How to cut down food waste (and fight climate change)

0:00You're listening to Life Kit from NPR. Hey everybody, it's Marielle. It's Climate Solutions Week here at NPR. Across the network, you'll hear stories and conversations about the search for climate solutions and the future of our food. And this week of stories isn't just about covering the climate. It's meant to remind us that we can always do something about climate change. Which I know seems daunting. But want to know something you can do that really will make a difference? Reduce your food waste. When I first heard that we could help fight climate change by reducing food waste, I was shocked.

0:35That's Catherine Miller, former vice president of Impact at the James Beard Foundation. She's also the author of At the Table, The Chef's Guide to Advocacy. Turns out 30 to 40 percent of the food supply in America ends up as waste. Right now, we waste 40 percent of the food that's produced in the United States. And a lot of that food actually goes into landfills. And in the landfill, all the food that's bagged up, it can't get the oxygen it needs to fully decompose. So instead of decomposing, it rots and releases methane, a greenhouse gas that in the short term is way more potent than carbon dioxide.

1:11Food waste alone contributes 8 to 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, according to the United Nations. This is a very easy thing that we as consumers and eaters can do to help change that. On this episode of Life Kit, five steps to fight food waste in your own home. NPR health correspondent Alison Aubrey talks kitchen hacks and how to compost. Also, you can help save the environment and save a bunch of money.

1:40So you're ready to set some new habits? Catherine Miller says here's the first thing to think about. Step number one to reduce food waste in our own homes is to plan. To make shopping lists, to plan out the meals for the week. It sounds so simple, but few of us do it. Lots of us are what I call aspirational shoppers. You know, we toss things into the cart that look appealing or novel with no real plan to use them. So as part of getting started, begin to take stock. Answer this question. What am I currently buying too much of? That's what Catherine Miller did in her own kitchen. There were a couple of things that shocked us when we started to look at food waste in our own home.

2:19One was the amount of fruits and vegetables that we were just tossing because we had been really ambitious and hadn't planned accordingly. If your refrigerator looks anything like mine, there's a lot of produce going to waste. Wilted greens, soggy carrots, overripe avocados. But don't beat yourself up over it because you can turn this into a moment of discovery. Every time you toss stuff out, keep a tally. Write down what you're wasting. Even this can start to change your habits. And look, it happens to everyone, right? Life happens, and sometimes you don't make it around to cooking. Sometimes those vegetables start to wilt.

2:56Sometimes things just sit a little longer than you anticipated, and the next thing you know, you're putting it in the trash. Meet Tiffany Derry. She's a chef and owns some restaurants in Texas, and she's become a food waste warrior. But we have to think of it in a very proactive way. We have to figure out what do we do with this now that, you know, now that the greens are wilted. Which leads us to strategy number two. Get creative. Learn to repurpose food. Before you throw something out, think, how can I transform this? How can I saute or roast or blend this into something new? We're going to run through some of Tiffany's favorite hacks.

3:32And by the way, you don't need a detailed recipe for any of this. I always say the recipes are just guidelines. Go get a little bit creative, have a little fun, and just make it work. You taste it, you adjust as you go. Here's one trick from Tiffany to use produce past its prime. Get out the saute pan. Just because your greens are wilted doesn't mean they're bad. You know, a little bit of onion and garlic or whatever flavor you want to use and go ahead and saute those greens. Or, you know, doing greens that are inside of soups or finish it off in sauces. Or you can put them in taco filling or fried rice because there's still a lot of flavor to salvage here.

4:11Plus, wilted greens are really forgiving. If they're just a little bit wilted, you can take and put in a little bit of ice water, and that will help kind of perk it up. You can also saute those tomatoes that you have sitting around that are now soft. It may be past as prime for fresh tomatoes chopped up on a salad or on a sandwich, but it is just getting into the soup season or that stew season for tomato. So no reason to throw any of this out? No, there's absolutely no reason to. And that's the point. And once you start noticing what you're tossing out, you may notice something else. Lots of leaves and stems, which, believe it or not, have a lot of flavor and nutrients too.

4:53Take broccoli. Most of us throw away the stalks and just eat the florets, the tops. But Tiffany says why. You can use everything from the root to the stem. I say cook them the same exact way that you were going to cook your florets. If you were going to boil it, boil it. If you were going to roast it, roast it. A little bit of salt and pepper and olive oil goes a long way in roasted vegetables. I mean, honestly, it's one of the most flavorful ways to bring out kind of the sugar and the flavor in any kind of vegetable. High heat, 425 degrees, olive oil, salt and pepper, a little bit of fresh herb, roast it for a few minutes.

