September 5, 2023 • 50 mins
Is the ugly food movement really saving wasted food from landfills, or is it literally stealing food from the mouths of the poor? Learn more in this week's episode of your favorite sustainability podcast.
What we talked about:
Sources:
- The Atlantic - Expiration Dates Are Meaningless https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/11/expiration-dates-food-waste-safety/672311/
- Recycle Track Systems - Food Waste in America https://www.rts.com/resources/guides/food-waste-america/
- Feeding America - Hunger in America https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america
- Reuters - Harvard Study Finds Food Expiration Labels are Misleading https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-foodsafety-dates/harvard-study-finds-food-expiration-labels-are-misleading-idUSBRE98H15F20130918
- Green Biz - Why is composting so hard in the United States? https://www.greenbiz.com/article/why-composting-so-hard-united-states
- Project Drawdown - Reduced Food Waste https://www.drawdown.org/solutions/reduced-food-waste
- Solus Group - Restaurant Composting and the Shift Toward Zero-Waste Foodservice https://solusgrp.com/blog/post/restaurant-composting-and-the-shift-toward-zero-waste-foodservice.html
- Berkeley Economic Review - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Produce Movement https://econreview.berkeley.edu/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-produce-movement/
- The New Republic - Does Your Box of “Ugly” Produce Really Help the Planet? Or Hurt it? https://newrepublic.com/article/152596/hungry-harvest-box-ugly-produce-help-planet-or-hurt-it
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
Hey, Tiffany. HELLO, CAT.
Welcome back to greening up myact. Thank you. I hope everyone
had a good week off because it'swe're recording this one.
Exactly right after we recordedlast week's when we were talking
about the mill quote unquotecomposting. So we're, we're on a
roll and we're just going tokeep rolling into this next
(00:23):
section, but I guess we shouldintroduce ourselves. Yeah, well,
and this comes out September 5,so hopefully you have less heat.
Yeah, here. Yeah, I hope I'vethere's no in inside. They're
actually keeping pools openlater this year through October
1, because the heat wave has noend in sight. So yeah. And we
keep having heat emergency likeheat, excessive heat warning
(00:47):
stuff. And the city has to keepcooling centers open, which is
really important, but it's likereally terrifying. Because
there's no escape. You know,that's really scary. Yeah. And
you said your AC went out,right? Yeah. My it overheated
last night. Oh, my God.
Yesterday afternoon sometime.
And I think because we had tohave or Sunday night we had to
have a guy come and look at ityesterday, and I was so scared
(01:10):
that it was gonna be out. I wasgonna have to buy a new H back
but it just, it just overheated.
Nice. Okay. Well, that's, Imean, that's a blessing. Yeah.
As a homeowner, that's it. Yes,blessing, but it's just going to
happen again, because it's 107degrees every day this week.
I'll go put an umbrella outthere and give it some shade. I
(01:30):
don't know. You know, like, howdo you Yeah, the air
conditioner.
Well, hopefully by September 5,you're better.
At least a little less daylightand nothing else.
But yeah, that's why we do thisthough. This is we right? It's
like a perfect re on. Yeah, it'stoo late, y'all, but it's not
(01:52):
too late. We are looking at waysto create a sustainable
lifestyle that reduces ourindividual impact and hopefully
influences corporations to dotheir part to reduce emissions
and other things that arecausing global climate change.
And yeah, and not only it's notlike a fake sustainable
(02:16):
lifestyle, like most of us,like we don't even know we're
doing most of the time, I thinkbecause so much more thing is
out there. That is as we call itgreen Hui, it tells you this is
a good product to choose whenit's really just more expensive
and less effective and doesn'tactually do anything to mitigate
the you know, carbon emissionsor waste that it creates or
(02:39):
water it wastes or chemicalsthat use it right or or people
it impacts like, yeah, waterwaysit pollutes or you know, things
like that. So yeah, and we aremarketing writers. So we spent
our days writingsilly words. No. I don't think
either of us marketsunsustainable products. No, no,
(03:02):
no. Our mapping words are forthe good. But yeah, yeah. We
Yeah, we try not to be evil, butthat's one goal.
But you know, we're really goodat seeing through other people's
verbiage. Yep. My garbage,verbal garbage. Is it verbiage
(03:24):
or verbiage, either I think it'sspelled verbiage but it's it's
meant to be verbal garbage iswhat it stands for. I had no
idea okay. Yeah. Learn somethingnew. Yeah.
Anyway, so yeah, and then werate we go through systems or
products or services and writethem on a scale of one to five
(03:46):
granolas because what else wouldyou do is eco friendly warriors
you want to be hippies and fiveis a crunchy crunchy crunchy
crunchy. Good. The crunchygranola, which is breaker twos
off, and a one is soggy.
Yep. And that's you don't wantsoggy granola. We have had a
sodden granola before. Oh, no.
Wait, it was Waterlogue.
waterlogged. Yes. I'm sorry. Ikeep saying sodden. Because I'm
(04:08):
like, it's worse than soggy, butit is waterlogged. Yes. So we've
had one of those, but mostthings tend to fall in the
three, right? Yeah, it depends.
Yeah, it really depends. Butthere's a lot of we, our goal is
to find that really good stuff.
Yeah, we can tell people likeyeah, do this. Like for example.
(04:28):
plastic forks, like, those arethe one reusable item that you
shouldwell, you should avoid plastic
forks and just carry around afork and yeah, like actually
doing some good. That wasamazing to find out. Yeah, just
keep a fork in your purse. Ihaven't if you missed that
episode, we chatted aboutreusable stuff a couple episodes
back so yeah, look for that.
(04:50):
It's worth it. Or just keep amug it works. You don't use a
paper cup every time you get acoffee.
Yeah, and we kind of tried toexamine like, what are
Individual impact is and thenmore like, like Cat said, like
company wide, like what cancompanies do? And how can we
hold them more accountable?
Because that's really where theimpact is going to be biggest.
(05:10):
Yeah. 100% Well, and then the Sothis week's episode last week,
we talked about compost, butmore specifically a brand called
the mill home composting system,which is an actually composted
the mill kitchen bin kitchen binthat sort of goes, yeah, that
and you can't talk aboutcomposting without talking about
food waste, and you can't talkabout food waste without talking
(05:32):
about composting. So these twoepisodes probably will be really
good listened to back to back.
I'm just gonna say, Yeah, well,I'm going to start with my
sources in no particular order.
An article from the Atlanticabout expiration dates are
meaningless.
A company called recycled tracksystems had a blog on food waste
(05:52):
in America, Feeding America,which is the largest network of
food banks in the United Stateshad. I got stats on hunger in
America from them. Reuters hadan article Harvard study finds
food expiration labels aremisleading.
A company called Green biz saidwhy is composting so hard in the
United States? Project drawdownhad an article about reduced
(06:15):
food waste? I love them? Yes,they're great. Yeah, they're
really great. The soloists grouphad an article on restaurant
composting and the shift towardzero waste food service.
