When you go to a restaurant and cannot finish your meal, do you ask for a to-go box for the leftovers?
At home, when you make more food than you can eat in one sitting, do you wrap your food up and put it in the refrigerator to eat at a later date? And do you end up eating it?
If you’ve guessed that the topic here is food waste, you’re correct.
Canadians waste a staggering amount of food every year, even in these times of rising food costs.
According to a number of food rescue groups that aim to redistribute food to those who need it, about $49 billion worth of food is wasted. That’s 11 billion tonnes of good food. In 2019, research led by Second Harvest found that 58 per cent of food in Canada is wasted.
Food is lost at every step in the chain, from what’s left unpicked, to what’s discarded due to looks, to what we, as consumers purchase but don’t use.
An issue that should be addressed is the use of best before dates. Many people do not know what they mean, misconstruing these dates to signify that the food must be discarded after this date. In fact, what a best before date indicates is just that — when an item is considered to be in its prime, so to speak. The item may be perfectly good for a considerable length of time after the date has passed. It most certainly does not mean that the item has gone bad. Too many people throw out anything whose date has gone by, wasting edible food.
We also have to tackle the stigma that leads some to refuse to eat leftovers, or feel embarrassed to ask for a take-away box at a restaurant. After all, how many people can actually comfortably clean their plate when they eat out?
Food box company Chefs Plate recently found in a survey that only a third of Canadians said that they didn’t throw away food each week, and the company has come up with a list of tips to minimize food waste.
They range from planning your meals in advance and making a grocery list, so you buy only what you need and will eat each week, to making sure you have space to store food, using up what’s been sitting around for a while, donating items to food banks if you don’t think you’re going to use them, and composting.
Apparently the most wasted food items include fruits, vegetables, bread, and dairy products, with lettuce leading the pack. We suspect this will surprise nobody.
And once we’ve addressed our personal food habits that might not be the best, we need to lobby for better practices up the food chain.