5:27Take it out while it's still got a little crunch. You're giving us all of your chef-y tips. You're not going to have any secrets left. I don't need it. I want to give it away. I want us to eat all our food. I don't want anybody else to throw their money away. The fun of all of this is that there are just so many ways to repurpose food. You can also quick pickle carrots, cucumbers or onions that you're just not going to get too fast enough. Or here's a good idea. It's for that bag of avocados you bought last week. It has ripened now while you weren't paying attention. And now those avocados have little brown speckles, right?

6:03Having some brown specks and having just a little bit of softness will not change the flavor. They won't look beautiful, but the taste is still there. So here's an idea. So one of the recipes we do is a chocolate mousse done with the avocado. And having an avocado that's nice and soft and ripe is the perfect avocado for that. Tiffany says chocolate avocado mousse is super simple to make. So it is melted chocolate, a little bit of avocado that is blended. It will eventually blend everything together. And then we'll whip in a little bit of heavy whipping cream as well. Or I have a recipe that uses tofu.

6:45I know I'm getting crazy here, but it acts in the same way and it's diabetes friendly. And then I add in a little bit of orange zest and cinnamon and a touch of sugar. I guess it's a way to salvage the avocado and get in a little bit of that good fat, yeah? Yes. Now we should say, before you use wilted greens or other things that are way past their prime, the general rule of food safety is that heat kills pathogens. But if something doesn't pass the smell test or makes your stomach turn just looking at it, don't risk it. Compost it. We'll go more into depth on how to compost in a second, But now it's time for takeaway number three.

7:27And this is so unbelievably useful. When it comes to fighting food waste, your freezer is your friend. I freeze anything that I'm not going to use quickly. By anything, she means almost everything. Your bread, your veggies, your fruits, even your milk. If I'm getting ready to go out of town, I look in my fridge and I freeze anything that I'm not going to use quickly. So berries, pineapple, I mean, all of those fruits are things that people buy already. Why not get it while it's in the peak of season and then pop it in a bag and just have it in your freezer ready to go? You know it's delicious.

8:07You know what time of the year it was brought in. I freeze vegetables if I'm not going to get to them. When you freeze things, you're actually locking in flavor and nutrients. So in some ways, it's better than letting produce languish in the fridge. So here's another tip. This one from Katherine Miller. Freeze bread. The best bakery bread will taste like a fresh baked loaf if you freeze it. Put sliced bread in the freezer and take the sliced bread out of the freezer during the week and put it into the toaster. And you have fresh bread every day without risking wasting the bread. Ah, so never even like never leave the bread sitting on the counter or even the refrigerator.

8:45Just put it right into the freezer. Slice it and put it right into the freezer. And you can take it out and you can throw it on a pan in the oven. You can put it in your toaster. And you can't even tell it was frozen. No, not once you put some butter and some jam on it or some cheese, a toasty. Yum. I love toasties. And here is another idea. Scraps of veggies, if you freeze them, are the perfect base for a broth. It's super simple to make broth, right? You just need some, you know, you can take the leftover onions, the celery, the carrots, the leftover chicken, take it out of the freezer, throw it in some water with some herbs and some garlic and, you know, let it simmer for about an hour.

9:20and you've got great broth. So looking in your freezer now, you've got your broth, your bread, your berries. And if you want to cook a big pot of grains on the weekend, say quinoa or rice, Tiffany Derry says make it last all week or all month. I always have frozen rice in my fridge because I'll make more than I need because I love rice. And then I'll take it and I'll put it into smaller containers so that if the next day or whatever day that I need the rice, I just take it out and go ahead and let it sit out, or I will pop it in the microwave at defrost. So the freezer really cannot be underestimated, it sounds like.

9:58Make the freezer your best friend.

10:05And while we're at it, let's talk dollars and cents. There really is an economic case to be made here about how much money freezing can actually save you. The typical household in the U.S. is wasting somewhere between$150 to$200 a month on wasted food. Katherine Miller says it's shocking. No one would throw away anything that had a$200 value to it. It is not something, I mean, think about all the things, all the time that we spend trying to find lost things because they have value to us. I lost my hat. It cost 20 bucks. Right. Where is my water bottle that cost$20? When we lose something that has value, that we've paid money for, we work to find it.

10:47And that's been one of the biggest things about food waste, is that we are throwing away hundreds of dollars every month in America into the trash. Another factor that really contributes to food waste is the misinterpretation of sell-by dates. For the most part, all a sell-by date really is, is a manufacturer's best guess about when the food is the freshest. It doesn't mean that the food is bad or expired. You don't have to toss it out. And this is true even with milk. My son used to ask me all the time, is this still good? Because it says on this date. Everybody knows that conversation, right?