Berkeley Economic Review had TheGood, the Bad and the Ugly
produce movement. And the NewRepublic had does your box of
ugly produce really helped theplanet or hurt it? And then of
course, I had to the two biggestugly food
(06:41):
companies are imperfect foods.
They're imperfect. foods.com andhungry for harvest is at Hungry
Harvest that net? Yeah, I getboth of those on Instagram.
Yeah. Well, I don't Did wemention we're talking about food
waste, but we're specificallyfocusing on your your ugly food,
right? I'm focusing on the uglyfood movement. Okay. I'm so
excited about that, because Iknow nothing about it. And I've
(07:01):
always been so curious as to thedetails. Okay. So I'm real
pumped. Well, good. Okay. Well,so you talked last week about
how the issue with food waste isat the source. Food waste
happens at the source, right?
It's that composting.
(07:22):
Who cares about composting ifpeople are just throwing away so
much food, right? According torecycled track systems, and
they're okay. They're a wastemanagement company whose goal is
a world without waste, which Ilike, but then they would put
themselves out of business. It'sfine. Yeah, well, well, maybe
not. I know. They're becausethey're, again, they're just
trying to create a closed loop.
Okay. It's not really a worldwithout waste. It's a world
without stuff in land. I gotcha.
(07:44):
Basically. Yeah. So Americanswaste nearly 60 million tons of
food each year. 60 60 milliontons. Yeah, that adds up to
about 50% of the entire US foodsupply. Almost half say 50 50%.
Almost half. Yep. And that's 325pounds per person every year.
(08:04):
Oh, my God. That's more thantwice what I weigh. You know?
My hand is up to my face. Yeah,shame. aghast. Yeah. But it's
also you know, that's $218billion worth of food just right
down the drain. Oh, my God, ifyou want to talk about excessive
lifestyles, Americans lead leadthe world in this by the way to
(08:25):
break it down. RTS says that 43%of food waste is directly from
individual consumers. So this isdefinitely a place where
individual consumers have themost impact. You said 43% 43%?
Damn, yeah, we have a lot ofimpact on that. And after that,
40% is from business to consumerstuff. So that's grocery stores,
restaurants or food servicecompanies. Okay. So they're
(08:48):
throwing out 25 million tons.
And a lot of that is ugly food.
Okay, right. They say, Okay,we'll get into that, or no
answer that 16% from farmsagain, that is food that is left
unpicked, or that they couldn'tsell. Okay, and then 2% for
manufacturers who have producedtoo much food and don't sell it.
(09:10):
Okay, so that's interesting. Sothey're not really doing as bad
as like, the manufacturersaren't doing as bad as well.
Yeah. And then thinking aboutthat, like clan food or jarred
food or stuff, you know, thatjust expires before it's sold, I
think, right? Okay. So overallfood wastes makes up 22% of
municipal solid waste. So that'sdirect to our landfills.
(09:33):
You know, we talked about 20%and 22. Corridor. Yeah. And
that's, that's not composted?
Right. That could be composted.
Yeah. Right. So that's thetragedy of that, you know? Yeah.
And we talked about whycomposting is better last week,
because it if there's oxygen,methane is not produced. If
(09:54):
there's no oxygen like in alandfill. Methane is produced.
Yeah. So we don't want it inlandfills. So
Don't do that. Again. That'sproject drawdown. So that
accounts for 8% of globalgreenhouse gas emissions. Now,
RTS was the one that said thatwas 11%. Oh, right. Right,
right. Yeah. But I don't knowwhy they're different. And
Berkeley Economic Review saysthat according to the UN, if
(10:15):
food waste itself was a country,it would be the third largest
global emitter of greenhousegases.
So it's like us, China. Foodwaste. You know, my food waste
Island. Holy shit. Yeah, stains.
Yeah, insane. Bad News Bears,Bad News Bears. So this is a
real frickin issue. Okay, if youcare about the environment at
(10:35):
all, food waste is a big, bigissue. The New Republic reports
that every year 30 million acresof cropland 4.2 trillion gallons
of water and nearly 2 billionpounds of fertilizer are used to
grow food that's never eaten.
When according then That'saccording to a recent study. The
latter is particularlyconcerning since nitrogen based
(10:56):
fertilizer is a major cause ofwater contamination and a
significant emitter ofgreenhouse gases. So it's not
just that the waste itself isending up in the landfill. It's
what creates the waste that iscausing the problem, which is
another thing we found with fastfashion, right? It's not just
that you're getting a quick $5shirt from Target and then
throwing it away after wearingit once. It's also that the
(11:18):
amount of work it takes toproduce that is causing problems
in the front end. So yeah, it'sit's a candle on both ends.
That's very bad. Wow. So why doAmericans throw out so much
food?
This is interesting. I don't Idon't think anybody can pinpoint
this directly. But okay. 34million Americans, including 9
(11:39):
million children are foodinsecure, according to Feeding
America. So that means thatthat's people who have a hard
time getting three square mealsa day. Right? So that's a lot of
people. That's that is a lot.
10% Although, in America, foodis plentiful and inexpensive
compared to other countries.
(11:59):
Okay, I know inflation sucksright now. And eggs are $9. You
know, a does. A few weeks ago, Ijust posted. I just posted this
on Instagram, I saw a jar ofpasta sauce for like $7 $16. Was
it handmade by somebody's Nona?
Like it shouldn't. It had tohave been they had to fly Nona
over to New York. So they flewher over. I don't know. I was
like, What in God's world areyou living? It's insane. Yeah,
(12:21):
I'm with shortages and stuff.
Food is really expensive. Butreally, and this is something
that my I remember in highschool, when we had exchange
students from Europe, they werelike, food is so cheap in the
US. It's so cheap. So we take itfor granted. Yeah. But we
produce most of our own food isone of the things I mean, yeah,
you're getting you're out ofseason. Oranges from South
(12:45):
America, you know, but we doproduce a lot of our own food
here. We're pretty selfsufficient. Yeah, I mean, we
have a lot of land to do it.
Yeah. Yes. Number one, we justtake it for granted. Because
it's cheap. It's 60 cents to buya head of broccoli, and I don't
care about throwing away 60cents worth of food, right? is
cheap. Four out of five. Okay,now this is the other thing.
Four out of five Americans willthrow away perfectly good food
(13:06):
because it's past its quoteunquote sell buy or Best Buy
date. Okay, so yeah, okay. We'reafraid of food poisoning. For
sure. That can mean a totallybad weekend. But most who that
says it's past its expirationdate is totally okay to eat.
Okay, well, not expiration date,I should say sell buy or use by
date, best date. Okay. That'ssomething we'll talk about
(13:28):
again. Okay. Now, according tothe Atlantic, the problem is
that most expiration datesconvey only information about an
item's quality, with theexception of infant formula,
where they really do refer toexpiration dates generally
represent a manufacturer orproducers best estimate of how
long food is optimally fresh andtasty. Although what this
actually means varies widely,not least because there's no
(13:52):
federal oversight over labeling.
