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I know the primary reason I waste food is because it goes out of date before I can finish eating the giant gently caress-off portions that certain things come in. Unless you really focus on using everything with perfect efficiency, you'll have loss. If you're single, you either focus on eating that loaf of bread (and only the one type at any given time!) or it will go moldy or stale before you finish it. If you buy anything but the smallest, most marked-up orange juice container (which some groceries don't even stock), you'll be lucky to get halfway through it before it expires. I'd also point out that measuring waste by weight is a bit silly. If you're composting marginal old celery, carrots, potatoes, onions, etc. and using fresh, that's a lot of waste by weight but not much in terms of dollar value. A single red pepper costs more than a 1kg bag of carrots now.
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Mar 23, 2016 15:29
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OwlFancier posted:It is rather impractical to legislate that consumers have to give away their waste whereas it is much easier to legislate it from suppliers, and also suppliers are rich so they should do it anyway. The law is sensible. Not to mention, how would consumer donations work? "Here, have a lovely old carrot, half a bunch of limp celery, some slimy spring onions and three slices of old bread!" I bet the lines will be around the block for that.
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Mar 23, 2016 17:39
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OwlFancier posted:Why don't we already have mass shortages? People get given money and can spend it on any food they like. What's the difference between that and a fairly generous allowance of food for everyone? So, under your proposed system, are there any limits to the amount of food which one can obtain for free, or its nature? Could I decide that I like to eat t-bone steaks and Osetra caviar for three meals a day, and get those for free, or would certain luxury foods be excluded from this system or limited in quantity? Would luxury foods even be available at all? As far as I can tell, you're basically discussing a ration system (but where additional food is available if you're willing to pay, I presume). It would've saved a lot of time for everyone if you'd just have said "I want basically the exact system Cuba has right now."
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Mar 23, 2016 21:08
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OwlFancier posted:I suppose rationing would be sort of accurate though I dislike its association with restricting the amount of food you can eat, really the goal should be to increase availability of food for most people because it's pretty cheap and decoupling it from the rest of your income would encourage people to be a little more free with it. So, you basically get a set amount of basic staples, inexpensive proteins and in-season fresh produce, and then you'd be allowed to buy additional or different food if you chose to do so? I think that's a pretty workable system, but I don't think it will meaningfully reduce food waste. Cooked pizzas from a restaurant, for example, could still be thrown out, the only difference is now it's just waste, instead of being waste at the same time someone goes hungry. That's an improvement in terms of guaranteeing food security, but not really in terms of the fact we throw food out all the time.
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Mar 23, 2016 21:14
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OwlFancier posted:No I didn't I said you wouldn't be paid in food, I said you get food regardless and that it should be more than you realistically need. Whether you actually need to ration it or not I suppose depends on the food. Do people regularly go up to public fountains and try to fill an 18 wheeler tanker off them? Exactly how much dried rice do you feel like carting away from the supermarket even if it was free? It depends. Do I think we can afford, as a society, to basically give away all the potatoes and carrots we want? Yes. Do I think the same applies to stuff that has to be imported regularly out-of-season, like red peppers or asparagus or any of the other expensive produce items at the grocery store? No, I don't think you should be able to take as much as you want. Should you be able to take just the premium cuts of meat, to any quantity you like? I have no problem with letting people grab a free whole chicken, but I think allowing people to take boneless, skinless chicken breasts for free would result in a glut of other sorts of chicken, since breasts are generally considered more desirable, and that would create more waste. Remember: you can't pass off the less desirable cuts for less money if you're giving the desirable stuff away for free. EDIT: There's also the issue that imported foods (or, I guess in the US context, food that come from a long way away in the same country) have a higher carbon footprint, as do animal proteins, so prices should reflect the externalities of those things to some degree. You can't do that if you're giving it away for free. PT6A fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Mar 23, 2016 |
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Mar 23, 2016 21:21
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Talmonis posted:Many of us are physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted by the time we get home at night. It makes the prospect of doing anything but sitting on the couch and unwinding from that near suicidal form is really unpalatable. If you're stressed out and miserable, what could be nicer than throwing on some music, pouring a glass of wine, and cooking a lovely quick meal? I get way more testy when I can't cook at home, for the most part.
