On Food Waste

"At the moment, we are trashing our land to grow food that no one eats." - Tristram Stuart, "The Global Food Waste Scandal" (TED)

Food waste has always been one of my biggest pet peeves. I'm apalled when I see people throw away barely-touched plates of food at social events or walk past garbage bins full of perfectly good grocery items approaching their sell-by date. These images strike me as symbols of injustice and ingratitude. When I bring up my distaste for waste in a world full of hunger, people get defensive and say things like, "Well, I can't really send it to Africa, can I?" No, maybe not, but come on! You can't let yourself off the hook that easily when your actions are a living reminder that our food system is broken in so many important ways. Wake up, people, you are not powerless.

Someone recently sent me this TED talk dealing with the issue:
http://www.ted.com/talks/tristram_stuart_the_global_food_waste_scandal.html

In America we are familiar with food waste. We see it all the time. But I don't think any of us really think about the full measure of what is being wasted in our food systems. Because it's not just about kids throwing away half of their lunch in school cafeterias. It's not just about the cucumbers that go bad in your fridge. The way our systems are structured create waste on a massive scale at every level. (Tristam Stuart starts talking about this at about 6:23 in the TED talk linked here. Here's the run-down with a bit of commentary from me.)

Somewhere around 1/9 of what is grown in the world is wasted while still in the field, mostly in the developing world through lack of infrastructure and preservation technologies. (Opportunity for improvement? Definitely.) Then one third of that agricultural output (and we're talking human-consumption grade crops, here) is fed to livestock for meat and dairy production. Think of that - one third! And the food yields from those animals is only one third of the input... so we've just lost - wasted - another 2/9 of our food supply. (I'll spare you the brunt of my opinions on this matter here. Suffice it to say... that irks me quite a bit. If you're interested, see my previous post about "Why I'm a Vegetarian.") Then we get to what we traditionally think of as waste - I'll call that "trash can waste." That by itself accounts for another 2/9 of the world's food supply. But the vast majority of that is not about what gets tossed from your household fridge or pantry. It's day-old, but perfectly edible bakery goods or vegetables that just aren't pretty enough for our supermarkets.  All told, we are wasting more than half of the world's food supply while millions of people starve. Why is no one talking about this?

Starting at about 11:20, Tristram Stuart talks about some solutions. Let's make some noise about it. Put pressure on the organizations with control over it. Learn how to keep your own food fresh longer. Figure out what to do with the inevitable food waste (aka, handle livestock production more sensibly!).

And I'm sure there are many more things we can do about this. I'm gonna do some more thinking about it. Would you do so with me? If you have ideas, please comment! Because when it comes down to it, the coexistance of food waste and starvation in the same world is a glaring injustice. And as someone striving to be "my brother's keeper" (see previous posts), I want to know what I can do about it.

Bibliography

I almost forgot! Here are all of the sources I used for my paper. (I don't want to be plagiarizing anyone's work!) This can also serve as a great list for further reading. I especially recommend Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and Patricia Klindienst's The Earth Knows My Name. Those are two of the books that first got me interested in food issues. Wallace Stegner's chapter on "The Sense of Place" is also great. And, while I haven't read them yet, I expect great things from Wendell Berry's The Unsettling of America and Carolyn Steel's Hungry City. I hope to find the time to read them, uh, relatively soon.

Works Cited

Bell, David, and Gill Valentine. Consuming Geographies:  We Are Where We Eat. London: Routledge, 1997. Print.

Berry, Wendell. The Unsettling of America:  Culture & Agriculture. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1977. Print.

"Central Intelligence Agency World Factbook: United States." Central Intelligence Agency. CIA, 28 Nov. 2012. Web. 06 Dec. 2012.

 "Convenience (food) - at Any Price? When It Works." IBeamforLife. N.p., 2012. Web.

 "English Proverbs | The Phrasefinder." The Meanings and Origins of Sayings and Phrases. Ed. Gary Martin. Web. 21 Apr. 2011. <http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/proverbs.html>.

 Gabaccia, Donna R.. We Are What We Eat:  Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998. Print.

 Gurian, Anita, PhD. "Family Meals Matter - Staying Connected." NYU Child Study Center. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Dec. 2012.

 Harris, Patricia, David Lyon, and Sue McLaughlin. The Meaning of Food:  The Companion to the PBS Television Series. Guilford, Conn.: Globe Pequot Press, 2005. Print.

 Jordan, William R.. "Chapter 2." The Sunflower Forest:  Ecological Restoration and the New Communion with Nature. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. 28-53. Print.

 Kingsolver, Barbara, Steven L. Hopp, and Camille Kingsolver. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. 1. ed. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007. Print.

 Klindienst, Patricia. The Earth Knows My Name:  Food, Culture, and Sustainability in the Gardens of Ethnic Americans. Boston: Beacon Press, 2006. Print.

 McLean, Fiona. "Introduction: Heritage and Identity." International Journal of Heritage Studies 12.1 (2006): n. pag. Taylor & Francis Online. Web. 6 Dec. 2012.

