What you picture food waste to be versus what it really is

I’m not sure what people think of when they think about food waste, but pictured below is just one example. This 8 lb tub of frozen wild sea scallops was part of a whole pallet of these tubs that was rescued by a local food recovery organization. Figuring out how to best distribute 8 lb tubs of sea scallops to those in need is challenging, so most of them have been sitting in the frozen cooler of their warehouse. I was fortunate enough to be volunteering yesterday and was offered one to take home.

I think for most people, thinking about food waste conjures of images of rotting food, or leftovers, or low quality processed products. And to be sure, food waste does include all of those. But, food waste in this country also includes an abundance of high quality and expensive food items. These scallops, which in a market would sell for upwards of $40 per pound, are a prime example of that. But the more I’m involved, the more I see other high quality and healthy items that were on their way to the landfill.

Wild caught frozen fish is a norm at our markets. Organic vegetables is another. Dairy products such as milk and cheese. Endless amounts of canned foods. The list goes on and on.

I think food waste in this country, around the world too I guess, needs a new name. When we’re talking about food waste we are not talking about the little scraps that might be leftover on your plate (although those do count, so make sure to eat everything on your plate!). We’re not talking about rotting food. We’re talking about real food that could satiety and feed real people who need it.

Which is to say nothing about the fact that when food like chicken, beef, pork, and seafood go to waste in a landfill, we’ve wasted a life. An animal was raised on this planet. Used up resources. And gave his life to become food, and still we discard it to the dump like it never mattered.

We’re not doing a good job when it comes to food waste in this country. Getting food waste right, fixing the food system in this country, has the ability to fix so much. Eliminate food insecurity. Improve people’s health, and reducing healthcare costs as a results. Reduce greenhouse gases. Right social injustices. And so much more.

I’m not sure there’s anything more important than solving this issue.

Kill The Meal Kit Delivery Companies

Before they kill the planet

Jen and I, along with ~10 other volunteers, spent two hours unpacking 2 pallets worth of prepackaged meals, donated by Hello Fresh. These companies should be illegal.

Hello Fresh donated the pallets of food to a local food recovery organization because they would’ve otherwise thrown them into the garbage. Ending up in landfills to rot and pollute the ozone.

Not only is the amount of food that these companies waste beyond comprehension, the amount of packaging that they require is disgusting. Brown paper bags stuffed with “meal kits,” containing individually wrapped spices, sauces, cheese, fruit, vegetables, and bread.

Picture this. Half a bell pepper wrapped in a plastic bag. One serving of cilantro pesto sauce in a to go style plastic package. Two slices of bread, wrapped in plastic. One serving of feta cheese, in a plastic bag. On and on and on.

Even if these two pallets actually went to paying customers, instead of being shipped to the landfill (before being intercepted for food recovery), it should still ring the alarm. The amount of plastic being used will make you sick

These companies have no morals. They have no awareness or respect for the environment and have no shame when it comes to trying to make a profit.

I’m sick of companies like these. And I’m sick of the fact that they are even allowed to exist. The federal government passed a huge spending bill last year, made up in large part of spending on “renewable energy.” Yet companies like Hello Fresh that devastate the earth with their incompetent business models are allowed to exist.

Jen and I have been tying to find a place to compost our food scraps and yard waste for the last month. I finally found a small company that accepts drop offs or does pickups for a small monthly fee (if you’re in or around Denver check out: Compost Colorado). Denver has apparently been working on rolling out a compost program for a couple of years now. We live 20 minutes from downtown and our region still hasn’t made the rollout.

If governments actually cared, if they were actually competent, the very least they would do is mandate a nation wide composting program in all municipalities. But they don’t. So, everyday people that actually do care fight an uphill battle. Trying to negate the ill effects of a shitty and incompetent government that allows companies to shit all over our country with zero repercussions. It’s a maddening situation.

Homemade Veggie Stock and Soup

I’ve been keeping all of my food scraps in a plastic bag in the freezer. I hate throwing away food so when I learned this technique of making vegetable stock out of scraps I went all in. This was my second time trying it which is always better than the first because I got to try things I missed the first time to make it better.

It was also exciting because this time I had new scraps. Peppers, eggplant, and my favorite, beets to add to the flavors! The recipe is so simple.

The biggest pot I have in my rental house holds only 10 cups of water. So I unloaded 1/2 of a gallon size ziplock worth of frozen scraps into the pot, and then covered them with water until the liquid hit the 10 cups level.