What? Yep, they just make aguess. Ah, I had no idea. And it
could be vastly different. Forinstance, I think I read that a
gallon of milk sold in Wyomingcan be sold 10 days later than
it can be in Montana or viceversa, even though like just
(14:12):
because they just have differentregulations about use by an
expired date. It's a it's not ascience. It's not so wait.
It's not federally regulated,but the states are the some
states do. Yeah. Okay. But it'sreally just up to the
manufacturer for them to getthem. How long is it going to
take for this broccoli to rot?
Quit looking at yourself,especially sell by dates. That's
(14:33):
just to move to make you feellike you've got to buy it now.
You know,but I do find some pretty good
deals on meat. Yes. On theirsell by dates. Yes. And it's
always been good for me. It'sperfectly fine. Yeah. Okay.
That's, we'll get more intothat. Yeah. Okay. Now, the other
thing about food waste is wejust don't compost, which is
(14:53):
what we talked about last week,composting would be so much
better. This is partly becausethere just aren't
systems in the US systems inplace in the US to compost in
the first place. It's just noteasy, right? Not everywhere.
That's not sure. Yeah, accordingto GreenBiz, we don't have
funding for it. We don't havefacilities to send compost to in
the first place. We don't knowhow to fix contamination
(15:15):
problems, meaning we don't knowhow to like, pull out the little
bit of oil that got on the onething that's, you know, and we
don't have any data on it.
Nobody really knows about who'scomposting what and where we
just, we just don't, we justdon't care. Interesting. But
also, when they try to introducecomposting programs, Americans
just don't participate. So theytried, they did a pilot program
(15:37):
in New York, and they were allabout it. And only 10% of people
in New York City participated.
When offered. Oh, that'sinteresting. So was it like a
pilot for pickup? Yeah. Okay.
You municipal like you have athird Ben? You have your and
your Yeah, it was a city. Yeah.
Anyway, I wonder if people arejust like, I don't want to
(15:58):
slosh. My? I don't want to soup.
Soup down 18. Stairs, or 18flights of stairs? I don't know.
I mean, it is it is gross. Wetalked about this last week.
It's gross to keep you know,they have all these
recommendations on our Austinresource recovery website about
how you can keep chicken bonesand stuff in your freezer until
you're ready to take the compostcurb. Which makes sense. But
(16:18):
yeah, it's a it's an extra step.
And it's not getting yourgarbage out of sight out of
mind. The way we all want it tobe right. Yeah, hard. It's
frickin hard. I personally thinkpeople are a little afraid of
composting. And I think thatbecause I was well, yeah, it's
kind of magic. Yeah, it's alittle it's intimidating to I
feel like there's a lot of likepeople who do compost can can be
(16:41):
kind ofgatekeeping weighty. Yes, yes.
Yes, exactly. It's true. Becauseit is it's like, well, this
works for me. Yeah, there's likekind of alive who reels and
totally, yeah, totally. Thegreen badge. Yeah. And so now
that I'm home composting, I'm100% gonna do that to other
people. Oh, yeah. Like, compost.
(17:03):
Why not? Oh, good. I was so sadfor you.
Anyway, okay. Okay. So the otherthing is restaurants don't
compost either. Okay. Yeah, it'sa little shocking to me. So
according to the soulless group,in 2018, the National Restaurant
Association reported that only14% of restaurants composted any
(17:23):
food waste, and I think aboutthat. I know maybe two places
that I can think of that Ifrequent with any regularity.
Not that I can afford to eat outanymore, but that have a compost
section in there. You know, whenyou've got to throw out your
food? Oh, yeah. It's very rarethat they have a composting. You
(17:45):
know, yeah. I don't really blamethem for not doing that. Because
I feel like people would justthrow their trash in it. Yeah.
Yeah, I feel like in the alley,you there might be a way I tried
to convince this coffee shopthat I worked at to compost for
a while and he was not feelingit. So I mean, at least a coffee
grounds. You know, that's whatit was. Yeah. And the auditor,
he was like, It's too messy. Idon't wanna deal with it. So.
And that's exactly it. It's toomessy. Which is why we come up
(18:07):
with food hydrators ordehydrators. Kitchens, kitchens,
yep.
(18:32):
Okay, so what's a girl to do?
Okay, and incomes the ugly foodmovement, right? If you're on
social media at all, like me,you've probably seen ads for
imperfect produce Hungry Harvestor other ugly quote unquote,
produce boxes? Yes. So they sendsupposedly unsellable produce
that farms or manufacturers arejust gonna throw away to your
(18:53):
door every month.
This is the 16% or 20 billionpounds of produce that gets
thrown away every year frompounds from farms. Okay. They
say.
Okay, critiques.
I don't know if I talked enoughabout what they do to make it
worth just diving into thecritiques. But
(19:17):
so they suck. And here's why.
Well, here's the thing. The newfood economy, which is like a
group of charities that focus onon food waste, they say the
issue with these boxes is thatthey can modify and gentrify
food waste, right. So that thefood that goes into ugly produce
boxes really isn't going to gointo landfills in the first
place. Usually, that stuff isturned into other food. So stuff
(19:40):
that they can't put on the shelfbecause it's bruised or too
ugly. Like a bruised Apple isturned into applesauce. That's
what I was just thinking. Yeah,shredded carrots. Where do you
think they come from? Where doyou think baby carrots come
from? Ugly carrots. I always Iwondered about that ketchup
tomato pie.
used diced tomatoes anythingcanned? That's kind of a mush.
(20:05):
You know, it's ugly food.
Now, another issue that theybring up is that a lot of these
crops often get donated to foodbanks. Okay, so they're
basically taking it out of themouths of the poor is what
they're saying, wow.
The other thing is that uglyfood can get sold to restaurants
because they don't care what itlooks like if they're just going
(20:26):
to chop it up and make it into apuree anyway, right? Right. So
that's cheaper food forrestaurants to get. It's also a
lot of this quote, unquote, uglyfood. And this kind of ticked me
off a little bit, but it's soldat a lower for a lower price to
grocery stores in lower incomeneighborhoods, or neighborhoods,
where again, it can be sold forless. So poor people deserve
(20:47):
ugly food, I guess it's kind of,you know, which,
when it comes down to it, whocares what it looks like, you
know, the nutritional value of acarrot isn't based on how it's
shaped like, Okay, we should allquit being so frickin bougie
about how our food looks? Yeah.
And I was gonna say one problemI could see is if somebody is
(21:07):
hesitant to, I'm just thinkingof kids really? Like if a kid is
like, oh, that's carrots. Weird.
I don't know. Well, you chop itup. Yeah, right. Yeah. I mean,
and maybe you just teach thekid. You can't judge a book by
its cover? Yeah, exactly. Maybethere's a teachable moment. Not
(21:29):
all food has to beInstagrammable mm. But another
pro tip, if you go to a lowerincome neighborhood, the produce
will be cheaper. It'll lookuglier. There is some concern. I
remember, a couple of years ago,when I lived in New Jersey,
there was someone who pointedout that produce and okay, we
lived in kind of the place wherewe lived in New Jersey was split
(21:50):
between like super, superwealthy $3 million homes. And
then like, just down the streetwas a much lower income
neighborhood. And the differencebetween the grocery store on
like, they were a mile apart,there was a whole foods at the
top of the hill and like apathway or whatever, at the
bottom of the hill. And thepurpose of the pathway was
uglier. And not in his goodcondition. It was cheaper. But,
(22:11):
you know, it's kind of it alwaysgave me the AIC you know? Why?
