Food storage tips to avoid waste
Maybe if there weren’t millions of people going to bed hungry every night – not to mention those dying from starvation – it wouldn’t bother me so much.
Then again, maybe it would. I’m talking about food waste.
According to an article in the New York Times, approximately $160 billion of food is wasted every year in the United States. The biggest culprit? Dairy products, at $91 billion.
One of the reasons so much food is wasted is because people prepare more food than they and their families can eat. The remainder often gets tossed out right away.
Another reason is that even if leftovers are placed in the refrigerator, they either are forgotten about or they go bad quickly because they were not stored properly.
So, what can each of us do to avoid wasting $2,200 in food each year, which is the national average per household?
The enemies of food
The key is to know what the enemies of food are and to make sure those food foes do not spoil our leftovers.
The dastardly enemies of food are… drum roll, please… AIR, MOISTURE, LIGHT, TEMPERATURE and MICROBIAL GROWTH. (I put them in caps to make them appear more ominous. Did it work?)
Actually, they are all very harmful when it comes to preserving food. But not every food item is equally affected by each enemy. Here are a couple of examples:
A leftover piece of meat or fish can be wrapped up tightly in tinfoil or plastic wrap and stay good for a few days in the refrigerator and much longer in the freezer.
But we should use a porous material such as parchment paper to wrap cheese. Why? Because cheese needs oxygen to stay “healthy” and taste its best.
Whole-wheat flour should not remain in a pantry for too long. That’s because oils in the wheat germ can go bad if they’re not kept cool. It will last for a number of months if stored in an airtight container within a refrigerator.
Unopened butter will last longer in a freezer (12 months) than it will in a refrigerator (4 months). But mayonnaise will stay fresher in the “warmer” part of a refrigerator (the door) than it will in the colder, inner part of the fridge.
Long-term food storage tips
OK, so much for leftovers, which even when saved have a very short shelf life. What about the food we are stockpiling for an emergency?
Well, the same rules about the enemies of food apply. But there are more considerations if you want your non-perishable food to last a long time. Here are seven of them:
- Don’t be so concerned about the volume of your long-term stockpile that you neglect nutrition. You’ll need healthy, nutritious food even more in a crisis than you do now.
- Don’t store too many items that require refrigeration. A lengthy blackout will wipe out that supply unless you run your fridge pretty much non-stop with a generator.
- Don’t forget about variety. Yeah, you can live off the same food every day, but you’ll get bored quickly. And eating the same thing every day will ruin your taste for that item.
- Don’t forget about balance. Your various food items should provide you with a variety of vitamins and minerals.
- Don’t forget about “comfort” foods. Not everything you eat during a crisis needs to be “healthy.” The occasional snack and dessert will be a big psychological lift.
- Don’t forget about expiration dates. Put labels on your containers and eat the oldest items first. If possible, replace the food you consume with new food.
- Don’t forget to store some food in a secondary location that only you and your family know about. A disaster that destroys your home will also wipe out your food stockpile.
By fighting the enemies of food, we can avoid wasting food, save money and prepare for the future.
My family were “preppers” of a sort when I was growing up and the Atomic Bomb threat was a very real thing. My father was a grocery store stock man (the ones who unload the trucks and put groceries on the store shelves). Most folks would be surprised as to how much food has to be thrown out by grocery stores and convenience stores because of being “out of date” (current food purity laws require it). There are two kinds of dates used in the grocery world – the “Sell By” date, and the “Best If Used By” date. Most people confuse the two. The “Sell By” date on a package means that the grocery store must remove the item from sale the day after that date because the food item will spoil within 1 to 2 weeks after the date. This date mostly applies to Dairy, Meat, and Bakery items. The “Best If Used By” date simply means that the quality of the food product will begin to degrade (the taste might change a little) a month or two after that date, but it is still good to use in most cases. However, grocery stores will remove the items anyway and either destroy them or return them to the supplier. This date applies mostly to canned goods and frozen food and some boxed food. Some bakeries and dairies deal with this by selling the “out of date” products in an out of date store where it is assumed that you know you must use or freeze the product very quickly. My father used to bring home as much as the store he worked in would let him, and other employees (BTW – this was against the IRS regulations of the time [circa 1950 – 1970] where the out of date food had to be destroyed by law) and he would store butter and bakery items in a large freezer we had in our cellar. Very little of it went to waste with our large family. Still, there were times when we had to recognize when an item went bad, or had to be used right away so we don’t get sick from trying to use it later.
My parents & grandparents all lived and/or grew up during the depression era. And my paternal grandparents owned a hotel in a small town in Iowa, where a whole bunch of their siblings lived at one time or another. So it was drilled into my siblings and me not to waste food. We even learned to appreciate the taste of different harvested foods, such as fried pumpkin blossoms and fried morelle mushrooms. Since I live alone now, I don’t prepare foods like this anymore, but still work at not wasting food.
I’ve been on this case for years. I’m of an age where I remember walking into the produce store with my grandmother & she could pick out just what we needed for a couple of days. Now days everything is pre-packaged in large quantities! Going back to the good ol’ days would stop a lot of waste! But the grocery stores aren’t listening.
Yes, things are very different now, aren’t they? It’s more of a challenge to keep food from going to waste.
Excellent points. I wouldn’t mind posting this on my blog as a guest post if you agree. Tittle Thoughts – http://rontittle.com
You probably know that a tremendous amount of fresh vegetables of good quality but either poor shape, off color, wrong size or having a minor blemish are left in the field to rot. The wholesaler can sell only the vegetable that meets the current standard and as we know the plants don’t know from perfect. I wouldn’t be surprised if more food is wasted this way than what is thrown away. At least in our house we don’t waste.
Wouldn’t it be great if these good but not salable vegetables could be used in some other way, like Campbell’s soup or mashed potatoes?