Then I added 2 bay leaves, 2 tsp of dry parsley, 3 - 4 pinches of sea salt, 1 tsp of turmeric, and 1 tsp of ginger root. Brought it all to a boil, and then brought the heat down to a simmer.

I didn’t time it, but once the liquid came down to about 8 cups, 2 cups evaporated off, I drained the pot. I probably could’ve let it go a bit longer, the originally recipe says once the liquid has reduced to half take it off, but we only have one pot and someone needed to make pasta. The stock (to the left) came out looking medicinal, and it tastes that way too. In a good way. It’s just so rich and full of abundance.

The next logical step of course was to make soup. I started it the same way I have been.

• 2 chopped carrots

• 2 slices of chopped red onion

• 3 cloves of sliced garlic

• 2/3 chopped celery stalk (I typically use 1/2 but it was going bad and needed to be cooked)

After sauteeing those ingredientns in a pot for 5 minutes with 2 tbsp of olive oil and 3 pinches of sea salt, I added the veggie stock from above and topped it off with water. I also added:

• 3 bay leaves

• 2 tsp of dry parsley

• 1/2 purple sweet potato (the only vegetable I had available, plus we’ve been wanting to add potato to the mix)

• 1 handful of Bob’s Red Mill Soup Mix

I brought all of that to a boil, then let it simmer. After 20 minutes I added 1/2 cup of white cannelloni beans to the pot and let it all simmer for another 25 minutes.

Having soup in the refrigerator has been a nice way to add some variety into my day. Recently I’ve been loving pouring a ladle of soup over some wild cod I pan fried (seen in the dish below). The flakey white fish and broth mesh so well together. It creates such a warming dish that fills you up. Give it a try.

Waste

Everyone talks about the effects of too much waste, then they go and waste. Take out containers. Take out drinks. Ziplock bags. Aluminum foil. Paper towels. Whatever it is. Watch someone for a while and you’ll find how much they waste.

I hate being wasteful. It comes off as being frugal, or cheap. But I’m not the latter. I just don’t like to waste. Whether that’s floss or money, I just don’t see the point.

So when I see people waste around me it twists my insides because I can picture that plastic cup or styrofoam container sitting in a pile of garbage rotting, just poisoning our land and water. And it kills me.

So I try not to be wasteful. I try to be very conscious of it. And frugal. But I know it’s such an up hill battle in the quick, easy, efficient world we live in where nothing is meant to last. Sadly, including the planet.

Food, Waste and Health in this Country

Understanding The Supplemental Nutrition Program (SNAP) and Its Impact

This week an article about proposed changes to SNAP benefits (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly Food Stamps) by House Republicans as part of their budget bill sent me down a rabbit hole. With federal spending at $3 trillion annually, why target the roughly $86 billion spent on SNAP.

Realizing I don’t know that much about SNAP, I decided to dig a little deeper and educate myself about the program. In my search I discovered that there are roughly 16 government programs (including SNAP) that reach millions of Americans each year and serve billions of meals to those in need. They range from school meals, and plans for older (60+) low income adults, to programs specifically for women, infants and children.

But SNAP is hands down the most far reaching, impacting some 42 million Americans each year. Some information on SNAP.

• SNAP provides nutritional support to low income families, older adults (60+), and people with disabilities.

• SNAP operates in all 50 states, and is funded by the federal government (admin costs are split with the state).

• ~90% of participants are in a household with a child <18, an adult >60, or a disabled person.

• 50% of households are white, 25% are black and 1/5 are Latin.

• To be eligible, a THREE person household must meet these requirements:

  • Gross monthly income at or below $2,379 ($28,550 annually)

  • Net monthly income, after living expenses, at or below $1,830 ($21,960 annually)

  • Total assets must fall below $2,500!

• Individuals on strike, some college students, individuals with drug felony convictions in some states, and people of certain immigration status, REGARDLESS of their income, are ineligible.

Households receive on average $127 per month, per person. Or $4.16 per day. The pandemic relief program added an additional $92 per month per person, but that’s expired.

Part of the proposed changes are to expand the age bracket of which work requirements must be met, making it harder for young adults to become eligible, as well as closing “loopholes” (limiting states ability to make exceptions for certain households). The changes are being sold as a way to save taxpayers money and encourage people to work their way out of their low income situation.

But it’s hard to work on an empty stomach, and in 2021 the US Government spent $748 billion on Medicaid (healthcare for low income adults, children and people with disabilities, a lot of the same people who benefit from SNAP) up nearly $200 billion since 2015. So if saving money is really our concern, then let food be thy medicine. Invest in SNAP and other food related programs, which will improve the health of this struggling population, and in turn reduce the absurd amount of money we spend each year on healthcare related costs, where 20 - 40% of deaths are preventable.