Yeah. Like, why, yeah, why? Howdoes Yeah, which people deserve
fresher food? What are thesesystems? Yeah, well, that like
one of the somebody wrote anarticle about it, and one of the
local papers, and she said, youknow, at Whole Foods, all of the
asparagus is stored in in water,standing upright and water at
(22:31):
the pathway. It's not, it's justkind of, you know, wilting sort
of like, yeah, I don't know.
It's, why do poor people deserveless fresh food? But yeah, they
don't. But at the same time,affordable food is more if there
are 34 million Americanssuffering from food insecurity.
fordable. Food Matters. SoRight.
(22:53):
It's more concerning that thesefood boxes would be taking
donated food away from foodbanks. I truly never would have
thought I would. Yeah, that's,that's really interesting. I
have done a lot of work withfood banks, I've there would
have, I don't think they shouldexist.
Because I think that we live inthe richest country in the world
and why they're hungry,especially children. Are you
(23:16):
kidding me? Hungry seniors andchildren, like we had a social
welfare network until the 80s.
And, you know, big capitalistgovernment got rid of it. And
that's when food banks cameabout this in the 1980s. We
didn't have them before then.
Whoa, I didn't know that. Yeah,that because we had a welfare
system that actually took careof people. So anyway, food bank
(23:36):
should not exist, in my opinion,but they do such important work,
just getting food to people whodon't have access to it. Anyway,
donate to your local food bank.
I'll get into that in a minute.
Anyway, okay. So I was gonnaask, but go. Okay, so the bottom
line, the biggest critique isinstead of handling food waste,
they're handling food surplus.
Okay. This means they'reincentivizing farmers to keep
(24:00):
producing excess food,especially big agriculture. Hmm.
They may be taking food awayfrom food banks, or even grocery
stores in lower incomeneighborhoods where it can be
sold at a lower price, you know,there are getting taking food
out of the mouths of lowerincome people or people who
can't afford it. So those aresome pretty big critiques. Also,
somebody pointed out in theBerkeley Economic Review, one of
(24:21):
the food scientists pointed outthat a lot of the food that's
wasted by farms isn't wastedbecause it was picked and
determined to be ugly, it'swasted because there is a labor
shortage because of ourimmigration policies. So the
food just isn't picked,especially in big agricultural
farms. It's just laid out towaste because nobody's picking
it. Okay, so ugly food box isn'tgoing to solve that problem.
(24:45):
Yeah, that's an immigrationpolicy issue. And, uh, you know,
farm labor union issue, that'sso much, you know, labor issue,
huge, huge other problem. Nowanother issue that people have
with the ugly foodimprovement is they may be
taking money away from CSAs. Socommunity supported agriculture,
(25:05):
which we've talked about now.
CSAs are really good for farmwaste, because they're small
scale farms. And the way thatmost of them work is you have a
subscription from stakeholderswho pay in advance. The Farm
knows what its membership sizesand plants crops accordingly. So
it doesn't grow excess food. Itknows exactly who it's going to,
(25:30):
you know?
Okay, so the samples are happybecause part of my see Yes,
exactly. It's it's a much moresustainable, it's local. The
farmer is also financiallyprotected in that sense, because
if a, you know, crop fails,okay, sure. The stake
stakeholders, I mean, membershave taken on a little bit of
the risk. So you might not getas much arugula this year as
(25:50):
last year, but the farmer is notcompletely out of money because
they put all their money intoarugula for you know, 2 million
people and they didn't have acrop. So Right. Yeah, we got we
get all the zucchini. Yeah, andthen nothing else. Yeah, I think
we had months of months of justlike, potatoes. Yeah, we had
problem potatoes, y'all. Like,here's some potato recipes.
Exactly. zucchini bread up thewazoo. Yeah. Imperfect foods and
(26:14):
hungry harvests, which are thetwo biggest ones have advertised
themselves as CSA style boxes.
Oh, I don't know, whichundercuts CSAs without
addressing why CSAs exist in thefirst place, right? They're not
really Community SupportedAgriculture. They're trying to
mitigate food waste, differentproducts, they're, you know, so
anyway, however, okay, so intheir defense, imperfect produce
(26:38):
claims, they save 30 millionpounds of food and 900 million
gallons of water from beingwasted every year. When asked,
you know, why do you work withbig ag? So one of the issues
that came up was that if theyget ugly produce from big
factory farms, they areincentivizing the big factory
(27:00):
farm to over produce, right?
If whereas if they were onlyworking with small farms, that's
a completely different story. Sothey said, so imperfect foods
claimed that only five to 10%total of their produce comes
from industrial producers likedole. Okay. Which means it
probably wasn't destined for thelandfill in the first place.
(27:21):
Hungry Harvest says they getmost of their food from farms
under 500 acres that were justleaving excess food in the
fields in the first place. Sookay, they Hungry Harvest didn't
have exact numbers on where,which farmers they're working
with. I don't like that either.
No. Like you want sometransparency. Again, imperfect
produce has a calculator thatshows your impact, personally,
(27:41):
if you use our service alone forgroceries, so if you only buy
one of their CSA, CSA styleboxes, as they call it, you can
save up to 384 pounds ofrecovered food for being tossed
in a landfill. 9000 Plus gallonsof water 38 hours saved
shopping. So if you just havethe box come every week, and up
to 288 pounds of carbon dioxideconserved.
(28:09):
Okay, I don't know how theycalculate all of that. But yeah,
that was the thing with mill.
They just were very transparentabout doing their own math.
Yeah. And they're like, thismight change later. But for now,
this sounds really good. Likewhat? Yeah, I don't know. I
don't know if they're doing thesame thing. But well, I mean, it
sounds like, okay, they canaverage how many pounds of
recovered food they sell everyyear. So that makes sense. I
(28:30):
don't know about the waterthough. Right?
I mean, the hour save shopping.
Yes. Right. Fine. Okay, theyalso don't charge a subscription
fee. So you pay by the box.
Okay. It is an annual, like amonthly, like, my CSA was the
same way you could cancel ifyou're going to be in town or
(28:50):
something. You could cancel thatmonth. But you really Yeah. This
we pay attention. Yeah. Butyeah, you basically you have a
week to change the items in yourbox around if you want to, and
then they just ship it to you.
Now they do also do what Radwelldoes. So they have like everyone
in your zip code get service onthe same day to reduce carbon.
Okay, but that's nice. Yeah. Sonow the smaller scale farmers
(29:14):
that they that the ugly foodcompanies do work with and
purchase from. They do say theydo donate less food to food
banks. But oh, this can be goodfor them because they make more
money to offset their costs.
Because that's the issue whenyou donate to the food bank.
