I must say I was shocked when I watched this.  Yet I shouldn't be.  We take our grandson out picking apples.  The ground is covered with windfalls.  Some years we just pick windfalls and don't make a dint in the piles.  Some are gathered for cider or pigfeed.  Most rot into the ground.  The same happens in backyard gardens with tomatoes becoming over-ripe and falling to the ground; green beans becoming old and tough because they didn't get picked at prime; broccoli going to seed to be thrown out.  And hungry people not getting enough nourishing food only a few blocks away. 

In my own home I try to eat up leftovers the next day.  I freeze my meat scraps for my daughter's dog.  I make casseroles, and banana breads and fruit smoothies, and bread pudding (not as often as I should).  And mainly I try to keep an eye on fresh fruit and vegetables and plan my meals around them.  But still I occasionally find food spoiling at the back of the fridge, and scrape too much off grandson's plate and into the garbage when he refuses to eat his meal.    Still, seeing this video makes me realize that my saving at the consumer end is just a drop in the bucket. 

Food waste is a sin. 

Tongue in cheek - Maybe we should reintroduce the ancient practice of gleaning - letting the poor (and those working on their behalf) glean the fields and orchards after the harvest. 

Seeler,

I have read (maybe in the Observer or Mandate? ) about initiatives in cities that plant neighbourhood fruit trees and let the neighbours harvest them. Can be apple trees in a park or at the side of the road.

I definetely think that every farmeer should feel obligated to offer harvesting of leftover foods to the poor/ foodbanks and so should restaurants and supermarkets.

How is at at your church?

We had a camp weekend this year and unopened leftover food went to the food bank. I offered to take the opened containers as I knew two families who would likely be glad to get that (and they did)- but I noticed too late, that a huge badge of left over pankakes weren't even put out to be eaten at our last meal, but must have gone into the green bin directly. It makes me mad.

I was told that institutions (nursing homes etc. are not allowed anymore to take leftover food- that's fine. But every congregation should have a list of private people who have an interest in taking left overs from suppers and save enough containers to distribute left over foods. I would have taken those 50 leftover pankakes and freeze them. I could have given them to those two families or the Inn from the Cold.

All this work people do for putting up a fundsraising supper- it should be mandatory to prepare for what we do with the leftovers.

The shocking thing in this video is not that this is fruit too ripe- it is fruit that doesn't fit the SIZE ! The cucumbers that are too bend, the apples that are too small.

And notice, that this is also happening in third world countries that deliver to foreign markets (see the bananas).

Great presentation.

Those "Best Before" dates, I've been told on very good authority (a supermarket regional manager) are to keep the distribution system working smoothly. Longer term sales figures are tweaked a bit and the distribution to retail outlets is all scheduled well in advance because the food and product supply chains are so long and warehouse space costs money. So does shelf space. 

The flow of goods is one way and can't easily be fine-tuned… and it's more "efficient" and less costly to ditch usable product than let unsold product clutter the shelves. The "best before" dates tell the manager there's more on the way: bin it or you'll have serious storage problems.

There are cost-benefit limits to discounting products. And, if supermarkets were to just just give usable product away to poor and hungry people, it would pull props from under the pricing structure. So it has to be deep-sixed in landfills. 

"Consumer choice" is an illusion: it is a marketing sleight of hand. The truth is that enormous forces favour the homogenisation of market demands (so supermarkets often lead in calls for food safety legislation… it can narrow the real range of products and simplify and save money on the distribution system. Any food that has a strong and distinctive flavour is only going to appeal to a minority, whereas everyone has a use for, say, toilet paper. Economics of scale favour the bland and the predictable. There go lambs' kidneys, goat shanks, farmed deer meat, properly hung beef steaks and farmed rabbits (though rabbits, deer and goat are far more effcient producers of protein from cellulose than cattle) … and there's more space for water-saturated chicken breasts, bland pork cutlets and vivid red, unhung beef mince: most of it from animals fed on manufactured abbatoir waste. And,to impart some flavour we are offered salt and sugar-laden, factory produced "sauces".

It suits supermarkets that cooking skills are generally superficial and tastes are unadventurous and predictable. How many people render meat scraps and vegetable peelings for stock that can launch a thousand interesting meals? Instead, the supermarket will sell you ketchup.

Domestically, most of us waste food with as few inhibitions as supermarkets — and we are co-conspirators in their policies of waste. We need a wake-up when it comes to food.

All this is what happens when we get to value money over and above other values.

A VERY VERY good book that goes to the heart of the matter — if you haven't already read it — is Raj Patel's 'The Value of Nothing'. He also wrote 'Stuffed and Starved'.

See: http://www.amazon.ca/The-Value-Nothing-Raj-Patel/dp/1554686229

AND: http://www.amazon.ca/Stuffed-Starved-Raj-Patel/dp/0002008114/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1351966389&sr=1-2

I can hear my mother's voice ringing your above statement, seeler.  She never wasted any thing - she composted long before it became popular.  She used leftovers to make other dishes and froze them.  She froze bread crusts and made the best french toast out of them.

I am embarassed to say I am not as good of a steward she was when it comes to food.  I am becoming much more conscious of it, and trying harder to not waste or throw out, but to use up if I can.  I am trying to be more conscious in my buying and my food preparation - hopefully I will continue to improve.

I just finished watching the video . . . and it spoke to me and my own personal food wasting.  I am going to try and do better.

I liked his tip about the lettuce.

Great video....I too will be much more careful about food and waste.  If I wash lettuce and celery and put it in a crisper it seems to last much longer, especially romaine. I do compost vegetables and fruit to use on my garden.  

Some of the ingredients in food used on factory farms is downright disgusting.  It makes much more sense to feed pigs cooked vegetables rather than road kill, feathers, fish meal, etc.

I agree seeler that food waste is a sin.    He had a well paid job, she wasted more food than was reasonable.  Nana said "She might as well take some of his pay and tear it up to throw out in the trash.  That way she'd save the time she spends doing the cooking!"

I'm going to start a new thread about ways to cut waste.  Between us we must know a few - even if they are only remembered from being at Granma's house!

I'll put it in this 'room' of the WC.