I was listening to an NPR podcast about an anthropologist, Timothy Jones, who basically went through people’s garbage for years. He was researching the eating habits of Americans. Jones came to the conclusion that the average American wastes about 14% of their food (or $600) a year. He said many people do their grocery shopping on Sundays, but barely use their perishables during the week (being too tired to cook after work). They also think they are being healthy by buying fresh fruit and veg, but they don’t actually eat a lot of it. Another factor is that Americans tend to buy more things in bulk and Europeans tend to buy smaller portions*.

I think I waste about $50 woth of food a year (mostly in breads). My immigrant mother came from a country where you don’t waste food. Every bit of chicken feet and fish head** was used because, well, Vietnamese people are dirt poor. And she instilled in me not to waste food - guilt tripping me to think about her relatives when I couldn’t finish my mound of mashed potatoes. So that’s why today, if I go out to eat and have leftovers, I always get them wrapped up and have it for lunch or a snack the next day. If you go out to eat with me and don’t finish your dishes and don’t want to take them home, I will ask if I can have it (despite this probably being an etiquette faux pas - because wasting perfectly good, gourmet food just to be polite is effing ridiculous).

Dogs are a good, organic garbage disposables. For example, I hate very ripe bananas, but Pokey loves them. Ends of carrots? Pokey’s favorite treats. Too bad he doesn’t like carbs.

So if you come to any of our dinner parties or grill parties, expect to take home plastic containers of left overs.

Now that I will be closer to the city, I’m gonna do this: NYC Food Bank

*I’ve been ranting for years about how almost everything in our supermarkets is Texas-sized: It makes it really hard to shop for a household of two since everything is sized and geared to families and marketed to kids and moms.

**In one episode of Survivor Thailand, they caught some fish after being malnourished for x amount of days. Shii Ann (born in Taipei) picked up the fish head and starting picking meat from it and some of other contestants got really disgusted and basically called her an animal. Even though they were practically starving, some spoiled Americans couldn’t get over their food fears. They would rather go hungry and waste food.