Yeah, maybe you might get alittle tax break. But it's
(29:34):
always better to sell the foodfor a small farmer. Okay, that
makes sense. Yeah. smaller farmsmeans less Big Ag right. And we
want less Big Ag. We want lessfactory farming. We want
thoughtful consumers.
Also, the ugly food folks don'tconsider CSAs as their main
competitors and the imperfectfoods CEOs said that when they
(29:58):
did a survey only one in 10 oftheir cars
Farmers had ever used a fooddelivery service at all
previously, so they're notreally stealing, you know, and
the CSA people who said thattheir sales had gone down 30% or
whatever didn't really say ifthere were other market
conditions like, okay, you know,maybe, maybe people just quit
pre buying groceries in thefirst place, you know? Yeah.
(30:19):
Another thing is imperfectfoods. And what does that Hungry
Harvest? What did I say it washungry, I can't even remember
the name. I startedcalling them IP and hh thing
because I was like, I'm tired oftyping hungry, hungry, I really,
really wait. They also do somecharitable work on top of to
fight hunger on top of their,you know, suppose saving food
(30:41):
waste. So imperfect Foods has areduced cost box program. So if
you qualify for SNAP benefits, Idon't think you have to be in
the SNAP program. So SNAPbenefits are for it's lower cost
food. And you usually get an EBTcard that, you know, you get
some money from the governmentto be able to feed your family
(31:01):
usually, yeah. If you are in theincome level that qualifies that
even if you're not in theprogram, they'll send a box of
ugly produce for less than itwould cost to buy it from the
grocery store. They say, okay,okay, so this isn't quite as
good as getting a free box fromyour local food bank or
community organization. Yeah,but it's still a sign that you
know, they're thinking about lowincome. Can you use your snap
(31:23):
card on? You can't yet. Okay,you can't use your snap card.
really help but okay, well, theother thing is, the program is
completely full, so you can'teven sign up anymore. Gotcha.
Which says a lot about the stateof America. You know, it does
are hungry, y'all. Okay, butthey do partner with other
suppliers to supplement yourproduce box is another thing. So
(31:46):
you're not just getting uglyproduce. So imperfect foods are
imperfect produce. I call themimperfect foods, but as an
imperfect produce. I thought itwas imperfect foods. I think
it's imperfect produce, okay.
You're probably right. No, it isimperfect foods. Okay. That
chain okay, it is i Okay.
(32:08):
Imperfect foods. Correct me isimperfect foods, ladies and
gentlemen. They have sustainablefood partners that they work
with for their own line of foodswhere they make like, you know,
yogurt dip pretzels from rescuedwith rescued sprinkles, right?
Or upcycle the food or leftoveringredients from other food
(32:30):
producers, so they're takingother types of food waste and
making new snacks out of it. Didyou just say rescued sprinkles?
Yes. That's the example theyuse. Oh, my God. I know. I was
like a sprinkler rescue. And Ilike the idea of upcycled food.
I mean, they're taking greenhooey words. And but it is an
interesting concept, right?
(32:52):
They're using what otherproducers are throwing away and
making a new line of food thatyou can put in your grocery box.
Right, right. So I kind ofthought that was kind of a cool
idea. Yeah, it's a cool idea.
Just don't call it rescuedsprinkles. I know. Stupid. I
know. I'm like no and you'rerescued sprinkles for your
rescue. Pitbull. Exactly.
(33:14):
Exactly. Okay, so they have allthese initiatives and and I feel
like they kind of responded totheir critics pretty well. I do
not.
I don't know it is again. Ohboy, another rich people thing
you can do you know, to feelbetter about yourself, right?
How much you might get intothis. But how much does a box
(33:34):
cost? That I actually didn't getinto? I need to get into that.
Let me look that up real quick.
I don't know. I don't know ifthere's like a standard x. I'm
just curious if it would be morethan my CSA because I go I come
away with my CSA with like, somuch food. Yeah.
Okay, let me see. I know theyjust started let's let's you can
just come with me on this.
Right. So on. Let me put in myzip code get started. Okay, so
(33:56):
they rescue food from going towaste you shop during your
window, we deliver your blah,blah, blah. Let's see. What am I
shopping for one adult.
So here's your window.
This is not a very good website.
Okay. I don't care aboutorganic. So they asked you that
too, to have any dietaryrestrictions. I eat it all.
Okay, what do I buy each week?
(34:21):
You can decide. I do meat andfish. I do produce pentreath
dairy. Or they they send me to?
Yeah. Interesting. Okay, they'resaving my answers. Let's see.
Jamie's Just kidding. Yeah, no,well, yeah, I think that's one
of the things I do. What, okay,so 36 to $46 for one adult per
box. I guess it depends how muchhow much food there is. But
(34:45):
yeah, or what items like if youdon't get meat when we are you
don't get there. Yeah, I'm freeto get to that person. Yes,
that's probably about what Ispend. And okay, and if they do
charge for delivery, so it'sfree delivery for order.
is over 60 bucks. Okay, so I useInstacart. And that
(35:08):
might actually be more for mebecause I always have to if I do
$40 I get free delivery.
But then I tip. Yeah, Instacartactually jacks up their prices,
like the prices of the products.
It's not just you're paying afee. I did a comparison of
Safeway. Yeah. And I did likeInstacart Safeway versus regular
Safeway on their website, and itwas the actual products were
(35:30):
more expensive. Yeah, well, andthey, they actually started a
new thing where that it showslike, for a lot of their items,
if it's similar to what's in thestore, okay, but I think that's
mostly for like total wine orlike alcohol. Okay, I just, I
hate going to the grocery storeso much.
Oh, that's funny, actually. Kindof like, Yeah, I know, my, the
(35:53):
guy I'm dating loves the grocerystore. But I, it's just for me,
it's like, I get overwhelmed.
When I go to the grocery store.
It's just easier to havesomebody else do it. And also, I
get that. It's an hour likeparking is no, no, no, I know. I
get it. My grocery store is kindof lovely. Because it's
Suburban. So yeah, there's roomthere's always parking. Yep.
You're not like elbowing people.
Obviously, like I'm stuck inline behind the one person who
(36:14):
can't who's like writing a checkor something, you know? Yes.
Probably my grandma. Yep.
Anyway, is it worth it? They aresupporting small farms. They
donate a lot of their proceedsto fight hunger. And they're
fighting the stupid aestheticstandards that we all have for
food, right? They're like, makeit we don't need food to be
(36:35):
fashion. Okay, but they may beperpetuating big agriculture's
incentive to over produce. Yep.
If you're already groceryshopping and buying other
produce anyway, you're justadding another rung on your
carbon footprint via delivery.
Although we did talk about howhaving if you're only shopping,
if you're only getting your foodfrom imperfect foods, it might
be better anyway, because you'resaving a carbon footprint that
(36:56):
way. Yeah, but Let's also notforget to mention, I feel like
box. Yeah, well, I was gonna sayI feel like the chances of you
getting every single item youneed from this box for your
entire weeks where the food areso slim. I don't know I wonder
about because I that my CSAstarted selling dairy and meat
(37:16):
and stuff. And it was when theyhad like rice. You know, it was
it was actually like a one stopshop. And I found that you know,
as to shopping for me, that'sanother thing, right? If you
baby items, and you know, theother thing is like, I'm not
buying my shampoo from them.
