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The issue is with portions. There is no need to give a human being 5 meals in one dish in one meal. You are just asking for them to a) get fat b) waste it. Oth

by electic 14y ago

The issue is with portions. There is no need to give a human being 5 meals in one dish in one meal. You are just asking for them to a) get fat b) waste it. Other countries, no doubt, have lower waste percentages because their portions are smaller.

tzs 14y ago
That's a big oversimplification. The waste is at all levels of the food supply chain, from producer to consumer. There was an excellent special on Food Network called "The Big Waste" that looked into this, by way of a cooking competition. Here's the description: -------- First class chefs Bobby Flay, Michael Symon, Anne Burrell and Alex Guarnaschelli tackle one of the most massive problems in food today - waste! Divided into two teams, with only 48 hours on the clock, they are challenged to create a multi course gourmet banquet worthy of their great reputations, but with a big twist; they can only use food that is on its way to the trash. The chefs' hunt takes them from grocery aisles to produce farms, and orchard lines to garbage piles, as they attempt to source enough ingredients to feed a gathering crowd. Bobby and Michael square off against Anne and Alex, as they challenge their views of food waste and how and why it is created. -------- Some examples of things I remember them finding and using (I may not be remembering these completely accurately, so if someone else watched it, please jump in with corrections): • Fruit at an orchard that was sized or shaped wrong and so was missed by the automated harvesting machines • Fish at a fish market that was bruised or damaged. • Cuts of meat that weren't used in any of the items in a restaurant that did its own butchering. • Produce from markets that was old enough to have lost some color. It's still fine culinarily, especially for any dish where it isn't important for the presentation, but it doesn't sell well compared to the colorful stuff so the markets clear it out to make room. (I believe this was the food that the blurb is talking about from garbage piles--although the chefs did not actually get it from garbage piles. They got it from the market employees who were carrying it out to dump it on the garbage pile). It was quite revealing. The chefs produced meals that would have been quite at home on the menus at any top fine dining restaurant, all with food that was considered waste before it ever reached a consumer.
eamsen 14y ago
Smaller portions do not help with the logistical (disposing food is less expensive than losing out on sales) and product placement (occupying more shelf space with your brand increases sales) issues. We will need to dig deeper to the core issue, the consumer's desires. The USA is not dramatically leading at food wasting either, Germany also wastes approximately half of all its produced food. Here is an in-depth study on that topic (in German) http://www.bmelv.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/Ernaehrung/WvL/Studie_Lebensmittelabfaelle_Kurzfassung.pdf?__blob=publicationFile http://www.bmelv.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/Ernaehrung/WvL/Stud... But then again - when it comes to food - Germany is to Europe, what the USA is to the world, so it might not be the best example.

by electic 14y ago

tzs 14y ago

That's a big oversimplification. The waste is at all levels of the food supply chain, from producer to consumer. There was an excellent special on Food Network called "The Big Waste" that looked into this, by way of a cooking competition. Here's the description: -------- First class chefs Bobby Flay, Michael Symon, Anne Burrell and Alex Guarnaschelli tackle one of the most massive problems in food today - waste! Divided into two teams, with only 48 hours on the clock, they are challenged to create a multi course gourmet banquet worthy of their great reputations, but with a big twist; they can only use food that is on its way to the trash. The chefs' hunt takes them from grocery aisles to produce farms, and orchard lines to garbage piles, as they attempt to source enough ingredients to feed a gathering crowd. Bobby and Michael square off against Anne and Alex, as they challenge their views of food waste and how and why it is created. -------- Some examples of things I remember them finding and using (I may not be remembering these completely accurately, so if someone else watched it, please jump in with corrections): • Fruit at an orchard that was sized or shaped wrong and so was missed by the automated harvesting machines • Fish at a fish market that was bruised or damaged. • Cuts of meat that weren't used in any of the items in a restaurant that did its own butchering. • Produce from markets that was old enough to have lost some color. It's still fine culinarily, especially for any dish where it isn't important for the presentation, but it doesn't sell well compared to the colorful stuff so the markets clear it out to make room. (I believe this was the food that the blurb is talking about from garbage piles--although the chefs did not actually get it from garbage piles. They got it from the market employees who were carrying it out to dump it on the garbage pile). It was quite revealing. The chefs produced meals that would have been quite at home on the menus at any top fine dining restaurant, all with food that was considered waste before it ever reached a consumer.

eamsen 14y ago

Smaller portions do not help with the logistical (disposing food is less expensive than losing out on sales) and product placement (occupying more shelf space with your brand increases sales) issues. We will need to dig deeper to the core issue, the consumer's desires. The USA is not dramatically leading at food wasting either, Germany also wastes approximately half of all its produced food. Here is an in-depth study on that topic (in German) http://www.bmelv.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/Ernaehrung/WvL/Studie_Lebensmittelabfaelle_Kurzfassung.pdf?__blob=publicationFile http://www.bmelv.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/Ernaehrung/WvL/Stud... But then again - when it comes to food - Germany is to Europe, what the USA is to the world, so it might not be the best example.