Food Waste Frames
May. 21st, 2022 03:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutIt occurred to me to ask, you know, how much can we reduce food waste? There are a variety of systemic issues. Like, for example, it can be difficult to save and later eat small amounts of food as a general rule, but especially when eating out while traveling and not in a place where the food can be stored safely. So portion sizes are important. Also, there are a variety of issues with packaging and so forth, where one often has to buy a minimum of a certain amount (the smallest mayo jar at the store, for example, is often quite large in the US), even if one will not be able to use it up in time (either because one infrequently eats mayo, or one is traveling and will only be able to eat the mayo during a 1 or 2 week period, and then will be flying home, leaving a partially full bottle behind).
Changes in portioning, both in prepared meals, and in package sizes, thus becomes fairly important. But there are some other problems, too, in that acquiring food for a period of time has a certain amount of cognitive load to it. Planning meals, planning a list, figuring out what you already have, buying what you do not, etc. There are, famously, cultural packaging conundrums, where the typical number of hotdogs in a package is incompatible with the typical number of hotdog buns in a package.
If you search on reducing food waste, goals at the national and international level plausibly focus on reducing _some_ of the food waste, rather than all of it.
If you search on what an individual can do to avoid food waste, there are a bunch of suggestions for how to preserve food for later use (Freezing, canning, etc.).
But if you search on one of the most important components that an individual could do to reduce food waste — acquiring less food — all that shows up are recommendations for how to _spend less money_ on food. Which is NOT the same!
This is just amazing! This is totally a More Is Better being a complete Stopper of a problem. And that’s the second one I’ve run up against in a few days (the previous one was how to move from early adopter on circular economy to the next group out — everything about circular is anti-More).
Changes in portioning, both in prepared meals, and in package sizes, thus becomes fairly important. But there are some other problems, too, in that acquiring food for a period of time has a certain amount of cognitive load to it. Planning meals, planning a list, figuring out what you already have, buying what you do not, etc. There are, famously, cultural packaging conundrums, where the typical number of hotdogs in a package is incompatible with the typical number of hotdog buns in a package.
If you search on reducing food waste, goals at the national and international level plausibly focus on reducing _some_ of the food waste, rather than all of it.
If you search on what an individual can do to avoid food waste, there are a bunch of suggestions for how to preserve food for later use (Freezing, canning, etc.).
But if you search on one of the most important components that an individual could do to reduce food waste — acquiring less food — all that shows up are recommendations for how to _spend less money_ on food. Which is NOT the same!
This is just amazing! This is totally a More Is Better being a complete Stopper of a problem. And that’s the second one I’ve run up against in a few days (the previous one was how to move from early adopter on circular economy to the next group out — everything about circular is anti-More).