 Steel, Carolyn. Hungry City:  How Food Shapes Our Lives.. London: Chatto & Windus, 2008. Print.

 Stegner, Wallace. "The Sense of Place." Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs:  Living and Writing in the West. New York: Random House, 1992. 199-206. Print.

Food and Identity in Modern America, Part 6: Conclusion and a Call to Action

Understanding of and involvement in the genesis of the food one eats shapes an individual’s identity by forming relationships between the individual and other people, ancestry and cultural heritage, and place. Distortion of these food-based relationships in mainstream American food systems muddles identity. Eating alone and on the run, the consumer is rarely aware of the ingredients in her meal. She gives no thought to cultural or historical associations, the place of origin, grower, conditions, or process of production or preparation of her food. She makes no attempt to understand and use food as a medium to engage the other and thereby develop her own identity. Her identity is obscured by her reduced awareness of her limits, context, and relationship to the other in the categories discussed above and by the limited extent to which she incorporates these into her understanding of self.

            If we are to preserve a strong sense of individual and collective identity, Americans can no longer afford to “let food take a back seat” (Steel 5). It is imperative that Americans take a more active role in their relationship to food in order to preserve the relationships that food mediates. As we choose to devote time and attention to understanding where our food comes from in every sense—biologically, geographically, culturally, and otherwise—we will develop stronger, clearer personal identities and create a vibrant food culture through which we can connect to other people, to heritage, and to the places where we live and eat. We will understand our food better as we engage it on every level, from seed to plate. Instead of heating up a TV dinner in the microwave or grabbing a burger to go, take the time to cook a meal with your family. Use fresh ingredients. Get familiar with what is grown in your area. Visit your local farmer’s market. Make friends with the farmers and ask them to show you their fields. Talk to your ancestors about foods they used to eat. Create food traditions and pass them down to your kids.  These and other activities can help us to better understand not only what we are eating but, by extension, who we are.

Food and Identity in Modern America, Part 5: Loss of Connection to Food

Food is fundamental to human life and the development of personal identity, yet understanding of and involvement in one’s food is not the norm in modern American society. Fewer Americans are involved in food production than ever before. In 2009, less than 0.7% of Americans were employed in the agricultural sector (CIA World Factbook). Having moved off of the farm, the vast majority of Americans are now largely separated from the biological origins of their food and the place from which it comes. With convenient access to diverse, abundant, and pre-prepared foods at supermarkets like the one pictured in figure 1, it is no longer necessary for the majority of us to understand or participate in the origins of our food. Few modern Americans’ diets reflect any certain ethnic or cultural background or distinctive food culture. As with fast food or the frozen TV dinner, the food itself has suffered a “loss of identity” by being stripped of differentiating characteristics and becoming “just another part of the blend, an anonymous commodity” (Kingsolver 161). With the advent of“convenience foods” many Americans have moved not only off of the farm but also out of the kitchen. Fast food, microwavable meals, and other packaged foods reduce necessary thought and preparation time to almost zero. As a result, individuals come together around the preparation and consumption of their food less and less frequently. The NYU Child Study Center reports a 33% decline in family meals over the last 20 years as all family members put in longer hours at work, school, and extra-curricular activities (Gurian). As Carolyn Steel says in her book Hungry City: “Few of us know much about food, or care to invest our time and effort in it. … [We are] happy to let food take a back seat as we get on with our busy lives, unconscious of what it takes to keep us fuelled” (Steel 5). As Americans have become more specialized, we have lost our understanding and stopped engaging in the origins of our food. In doing so, we have weakened our food-based relationships to place, heritage, and other people and thereby obscured the parts of personal identity that come from them.

Food and Identity in Modern America, Part 4: Sense of Place

Individuals also form their identity partly from their connection to place. In his chapter entitled “The Sense of Place” from Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Wallace Stegner echoes renowned author and essayist Wendell Berry in saying, “If you don't know where you are … you don't know who you are” (Stegner). Stegner and Berry are two of many authors who affirm the importance of sense of place in the development of a personal identity. Stegner goes so far as to say of his rootless childhood, “Some towns that we lived in were never real to me. They were only the raw material of places, as I was the raw material of a person” (Stegner). For Stegner and many others, sense of place is central to identity development.