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Mar 23, 2016 22:44
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Liberal_L33t posted:Be careful you don't break your arm patting yourself on the back there, that'll put a cramp in your cooking flair for sure! Yeah, boy, I'm just so proud of myself for being a functional adult who manages to prepare their own food on a regular basis. It's not really something to be proud of, so much as the lack thereof is something to be properly ashamed of.
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Mar 23, 2016 23:34
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Liberal_L33t posted:Newsflash: ~30% of all American adults are nonfunctional and should be ashamed of themselves - especially black people. I'm PT6A, and I've always held that urban black populations just don't receive enough public shaming in the media. Did you suffer a traumatic brain injury or were you born a complete moron?
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Mar 23, 2016 23:44
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The fact that supermarket food waste is a bigger source of waste than personal food waste is no excuse to behave as a loving child that can't be bothered to cook for yourself.
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Mar 24, 2016 04:16
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Arguably, there are no junk foods, only junk diets, and foods which are bad if they comprise a large part of your diet. We need to address why people have bad diets, instead of attacking individual foods.
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Mar 26, 2016 18:23
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BarbarianElephant posted:I'm not a snob. I didn't say "fresh is better for you than frozen" because I've read plenty that says it is the other way around. But I don't care because it tastes great. And yes, I eat a lot of steamed broccoli but that's not the only thing I eat. It depends. I've never tried most frozen veggies, but frozen fruit is absolutely as good as fresh fruit for cooking with (usually better if the fruit isn't in season), and I'm a big fan of using tins or cartons of tomatoes for anything that doesn't absolutely require fresh tomatoes, because the fresh tomatoes you buy at the supermarket are usually really poo poo. For bell peppers, I always use fresh, because I like the taste and texture of eating them raw, but for solely cooked applications, I don't think it would make a big difference.
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Mar 26, 2016 19:08
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Count Roland posted:This doesn't mean we should give the benefit of the doubt to chips and pop and big mac's. Why not? I eat all those things occasionally, and I'm in good health and not overweight. We need to focus on why people are eating those things in such amounts, or with such frequency, that it becomes unhealthy.
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Mar 26, 2016 21:31
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If you ask a restaurant to not use salt while preparing your meal, the chef should personally come out of the kitchen to throw you out of his establishment.
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Mar 26, 2016 22:09
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Helsing posted:I imagine the kind of "restaurant" described in that guide is most likely to be a Denny's or Olive Garden rather than the kind of place where the chef takes great pride in using their own recipes. You probably shouldn't be going to those places in the first place. Not for any kind of health reasons*, just because they serve overpriced poo poo. * Although you could easily argue their insane portions are not conducive to a healthful diet EDIT: I bought a piece of salt cod at the supermarket today. Apparently 1/6th of the package contains 155% of the daily sodium recommendation.
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Mar 26, 2016 23:10
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Pretty much nothing is bad as long as you don't go nuts with it, and pretty much everything is bad when you overdo it. Fat is loving delicious when used correctly, and there's nothing wrong with that. If you were to eat osso buco with its delicious, perfect marrow every day, it might turn into an issue, but once every month or so is certainly not going to kill you or make you fat.
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Mar 26, 2016 23:51
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blowfish posted:This. If it were profitable to sell extra food to poor people or starving third worlders, there would already be companies lining up to do so. Giving excess food to poor countries is also extremely bad for their food security long-term, since it will drive local food producers out of business and make those countries wholly dependent on continued foreign aid. To be fair, though, most people in the thread were talking about giving food to food-insecure people in our own respective countries.
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Mar 28, 2016 15:41
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Honestly, it looks more and more like the best nutrition advice is "eat a variety of stuff, and make sure you're hitting your calorie target." Barring people with special dietary needs, of course.
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Mar 28, 2016 23:30
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This, but instead of having it taught by some frumpy old bag that reeks of cigarettes in a lovely high school "kitchen", make it a one week cooking boot-camp at a professional culinary school run by an actual chef. That's the lion's share of how I learned to cook, and why I'm more adventurous when it comes to making new dishes than my parents. EDIT: I don't have fond memories of my Jr. High home-ec teacher.
