less, tasted better, and led me to see packaged food as unnecessary. I wrote a bunch of posts on it since I felt my ignorance and inexperience kept me from a better life and wanted to make the experience available to others http://joshuaspodek.com/avoiding-food-packaging-2 http://joshuaspodek.com/avoiding-food-packaging-2
NoodleIncident 7y ago
Bottled water has an "expiration" date. You must live somewhere with vastly different regulations.

vallismortis 7y ago

A lot of produce is already molding by the time it gets to the shelves, it just isn't visible to the consumer. I would love to see that problem fixed.

davidw 7y ago

It's like that joke: saving leftovers makes you feel good twice; once when you put them away, and the next time when you pull them out and realize you dodged a bullet by not eating them. My wife certainly treats the fridge like 'write only media' at times.

nrjames 7y ago

Good thing my parents keep it around and eat it anyhow. My dad once made me a sandwich with mayo that had "expired" nine years earlier.

mikelyons 7y ago
What's wrong with eating 9 year old mayonnaise?
- nrjames 7y ago
  It was kind of crystalized and ew.... I just shudder thinking about it. To the point of the article, however, I didn't get sick.

danans 7y ago

A basic traditional trick to minimize waste is to repurpose yesterday's leftovers into today's entree. Nearly every culture has a version of this, from Asian fried rice to American casserole.

dcolkitt 7y ago

I'm pretty guilty of food waste. In particular fresh produce. But to be honest I'm unrepentant about it. The health benefits of a diet high in fruits and vegetables are just enormous. I'd much rather over-buy than under-buy. If someone in the household ends up eating junk food because there was no fruit/veggie option, that's a disastrous failure condition. The solution is to make sure that we never run out of fruits and vegetables, which necessarily entails keeping excess inventory that will eventually be thrown out. Is this financially wasteful? In a very narrow sense, sure. Yet even in just economic terms the health benefits from a diet high in fruits and vegetables overwhelms any grocery bill considerations. At the end of the day produce is much cheaper than insulin.

ticmasta 7y ago
certain aspects of nutrition are best met with fresh vegetables, and definitely taste desires, but supplementing with frozen fruits and veggies can be just as healthy, reduce waste and let you stock up in-season for later in the year. It's pretty hard to freeze leafy greens for a nice salad though...
- dcolkitt 7y ago
  That's an excellent point about freezing. And we certainly do keep the freezer stocked to the brim with frozen options. Like you alluded to the biggest challenge is the taste factor. Eating veggies over junk food is already enough of an uphill battle willpower wise. Especially with kids in the house. Combined with the inconvenience of dethawing, they're just not that popular. I wish American super-markets would stock a wider range of fermented vegetables. In terms of long-term preservation, I find fermentation to be more appealing than freezing for most cases. Frozen veggies typically just taste like a flatter version of their fresh counterparts. Whereas fermented veggies have a unique taste that's appealing all on its own.

moosey 7y ago

My partner and bought a CSA share, and the entire food planning for each week is based on that CSA share. Often times, food is prepared on the weekend, and we eat only left overs all week. We also have a small garden outside. Between the two, we have little need to buy anything but proteins, all of which are vegan, and perhaps a few additional food items like bread. Our food waste and costs have dropped dramatically, but we did have to make a 'sacrifice' of choice. Each week, the food that is produced for consumption in the house is decided not by us, but by what is produced and distributed by the farm. Due to this process, we might have lost choice, but we have gained, surprisingly, variety. To expand on this idea: I think that the prevalence of choice in our supermarkets (example: fresh fruit in the middle of winter, wtf?) is massively inefficient, and should be reconsidered. Of course, when human society decides to get its collective act together and fight climate change, the point is moot. The entire 'choice regime' is dependent on high density fuels, and energy density will make these choices for us if/when carbon based fuels are made more expensive.

dllthomas 7y ago
You get back a little bit of choice if you pickle some of the produce.

tmaly 7y ago

I try to batch cook 1-2 large meals that everyone in the family likes. This lessens the likely hood that food would be wasted. I have also made it a habit of freezing half the meet or seafood when I buy in larger quantities. It is good to label when you freeze something as there is still a shelf life. I remember several years back there was a post on HN about a food expiration database that showed true dates food was good until. Many times the sell by date is not the same as the good until date.

bash-j 7y ago

Maybe supermarkets and their suppliers could stop selling bulk quantities at a huge discount? You can sometimes be paying double the price per kilo for the smallest packet, so you end up picking up the bigger packet thinking you're saving money, but how much will end up spoiling before you get around to using it? Supermarkets also often have specials where if you buy multiple packets you save a few dollars.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago

I live by myself and I eat very little. When I have to throwaway food, it's often because I wasn't able to purchase small enough portions in the first place. One example is eggs. They only stay good for 2–3 weeks, and I can't buy less than a half dozen. If I decide to make pancakes one morning (which I do occasionally, but rarely), that's one egg. I'll maybe find a use for one or two more before the batch goes bad. :(

dredmorbius 7y ago
Perhaps buy a smaller variety of foods, and make more items from from those, especially basic scratch items such as eggs. Boiled or scrambled eggs are a fast easy meal, and can be made in units of 1. My solution generally is to have standard stock meals and buy for those. There can be variety, though it's around the basics. And eating within a range rarely proves fatal.