11:26Exactly. It happens in every household. One of Tiffany's tricks, she takes milk that's about to turn sour and turns it into a sweet treat. I've made a lot of pancakes out of it. We've all heard of buttermilk, right? Which is just milk with some lemon juice or other acid mixed in. Think of sour milk as nature's way of making buttermilk. So you basically take this milk that's about to sour and then just blend it in with a bunch of flour and whatever other pancake mix you have, right? Yes. And sometimes I want it to go a little bit further. So I'll add in first I'll take that milk. Let's say I had a cup of milk.

12:03I might add in a tablespoon of vinegar. It will thicken just like my buttermilk. And then from there, I would add in that milk into my dry ingredients and make pancakes or biscuits. Now you're talking biscuits. Your family must love that. Oh, yes, they love it. And another way to use up that milk comes from Catherine Miller. She says she likes having it in the house for coffee or the occasional recipe, but a lot of it goes to waste. So here is her tip to use up the rest of the gallon. So we make a lot of ricotta cheese in our house, which is super easy. Just milk, cream, and acid, which we typically use lemons to use those lemons we always have in our house, but you can use a vinegar.

12:44And then a pinch of salt. And all you need to do is heat it to pretty much almost boil. Don't scald it. And then add the acid and the salt, and the ways will separate, and you'll have delicious ricotta. I had no idea it was so easy to make ricotta. It's so easy.

13:05Your final tip, tip number five, should take away some guilt, given how much heat-trapping methane comes from our food waste. Well, I thought that it was going to really stink. Think of composting as a way to recycle your food scraps. When food scraps are composted, they break down in a way that reduces or prevents the release of methane. Basically, the scraps get plenty of oxygen, and this aerobic breakdown allows food to decompose in the soil, enriching and improving it. Composting is really no different than throwing out your trash. You're just thinking about, you know, you have two different trash cans now.

13:41You're thinking of actual waste, which are things obviously we can't really do anything about. And you're taking your food pieces and putting it in another trash, basically, right? Another bag. And it's super easy to do. The easiest way to compost is, yep, we're coming back to it, the freezer. As you have scraps, whether it's carrot peel or apple core or rinds, put them in a container and stick it in the freezer. And if there is any odor and if you are using the freezer method, it helps a whole lot because the bags are easy. All you do is take it out and pop it in your freezer and then you can take everything out at the end of the week.

14:20Then you can take it to a drop off spot. Some cities have compost collection sites. A handful of cities will actually pick up your compost at the curb. Some farmers markets collect too. And why is this so helpful? Back to climate change. And it's completely worth the time. Because otherwise it's just going to go in the garbage where it's going to be part of that great pile of food that we waste that produces methane gas and contributes to climate change. If you can collect your scraps and get them composted, then you're putting the compost back in the soil. And if you are a gardener, you know just how fabulous that soil is once you've added in your composted material.

14:58It works as a fertilizer. It helps to prevent moisture from leaking out. It just makes the soil so much healthier and prevents the release of greenhouse gases. So let's recap. Takeaway number one, plan before you buy groceries. When you're shopping your main meal, you always want to make sure that you take that and repurpose that into a second or third meal. There's many ways to do that. Get into it. Tip number two, to reduce food waste, you got to get creative in the kitchen. The best way to use your leftovers, vegetables that are starting to wilt is to repurpose them. Toss them in soup, salads or anything that you can create.

15:42Takeaway number three, my personal favorite. Make the freezer your best friend. And takeaway number four, don't be fooled by that sell-by date. The sell-by date is truly just a guideline. It is not an expiration date. And your final takeaway, don't throw that food into the trash. Compost, compost, compost. Composting is an amazing, feel-good way for you to have a direct impact on the environment and know that you're making a change. Food gets wasted at every point in the supply chain, from the farm to the grocery store. And changing this is outside of our control. But we can all do our bit, and hopefully you'll feel better about making a difference.

16:29That's NPR's health correspondent, Alison Aubrey. For more Life Kit, check out our other episodes. There's one on healthy eating and another on how to get a good night's sleep. You can find those at npr.org slash Life Kit. And if you love LifeKit and want even more, subscribe to our newsletter at npr.org slash LifeKit newsletter. Just a reminder that signing up for LifeKit Plus is a great way to support our show and public media, and you'll get to listen to every episode sponsor free. So please go find out more at plus.npr.org slash LifeKit. This episode of LifeKit was produced by Megan Cain, who's also our supervising editor.

17:05Our visuals editor is Beck Harlan, and our digital editor is Malika Grebe. Beth Donovan is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Andy Tagle, Claire Marie Schneider, Margaret Serino, and Sylvie Douglas. Engineering support comes from Ted Meebane and David Greenberg. I'm Mariel Segarra. Thanks for listening.