Right? So, yeah. But yeah. Or,you know, like, you need a
bottle of Coca Cola. They're notgoing to have it. Not that
(37:38):
anyone needs a bottle of CocaCola.
But yeah, I mean, it's apossibility there also Okay,
Hungry Harvest only delivers toMaryland DC. Philly, Southern
New Jersey, northern Delaware. Ispell Delaware really funny in
this Dalloway, yourW A. Ye are I guess I was
thinking about it phonetically.
(37:59):
And then Raleigh, NorthCarolina, imperfect foods is in
the west, south central region,the Midwest, the Northeast and
the West Coast. Okay, they didhave I looked him up for my old
zip code in Albuquerque, NewMexico, and they had a partner
that they worked with calledmisfit something. So yeah, I've
seen that. Yeah. So it lookslike imperfect Foods has a wider
reach by I don't know, justbecause there's so much nuance
(38:21):
to it. And I'm, I'm kind of likenot really sure you need to buy
ugly food. You know, like maybejust buy from your local farm. I
my granola rating. I gave it achewy. So three out of five. Did
we talk about what this is? Ourgranola rating we did it
beginning a little bit but I'llgo into more detail we we rate
all of our products and serviceson a scale of one to five
(38:41):
granolas one being soggy whichis bad five being breaker too
tough, which is good because youwant crunchy granola crunchy or
the better. This I gave a chewy,which is chewy medium. Okay,
three out of five. Yeah, theywill be doing some good. They
may be rescuing some ugly food.
Again, if you're gonna get yourgroceries delivered anyway, why
not get it from that seems likethey're affordable. It's you
know better probably than buyingjust from a local grocery store
(39:06):
that just go straight to bigagriculture. You know, you're
definitely they have options fororganic and you know, other
other food structures. So it'skind of like a CSA, but I you
know, I don't know, maybe it'sbetter to get a CSA
right. What I want to talk aboutis, you know, where do we go
from here? Okay, imperfect foodsisn't solving the whole problem
(39:27):
because it's higher up the foodchain. We need big ag to quit
producing extra food but we alsoneed the biggest thing is we
need you and me the individualconsumers to stop throwing food
away. Just stop. Only buy whatyou need. It's the leading cause
of wasted food in the US. Yeah,I'm really amazed. I know. This.
(39:47):
A lot of stuff is like we feellike we can't really make an
impact but like this we reallythis is the one this fast
fashion quit buying new clothes.
Quit throwing new clothes awayand quit buying new food. Just
quit. Yeah, noOkay, don't quit like don't buy
food.
I was gonna say, I for a whilewas, I felt like a big food
(40:07):
waster. Because I don't know, Ijust felt like really frenzied,
and I didn't plan.
I didn't, I didn't have time formeal planning and all that shit.
I didn't think I did. And Istill don't. But,
um, but then what I did was Ijust stopped buying as much when
I went to the grocery store.
It's not like I had a betterplan or a better system. I just
(40:29):
stopped buying as many mealsworth of food. Because a lot of
them were like, fingers crossed,I'll make that food. Yeah, no,
that's, that's my thing is Ihave really helped. Yeah, I have
greatly overestimated mycapacity for making food. Yes,
in the past few years, becauseI've just been worn out and
exhausted and I just don't havethe bandwidth to bring a meal
together. And the thing is theway that I solve that problem is
(40:51):
I buy premade meals. Yes, hithim up, because I just can't
right now. Like I have all theingredients to make things and
it's like, something in me. I'm,I'm too exhausted to chop an
onion, which is so depressing. Iknow. No, but a lot of us are in
the same boat. And yeah, but Iactually I did notice like, I
think I was worried if I don'tget all my food right now then
(41:14):
I'mgonna have them on a night where
we don't have anything to makefor dinner or whatever. But that
hadn't happened. And it actuallymade me less stressed about all
this shit to cook. Yeah, youjust have to jump. Just take the
plunge. I mean, there'ssomething about like, Girl
dinner. Right? Have you heardabout girl dinner? No. It's kind
of like whatever you have in thepantry. Oh, like a 20 year old.
Who comes home and is like, Idon't want to order UberEATS
(41:38):
again, so you end up with like,popcorn. I have popcorn for
dinner a lot, huh? But it's justlike whatever. Like a bag of
Cheetos. Real glass of wine andsome cereal. Yeah, cereal is a
big girl dinner. Giant girl. Imean, when you don't have kids,
it's different. I mean, when youhave to make mealtime and I I do
enjoy I miss cooking. i Oh,yeah, I was supposed to make a
(42:00):
sauce today and make spaghettiand I just just couldn't do it.
So I had a pre bag. Oh, paroubeksalad. And the here's what I
wanted to start this off with.
Okay, again, stop relying onsell by dates quit throwing your
food out just because it sayssell by or Best If Used By
unless it's infant formula.
Right? Refrigeration is awonder. We can keep it a lot
(42:22):
longer than our ancestors evercould. RTS said the two things
best of us buy or sell by meansit may lose quality, but it'll
be safe to consume after thisdate. So you can still eat these
things past their dates used byis the rare but highly
perishable item that may have asafety concern over time. This
is the stuff you need to becareful about some meat. Yeah,
(42:44):
okay. The rule of thumb is ifit's moldy, especially if it's
bread or clearly rotten, yeah,throw it away. Okay. Generally
food is probably still okay ifit's past its quote unquote,
expiration date, even meatsometimes the Atlantic says
follow your nose smell stuffthat has passed pass its date.
If it smells rancid if it stinksreally bad, doesn't smell like
(43:06):
it's supposed to don't eat it.
Even then it's highly likely itwon't kill you. So don't be
quite so worried about you know,and some things if you just cook
them it kills all the bacteria.
I don't want to advocate liketaking the four month old meat
stuff, free stuff if you're notgoing to use it. I bought
chicken the other day and Irealized I hadn't eaten it. I
(43:27):
was out of town and I called myroommate and he put it in the
freezer. I have something achicken. Yes. And then you're
like, Yeah, chicken, chicken.
But you can use stuff thatsmells a little off some of it
like spoiled milk. If it's if ithasn't curdled you can actually
bake with it. Oh, baking? Yeah,that's interesting. See, I might
(43:47):
do that. I wouldn't just drinkit. Yeah, but maybe don't miss
it because it's gonna smellmight put you off. But you can
also make paneer which is a kindof cheat. It's really easy. You
just add lemon juice. To what Ilove paneer Yeah. Pina I had no
idea. Yeah. Okay, so slightlyolder milk. That doesn't smell
right. But isn't. I mean, evenif it is a little curveball, you
can still make cheese out of it.
(44:09):
Amazing. Yeah, I use eggs. Mymom told me like eggs are good
for like a month after they're.