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Mar 28, 2016 23:41
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Helsing posted:No one really disputes the importance of getting certain micro-nutrients in adequate supplies (hell, people understood that lack of vitamins lead to scurvy long before we actually knew what vitamins were). The scientific consensus on the importance of omega 3s or the danger of trans-fats is pretty well established at this point. This idea that nutrition science is so under developed that we just can't say anything about it other than "count your calories" is ridiculous. Counting calories isn't even very good advice outside of a narrow and specific focus on weight: if you were trying to plan what you're gonna feed your kid over the next week and you just completely ignored any scientific advice on nutrition other than "count the calories", then you're being outright negligent. Well, I suppose if you were determined to be purposefully ignorant about nutrition, this would be the case, but if you just made sure your kid ate a variety of different stuff to eat and roughly the right amount of calories, you'd be fine. It's incredibly hard to get scurvy or any other vitamin deficiencies these days, frankly. I can't even fathom how someone could stand to have so little variation in their diet as to get a vitamin deficiency in this day and age. Just eat enough different stuff and you'll have all your bases covered, even if some of those things are big macs and fries.
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Mar 29, 2016 18:59
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BarbarianElephant posted:I guess another way of saying it would be "food with more than one ingredient." No more buying bread of any kind at the store; got it! This whole discussion is so, so very stupid. And you can just forget about using hot sauce, mustard, Worcestershire, or anything else in your cooking too -- things with more than one ingredient are the tool of the devil, I tells ya! And don't even get me started about the nefarious evils of cooking with wine or beer -- both substances which are created from extensive processing of multiple ingredients. PT6A fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Mar 29, 2016 |
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Mar 29, 2016 21:13
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WampaLord posted:The "only calories matter" argument is stupid as gently caress when there's poo poo like Wonderbread for sale. Why? It may not have as many nutrients as a whole-grain bread (and it tastes like bland garbage, but that's a matter of taste) but it's not bad for you. You only suffer from it's lack of nutrients if you aren't eating other things with nutrients. It's not bad for you, it's just easier to have a bad diet when Wonderbread is included on a regular basis. It's no worse for you than pasta -- even homemade "unprocessed" pasta! It's no worse for you than a lovely French baguette either, in all likelihood. I guess there's the added sugar they put in, which is pretty disgusting.
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Mar 29, 2016 21:22
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WampaLord posted:Tell that line about sugar calories to a diabetic. That's loving stupid, and you know it. Anything can be bad for someone with the right disease to make it bad for them, that doesn't mean it's bad in general. quote:How about the part where they add high fructose corn syrup to it? Why does a sugar substitute need to be in bread? God only knows. I'm not defending it as a fine product with a great taste, I'm just saying it's not actively unhealthy for most of the population (those that don't have diabetes or celiac disease). Helsing posted:I feel like I'm debating a martian who has never actually eaten human food or been in a grocery store. You do understand part of why doctors recommend fresh fruits and vegetables is because in addition to having a good calorie to nutrition trade off, they also promote a sense of satiety? Whereas sugar is the opposite: many food items with added sugar will actually make you hungrier despite being full of calories. This doesn't mean that sugar is worse for you than any other source of calories, though. That's what you're not getting. I agree it can make you hungrier, and that, in turn, makes it hard to maintain a proper diet, but that doesn't make it bad for you. That just means it can turn itself into a part of a whole diet that is bad for you. I could go have a slice of wonderbread right now and suffer absolutely no ill effects from it whatsoever, as could most people. It is not bad for you; it promotes a diet that is bad for you. The bad diet is the problem, not any individual component thereof.
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Mar 29, 2016 23:31
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Helsing posted:So far as I can tell this has been universally and explicitly agreed on by everyone posting here for the entire discussion. If no food can in and of itself be bad for you (and excepting trans fats and literal poison, this is the case), then how can you call something "junk food?" That's what people are arguing with you about.
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Mar 29, 2016 23:41
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BarbarianElephant posted:"Fresh" as opposed to processed, I'd assume. It's a good rule of thumb. A pizza might have more tomates than a salad, but that doesn't mean it's better for you. What's wrong with a pizza? It's bread with stuff on top; I've made it from scratch. If you make one the proper size, and don't jam too much greasy meat and cheese on top, it's a fairly well balanced meal. Salads are good too, but they ain't gonna satisfy your calorie needs for a meal unless you're a sedentary waif or top it with the same sort of stuff you'd put on a pizza and/or tons of dressing. The ingredients don't care whether they're in a salad or on a pizza, and neither does your body.
