#stopthewaste to help end hunger

Did you know there’s enough food in the world to feed the world’s 7 billion people, and yet, 811 million people still go to bed hungry every night?

Did you also know that nearly 1/3 of the food that’s produced each year is lost or wasted? (that’s the equivalent of $1 trillion dollars wasted!)

Did you also know that YOU can help fight hunger by wasting less food and turning your savings from that positive practice into lifesaving food for those who need it most through the United Nations World Food Programme?

Together, we can #StopTheWaste and end hunger

So, how can WE help end hunger?

Today, in the leadup to World Food Day on October 16th, I’m partnering with The United Nations World Food Programme – 2020 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and  the world’s largest humanitarian organization, who work to save lives in emergencies and use food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability and prosperity for people recovering from conflict, disasters and the impact of climate change – to spread awareness about the devastating consequences of food waste and how we can help. It starts with small actions that, if everyone contributes to, can have big impact.

How much food do YOU waste? Do you have any habits you could look at changing?

Are you one of those people who impulse shops dinner on the way home from work? How many times have you arrived home with bags of groceries only to find you had many of the ingredients at home already? This *used* to be me more often than I’d like to confess to. I am still occasionally guilty of this but over the past 18 months as I have been home more often and when I was working from home, I’ve tried to keep up a few new habits to help stop wasting so much food.

Simple ways to waste less food.

  1. Do an inventory. Know what you have on hand. Not just for your pantry but also your fridge and freezer. The freezer, especially is somewhere I often end up placing items that I don’t have time to use up but this then turns into a sort of graveyard for forgotten foods which I then end up not using.  Check use-by dates and move “to use” items to the front of you fridge freezer or pantry shelves.
  2. Meal plan. Once you know what you have on hand to use, it’s easier to plan meals which ensure you won’t end up tossing food that’s gone bad or is beyond it’s best-before date.
  3. Shop small, buy what you need. I’ve tried to adopt the European habit of buying smaller amounts of food more often and this definitely does help me know what I have on hand and, therefore, waste less food. This also pushes me to think ahead to plan meals (see above) and then buy the ingredients I need, based on the inventory I’ve taken (see above).
  4. Do a purge/ cleanout a couple of times a month. Starting with a freshly “swept” fridge and freezer, epsecially is a great way to reduce food waste because apart from anything else, you are able to see more of what you have on hand and keep it at the top of your mind when you are meal planning.
  5. Take some time to batch cook and use your freezer! Taking some time to cook up a big batch of a chili or a soup on the weekends means you’re setting yourself up for some tasty meals with no prep later that week. If you’ve got a clean fridge/ freezer, then you’ll even have room to store these!

Ok, so these are not huge steps and *look* simple (actually they look more simple to do than they actually are in a long term effort) but, like anything, it takes time to change your way of thinking and making steps like this ingrained in your shopping/ cooking habits.

Good ideas in action – a “no recipe” recipe shopped from my fridge and pantry

Vegetables on a tray ready to roast.This past weekend, as I went through the contents of my vegetable crisper, I found a handful of mushrooms, some cherry tomatoes, a red pepper, a couple of garlic cloves and some red onion all needing to be used. At a loss for what to do with such small quantities of each, I threw them on a tray, added a drizzle of olive oil, some salt and pepper and roasted them for about 15 minutes at 455˚F.

Roasted vegetables on a baking tray.Ok so they looked pretty and smelled wonderful. But what to do next. It wasn’t quite enough ingredients to make a whole meal with so I went fridge shopping and found…

  • a handful of shredded cheese
  • half a can of plum tomatoes
  • half a can of white beans
  • 3/4 carton of chicken stock

Ok then… I started to get some ideas and rummaged around the pantry to see if I could add anything else to this – I was originally thinking some kind of Pasta e Fagioli soup (soup with vegetables, pasta and beans) or even a minestrone and – bonus – found about 1 1/2 cups of leftover short pasta.

I roughly chopped the veggies and plum tomatoes and heated them over medium heat, added the stock, brought it to a boil and added the pasta. When the pasta was *nearly* cooked, I added the beans. It looked more like a stew than a soup (what Rachael Ray calls a “stoup”) and I figured that would work too but a couple of hours later as I went to portion it into Tupperware, I noticed that all the liquid had absorbed and it was more like a pasta dish. Ok, this is great – two dishes in one depending on when you serve it!

I tipped the lot into a baking dish, added the shredded cheese on the top and broiled it for about 7 minutes until the cheese was melted, bubbly and golden brown..

Pasta bake with cheesy topping in a white baking dish.Et voilà – a loose Pasta Bake literally made with a handful of this and a handful of that. A delicious way to avoid wasting all that food. Imagine if we all did this even once a month? Better, once a week?

What about you – what are some steps you are taking to reduce your own food waste?

Learn how you can help #stopthewaste and ensure people aren’t going to bed hungry: World Food Programme’s Stop the Waste.

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1 thought on “#stopthewaste to help end hunger”

  1. OK, I wasn’t hungry when I started reading but I was at the end.
    Nice post, Mardi.
    Also, good for you re the food waste issue.

    Reply

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