Yeah, maybe longer eggs areprobably especially if you
refrigerate them Yeah. Stalebread you can make an A bread
crumbs or croutons or the theway the French dude is they make
French toast out of it. Pan BLTmeans last bread and spreads.
It's gone stale. Love it. Andwho cares if your cereal is a
(44:29):
little stale if you're justgoing to soak it in milk anyway.
Yeah, exactly. So yeah. Could Iuse this stainless? I used to
make homemade bread and I usethe smallest possible bread. I
was like, I'm gonna getsomething make some Yes, I use
it for French toast and it waspretty chewy. Yeah, also
delicious. It's I mean, just gotto soak it a little longer in
(44:50):
the milk mixture. Yeah, yep. Putmore syrup on it. Exactly. Free
stuff before. If you thinkyou're not able to use it
broccoli, meat, everything justThrow in the freezer. Also, if
you have jars of stuff thatyou're not going to use, donate
them. Go to the food bank. Yeah,my neighborhood has a free
fridge by one of the restaurantsthat you can just Yeah, I have
(45:10):
like a jar of harmony that Iended up with. And I'm not going
to use harmony, right? Nobodywill
make a solely but I use frozenpersonally I don't use like
canned hominy Give me a breakhere. Okay, also composting,
start composting.
Love it, that's if you're gonnathrow food away, or scraps,
(45:31):
compost it. I know not everyonehas access to compost. But it
can really help start lobbyingyour city or state to create
composting programs forresidents and to get restaurants
and farms to be mandated to doso. That's a big one. Because if
43% of our food waste comes fromus, you know, as individual
consumers 40% still comes fromrestaurants, right? Because this
(45:54):
consumer grocery stores, theyneed to be composting. Yeah,
that's huge. Yeah. Wow. We'rewe're also going to talk about
too good to go, which issomething that my roommate uses,
which is when stuff is a littlebit past, it's, it's like, it
didn't sell the day it wasfresh, like doughnuts. And
they'll just put it up on thistoo good to go. app and you can
like sign up to go get it andyou get it for free. Wow. So
(46:17):
like bagels and things thatdidn't sell or don't. Oh my
gosh, this just reminded me whenI was young, when I was young. I
was like probably early 20s Iwent dumpster diving. Yep. And
we it was just a one night thingbut we actually found clean
trash bag. A trash can with aclean bag wind, you know,
(46:40):
perfectly clean, perfectly safe,full chock full of same day
Panera bagels, you and other.
They can't donate. Yeah, yeah.
So yeah, we took a shit. We gotlike bread and bagels and
everything. We took it home andfroze it. It was great. Yeah, I
used to forge in a coffee shopin college. And we couldn't
donate our bagels at the end ofthe day. And so whoever worked
(47:02):
the last shift just took themhome. Yes, freezer full of
bagels. You get so sick of themafter a while.
But I mean, they're nice. It'syeah, that's great. You know,
let's mitigate food waste. Imean, first of all, it shouldn't
be. You would want restaurantsto be able to manage the numbers
enough to know they're not goingto need that many. But what can
you do? Yeah. Well, well, inother ways, you know, sign up
(47:26):
for a local CSA because localfarming is better than big ag.
It's also really fun. It's aweekly ritual every Friday.
Yeah, I missed I need to lookinto a CSA here. Maybe that'll
that's the thing when I hadbunny rabbits, you know, like,
it was great to have a CSAbecause they would give me like
a giant bag of greens. And I'dbe like, alright, I always look
very healthy. I was not it wasfunny. Yeah, that's a funny day,
(47:48):
the greens, but yeah. Okay. Andlastly, quit caring what your
produce looks like. Love it bythe bruised apple.
Maybe try and go to a lowerincome neighborhood and see what
it's like to shop there. Yeah,you're cheaper produce. I mean,
I again, I don't want toadvocate like, I don't want so
much wrong with that in so manyways. Yeah, I was gonna say it
(48:11):
could be really eye opening,though, to go and see how
different it is if it isdifferent. Right. Or like if
it's cheaper, but it's stilledible. Yeah. Or, you know,
like, not even just edible, butlike, it's still good food. You
know? It just has a bruise. Oh,my dog just busted in here. He
is ready for his evening walk. Isee you. Hi. Okay, ma'am. It's
(48:32):
time. It's time. He's like, getdone here, lady. All right.
Thank you for listening tonight.
And I hope this helps with itsfood waste and the ugly food
movement. I might try it. MaybeI'll try it and see. Yeah, I
would be curious. I woulddefinitely love to hear if you
do try it. But I mean, now I'mquite a bit more skeptical of
it. But yeah, I mean, but yeah,it's a mixed bag. Like a lot of
(48:53):
things. Yeah, like so manythings. So we'll see. Anyway.
Well, thank you for listeningagain. Hit us up on on your
review down there. Give us fivestars if you can, it really
helps us out. Yay. Please dothat when we appreciate your
listening to us. And we willtalk to you next week. No, what
are we talking about next week?
(49:16):
Oh, yeah. Good call. Let me see.
Bulk shopping. Oh, yeah. It's acat cat two in a row. Cat, cat,
cat, cat cat back to back.
You're talking about bulkshopping and try to Yeah, try
examining whether that helps.
Yeah, take those reusable jarsthat you saved and go buy your
food in bulk. And I know WholeFoods interested. There's
(49:38):
there's book sections. I wantOh, yeah, I might try it out.
Yes. I will let you know how Imight try it out to actually
okay, because there's we havetons of like healthy, healthy
food source. So yeah, and thisis like,
what do you mean? I can't orderInstacart but, you know, this
could be a fun date for me andthe man who loves going to the
grocery store. There you go.
Perfect.
(50:00):
It's gone by bulk. I think he'sbehind on listening. So he's
gonna be like, Why are youtalking about me on your blog?
Because you're so great. Okay.
Anyway. All right. I will talkto you next week about bulk
foods. Yeah, that sounds good.
All right. No better. Thank you.
Bye
Hey, Tiffany. HELLO, CAT.
Welcome back to greening up myact. Thank you. I hope everyone
had a good week off because it'swe're recording this one.
Exactly right after we recordedlast week's when we were talking
about the mill quote unquotecomposting. So we're, we're on a
roll and we're just going tokeep rolling into this next
(00:23):
section, but I guess we shouldintroduce ourselves. Yeah, well,
and this comes out September 5,so hopefully you have less heat.
Yeah, here. Yeah, I hope I'vethere's no in inside. They're
actually keeping pools openlater this year through October
1, because the heat wave has noend in sight. So yeah. And we
keep having heat emergency likeheat, excessive heat warning
(00:47):
stuff. And the city has to keepcooling centers open, which is
really important, but it's likereally terrifying. Because
there's no escape. You know,that's really scary. Yeah. And
you said your AC went out,right? Yeah. My it overheated
last night. Oh, my God.
Yesterday afternoon sometime.
And I think because we had tohave or Sunday night we had to
have a guy come and look at ityesterday, and I was so scared
(01:10):
that it was gonna be out. I wasgonna have to buy a new H back
but it just, it just overheated.