Understanding and engaging in the genesis of one’s food helps an individual to develop this sense of place. Kingsolver asserts that the need for a sense of place can be met in part by understanding and engaging in a local food culture. “A food culture is not something that gets sold to people. It arises out of a place, a soil, a climate, a history, a temperament, a collective sense of belonging” (Kingsolver 17). For Kingsolver, a food culture is a reflection of the place from which it springs. It is a method of accessing, engaging, and developing a relationship with that place. In a very real sense, understanding food as coming from a place helps the individual make that place part of him or herself. In The Earth Knows My Name, interviewee Gerard Bentryn relates a conversation he had with a local while surveying in British Columbia that illustrates this point:

“‘Oh, so you’re out in the woods, and you’re learning about this valley.’ He said, ‘I’ve never left this valley. Everything that I eat comes out of this valley. Everybody that I’m related to, all of my family, is buried in this valley. When I eat, I eat the people and the place. I’m made out of Vancouver Island. But look at what you’re eating.’ I said, Yeah?’ and he said, ‘You’re made out of tin cans. Because that’s what you eat out of.’ … We use the phrase ‘We are what we eat,’ but I also think we are where we eat. That’s the thing people miss. This need to be of a place.” (Klindienst 85)

Bentryn here emphasizes the connection between place, food, and identity. Through developing a food-based relationship with a place, a person can develop an identity that is “rooted” in and shaped by that place.

Food and Identity in Modern America, Part 3: Connection to Heritage

Connection to ancestry and heritage allows individuals to understand themselves in the context of a people and a culture. In her introduction to the International Journal for Heritage Studies’ special edition on heritage and identity, scholar Fiona McLean reminds her audience that “it has long been held that heritage has ‘an identity‐conferring status’” (McLean 2006). Her article discusses several levels on which individuals derive their identity from their heritage. Heritage allows the individual to incorporate a national identity into his or her personal identity. By participating in a national identity, the individual is able to understand him or herself in the context of the larger “story” of the nation in which he or she lives. On a non-national level, heritage also places the individual within the story of an ethnicity and a familial line. The individual connects to each of these levels or components of identity through traditions and a feeling of belonging to that particular heritage. This connection allows the person to understand him or herself within the context of that heritage and incorporate it into his or her personal identity.

Understanding food’s ancestral and cultural origins and significance develops identity by connecting an individual to a heritage or a people. Individuals connect to their memories and heritage through eating the food associated with them. Different cultures often have traditional foods that bear special significance for their participants. For example, some countries relate their traditional foods to their national identities in phrases like “as American as apple pie” or “tan tico como el gallo pinto,” which is Spanish for “as Costa Rican as gallo pinto (the traditional breakfast dish of beans and rice).” In Mexico, special events such as weddings and quinceñeras are nearly always celebrated with mole (pronounced [mo’-lay]). Because it is traditionally eaten in these settings, the dish has developed a special significance for people of this culture. Use and understanding of foods in their traditional cultural context connects an individual to the culture and heritage from which they come.

The sum of all food traditions, customs, and meanings within a culture make up a distinctive “food culture,” and participation in a strong food culture helps shape personal identity. One of the most commonly cited examples of a thriving food culture is that of the Italians. In Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver writes, “It’s my observation that when Italian genes are present, all others duck and cover. … After arriving on the ancestral soil I figured out pretty quickly why that heritage swamps all competition. It’s a culture that sweeps you in, sits you down in the kitchen, and feeds you so well you really don’t want to leave” (Kingsolver 243). According to Kingsolver, relationship with food in a strong food culture causes individuals to develop a strong sense of cultural identity. In her book The Earth Knows My Name, American Book Award winner Patricia Klindienst echoes these ideas using another example drawn from Italian food culture. The Pellegrinis are an Italian-American family for whom food signifies a deep cultural connection. Klindienst writes, “Food is not about fashion for the Pellegrinis; it answers a hunger for continuity. Food is a form of deep memory. Through food they are linked to their native landscape, to its soil, its water, and its trees” (Klindienst 145). Understanding the food one eats as coming from a specific ancestry or culture causes an individual to understand himself or herself within that context and incorporate that culture into his or her personal identity.

Food and Identity in Modern America, Part 2: Interpersonal Relationships

Individuals use food to develop interpersonal relationships that build their own identities. As food is a universally shared human need, individuals can grow together around the food they eat. When people deepen their understanding of and participate in the genesis of their food, families and friends can deepen their relationships as they grow, choose, cook, and eat their food together. One of the most important examples of this process occurs within the context of the family. In her book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, acclaimed author Barbara Kingsolver highlights the gathering of families around food and the identities they develop through this interaction. She writes, “The choreography of many people working in one kitchen is, by itself, a certain definition of family, after people have made their separate ways home to be together” (Kingsolver 130). Through engaging food together, Kingsolver says, individuals develop an identity as a family. She emphasizes the vital role food plays in family relationships when she says:

Some of my happiest family memories involve making and eating elaborate meals for special occasions. Food turns events into celebrations. It’s not just about the food, but the experience of creating and then consuming it. People need families and communities for this kind of experience. Kids need parents, or some kind of guide, to lead them toward the food routines our bodies need. Becoming familiar with the process of food production generates both respect and a greater sense of calm about the whole idea of dinner.

(Kingsolver 292-3, italics added)

Here Kingsolver stresses the benefits of understanding and participating in the genesis of food to developing family roles (parent-child, etc) and the identities that come from them. As individuals gather around the production and consumption of food, they strengthen the relationships by which they define themselves.