We have the resources, they are just being allocated incorrectly. And we surely have the food (as the next article will make clear), but for some reason the disconnect remains.

ReFED Releases New Food Waste Estimates and Calls for Increased Action by Food System

A data-driven guide for businesses, government, funders, and nonprofits to collectively reduce food waste at scale. Together, we can reduce U.S. food waste by 50% by 2030.

ReFED is a company I began following recently after applying for a job there (I didn’t get it, hence why I have the time to write this newsletter). ReFED is a national nonprofit working to end food loss and waste by advancing data-driven solutions.

A few days ago they published their annual estimates on food waste in the U.S. The numbers are not surprising, but they are nevertheless upsetting.

A few key stats:

• In 2021 the U.S. generated 91 million tons of surplus (unsold or uneaten) food, equal to 38% of total food production

• Food waste represented 6% of greenhouse gas emissions (food rotting in landfills), equal to driving 83 million passenger vehicles for a full year

• 80% of the total food surplus was edible, by only 2% was donated

• To produce this surplus food required utilizing 22% of the U.S. freshwater and occupied 16% of cropland

• The estimated value of the uneaten food was $444 billion and converts into 149 billion potential meals for those in need

ReFED also modeled out some 42 solutions to reducing food waste. They estimate that implementing their solutions would cost $18 billion annually but have a net positive effect on the economy of $74 billion, while saving 4.3 billion meals for those in need. It’s estimated that at least 10% of the U.S. population (or 34 million Americans) are food insecure.

That article was summarized and expanded on in a good piece by Bloomberg.

#51 - Robert Sapolsky, Ph.D.: The pervasive effect of stress - is it killing you? - Peter Attia

A few years ago I heard about Robert Sapolsky, Ph.D. while listening to an episode of the Tim Ferriss podcast. The guest recommended Sapolsky’s book, Why Zebra’s Don’t Get Ulcers. The title was intriguing and so was the description:

“As Sapolsky explains, most of us do not lie awake at night worrying about whether we have leprosy or malaria. Instead, the diseases we fear-and the ones that plague us now-are illnesses brought on by the slow accumulation of damage, such as heart disease and cancer. When we worry or experience stress, our body turns on the same physiological responses that an animal's does, but we do not resolve conflict in the same way-through fighting or fleeing. Over time, this activation of a stress response makes us literally sick.”

I immediately bought a copy, but admittedly didn’t open it for some time. It’s a dense book that required a certain mindset before diving into it. Eventually I got into it, and it ended up being one of my favorite reads. The correlation between stress and disease is far beyond anything I could’ve imagined. It’s a book that everyone should read. But since everyone can’t and wont, this 2 hour podcast at least serves as a good intro for anyone that is interested in the topic. A couple of interesting sound bites below.

Minute 32: “We belong to multiple hierarchies, and we are very good psychologically at deciding whichever hierarchy we are highest in, that’s the one we define ourselves by.”

Minute 67: “You look in some bloated corporation and there’s some guy who is the assistant manager of the mailroom and thats an incredibly status filled position for that guy, and theres some other guy who’s number 2 in the company who was just passed over to be number 1, and the only pertinent thing in his mind is not the 99,000 employees that he’s higher ranking then, its that there’s still someone ahead of me… in other words, its not being poor, its feeling poor.”

"The [stress response] system has been serving vertebrates, doing a lot of help for them for an awful long time, and it's only been a very recent modification to instead secrete [cortisol] in response to thinking about taxes." —Robert Sapolsky

Worldwide Obesity on the Rise

Many physicians, organizations and pharmaceutical companies are busy promoting obesity as genetic and pushing new “miracle drugs” (and getting paid to do it), the World Obesity Federation (WOF) and World Health Organization (WHO) are keeping it real, recognizing that diet, and specifically the “disappearance of fresh food markets, control of food chains by supermarkets, and the increasing mass production of processed foods in many countries” is the real cause.

This is a topic that irks me, because touting obesity as a genetic disorder is a disservice. The information is especially dangerous for children, where drugs and surgery for children as young as 12 is now the recommendation. These drugs however don’t just reduce fat mass, they result in a loss of lean mass, which also includes muscle and bone.

We seem intent on trying to drug ourself out of this problem as we’ve tried so many times before without success. But it’s a problem that won’t get solved until we dismantle and re-engineer the three industries who are allowed to continue to push these lies: big pharma, big food and big ag.