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Mar 30, 2016 14:54
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WampaLord posted:Jesus Christ can you be more disingenuous? He said "Pizza is not better for you than a salad" and your response is "Well, what's wrong with pizza?" No, we're saying "I eat this thing and am healthy, so it's not intrinsically unhealthy." A pizza can be better for you than a salad. Everything can be unhealthy.
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Mar 30, 2016 15:09
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Obdicut posted:A pizza can be a lot better than a salad. This is the problem with nutrition: people "know" that fresh fruits and veg are better than frozen, and people "know" that salad is better for you than pizza, and people "know" that a roast beef sandwich is better than a burger, despite none of this being true. This is why people get frustrated with diets: "I eat salad all the time and I haven't had a slice of pizza in months and I'm still fat  " Yeah, it's because you've been conned into believing that salads have magical healthful properties and that pizza is bad for you for some reason, so you're miserable all the time because you're not eating things you like, and you're not losing weight because you're not paying attention to your calorie needs versus your calorie intake.
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Mar 30, 2016 15:28
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In what world in 1750 calories per day representative of average? I need 2700 calories per day to maintain my weight, and I'm skinny (6'2", 165 lbs).
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Mar 31, 2016 18:46
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Doctor Malaver posted:For me not throwing food away is a moral thing. There's a saying in these parts of the world (Eastern Europe) that translates to "throwing away is sin". 'Sin' not being a religious term in this case, it's closer to 'shame'. If I'm full and there's still food on my plate I'll either force myself to finish it or I'll store it. I hate seeing people throw half the plate to garbage because they decided they weren't that hungry or they didn't like it too much. To me that's frivolous. Wasting food while there are hungry people, killing animals and plants just to throw them away... Yeah, I feel bad about throwing "good" food away, but I think we need to make a distinction between waste that's easy to deal with (essentially leftovers) and waste that would require a lot of ingenuity to deal with. Throwing out a half portion of cooked food that you could eat the next day is different from putting half an onion that's been in your fridge for a week into the compost, simply because you didn't have anything that called for half an onion. You could save all the odds and sods and make a stock or something, but realistically that's only slightly better than just composting those things. Sometimes the leftovers get used "naturally" and other times they don't.
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Apr 4, 2016 23:03
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Baronjutter posted:I had to throw away 3 tiny bananas because they were lovely "organic" ones that turned into liquid mush in a few days. I hate that the only supermarket near me is a lovely organic one with horrible mushy produce at higher prices. This is the most food I've wasted all month. You could've frozen them before they went to poo poo and/or made them into banana bread, just sayin' Kidding aside, that's an acceptable amount of food waste. Trying to get to 0 is not a realistic goal.
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Apr 4, 2016 23:17
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I'll admit I never take home food at restaurants. Fully cooked dishes generally don't make good leftovers, with a few exceptions. Luckily, this only results in waste at bad restaurants that don't know how to size a loving portion properly. If I'm cooking at home, I can portion things correctly or save some of my protein before it gets sauced/finished/etc.
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Apr 5, 2016 20:13
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Doc Hawkins posted:These are all methods for a restaurant-goer, banal enough to be the basis of a Kevin James bit. You said that the restaurants themselves should "know how to size a loving portion properly," that's the secret technique I'm interested in. If you're not specifically offering tapas or a tasting menu, your portions should be sized such that an average adult can eat an appetizer, an entree and a dessert without being unpleasantly full or hungry. I average around 2800 calories per day: if I can't finish a three course meal, the portions are way too big. Restaurants with smaller portions are actually better, because I can just continue ordering plates until I'm full, allowing time to digest in between. The very best meal I ever had was 24 courses, and I didn't leave feeling unpleasantly full, nor did I waste any food. This is a solved problem in many respects, it's just that Olive Garden and their lovely ilk want to increase the perception of value by providing a greater quantity of food, because ultimately they know they're serving poo poo-tier food. EDIT: Or to phrase it differently: portions which are too small are, at worst, a value problem. Portions which are too large are, on the other hand, a food waste and public health issue. I wish more restaurants would err on the side of the former rather than the latter. PT6A fucked around with this message at 05:50 on Apr 6, 2016 |
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Apr 6, 2016 05:36
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