Nice. Okay. Well, that's, Imean, that's a blessing. Yeah.
As a homeowner, that's it. Yes,blessing, but it's just going to
happen again, because it's 107degrees every day this week.
I'll go put an umbrella outthere and give it some shade. I
(01:30):
don't know. You know, like, howdo you Yeah, the air
conditioner.
Well, hopefully by September 5,you're better.
At least a little less daylightand nothing else.
But yeah, that's why we do thisthough. This is we right? It's
like a perfect re on. Yeah, it'stoo late, y'all, but it's not
(01:52):
too late. We are looking at waysto create a sustainable
lifestyle that reduces ourindividual impact and hopefully
influences corporations to dotheir part to reduce emissions
and other things that arecausing global climate change.
And yeah, and not only it's notlike a fake sustainable
(02:16):
lifestyle, like most of us,like we don't even know we're
doing most of the time, I thinkbecause so much more thing is
out there. That is as we call itgreen Hui, it tells you this is
a good product to choose whenit's really just more expensive
and less effective and doesn'tactually do anything to mitigate
the you know, carbon emissionsor waste that it creates or
(02:39):
water it wastes or chemicalsthat use it right or or people
it impacts like, yeah, waterwaysit pollutes or you know, things
like that. So yeah, and we aremarketing writers. So we spent
our days writingsilly words. No. I don't think
either of us marketsunsustainable products. No, no,
(03:02):
no. Our mapping words are forthe good. But yeah, yeah. We
Yeah, we try not to be evil, butthat's one goal.
But you know, we're really goodat seeing through other people's
verbiage. Yep. My garbage,verbal garbage. Is it verbiage
(03:24):
or verbiage, either I think it'sspelled verbiage but it's it's
meant to be verbal garbage iswhat it stands for. I had no
idea okay. Yeah. Learn somethingnew. Yeah.
Anyway, so yeah, and then werate we go through systems or
products or services and writethem on a scale of one to five
(03:46):
granolas because what else wouldyou do is eco friendly warriors
you want to be hippies and fiveis a crunchy crunchy crunchy
crunchy. Good. The crunchygranola, which is breaker twos
off, and a one is soggy.
Yep. And that's you don't wantsoggy granola. We have had a
sodden granola before. Oh, no.
Wait, it was Waterlogue.
waterlogged. Yes. I'm sorry. Ikeep saying sodden. Because I'm
(04:08):
like, it's worse than soggy, butit is waterlogged. Yes. So we've
had one of those, but mostthings tend to fall in the
three, right? Yeah, it depends.
Yeah, it really depends. Butthere's a lot of we, our goal is
to find that really good stuff.
Yeah, we can tell people likeyeah, do this. Like for example.
(04:28):
plastic forks, like, those arethe one reusable item that you
shouldwell, you should avoid plastic
forks and just carry around afork and yeah, like actually
doing some good. That wasamazing to find out. Yeah, just
keep a fork in your purse. Ihaven't if you missed that
episode, we chatted aboutreusable stuff a couple episodes
back so yeah, look for that.
(04:50):
It's worth it. Or just keep amug it works. You don't use a
paper cup every time you get acoffee.
Yeah, and we kind of tried toexamine like, what are
Individual impact is and thenmore like, like Cat said, like
company wide, like what cancompanies do? And how can we
hold them more accountable?
Because that's really where theimpact is going to be biggest.
(05:10):
Yeah. 100% Well, and then the Sothis week's episode last week,
we talked about compost, butmore specifically a brand called
the mill home composting system,which is an actually composted
the mill kitchen bin kitchen binthat sort of goes, yeah, that
and you can't talk aboutcomposting without talking about
food waste, and you can't talkabout food waste without talking
(05:32):
about composting. So these twoepisodes probably will be really
good listened to back to back.
I'm just gonna say, Yeah, well,I'm going to start with my
sources in no particular order.
An article from the Atlanticabout expiration dates are
meaningless.
A company called recycled tracksystems had a blog on food waste
(05:52):
in America, Feeding America,which is the largest network of
food banks in the United Stateshad. I got stats on hunger in
America from them. Reuters hadan article Harvard study finds
food expiration labels aremisleading.
A company called Green biz saidwhy is composting so hard in the
United States? Project drawdownhad an article about reduced
(06:15):
food waste? I love them? Yes,they're great. Yeah, they're
really great. The soloists grouphad an article on restaurant
composting and the shift towardzero waste food service.
Berkeley Economic Review had TheGood, the Bad and the Ugly
produce movement. And the NewRepublic had does your box of
ugly produce really helped theplanet or hurt it? And then of
course, I had to the two biggestugly food
(06:41):
companies are imperfect foods.
They're imperfect. foods.com andhungry for harvest is at Hungry
Harvest that net? Yeah, I getboth of those on Instagram.
Yeah. Well, I don't Did wemention we're talking about food
waste, but we're specificallyfocusing on your your ugly food,
right? I'm focusing on the uglyfood movement. Okay. I'm so
excited about that, because Iknow nothing about it. And I've
(07:01):
always been so curious as to thedetails. Okay. So I'm real
pumped. Well, good. Okay. Well,so you talked last week about
how the issue with food waste isat the source. Food waste
happens at the source, right?
It's that composting.
(07:22):
Who cares about composting ifpeople are just throwing away so
much food, right? According torecycled track systems, and
they're okay. They're a wastemanagement company whose goal is
a world without waste, which Ilike, but then they would put
themselves out of business. It'sfine. Yeah, well, well, maybe
not. I know. They're becausethey're, again, they're just
trying to create a closed loop.
Okay. It's not really a worldwithout waste. It's a world
without stuff in land. I gotcha.
(07:44):
Basically. Yeah. So Americanswaste nearly 60 million tons of
food each year. 60 60 milliontons. Yeah, that adds up to
about 50% of the entire US foodsupply. Almost half say 50 50%.
Almost half. Yep. And that's 325pounds per person every year.
(08:04):
Oh, my God. That's more thantwice what I weigh. You know?
My hand is up to my face. Yeah,shame. aghast. Yeah. But it's
also you know, that's $218billion worth of food just right
down the drain. Oh, my God, ifyou want to talk about excessive
lifestyles, Americans lead leadthe world in this by the way to
(08:25):
break it down. RTS says that 43%of food waste is directly from
individual consumers. So this isdefinitely a place where
individual consumers have themost impact. You said 43% 43%?
Damn, yeah, we have a lot ofimpact on that. And after that,
40% is from business to consumerstuff. So that's grocery stores,
restaurants or food servicecompanies. Okay. So they're
(08:48):
throwing out 25 million tons.
And a lot of that is ugly food.
Okay, right. They say, Okay,we'll get into that, or no
answer that 16% from farmsagain, that is food that is left
unpicked, or that they couldn'tsell. Okay, and then 2% for
manufacturers who have producedtoo much food and don't sell it.
(09:10):
Okay, so that's interesting. Sothey're not really doing as bad
as like, the manufacturersaren't doing as bad as well.
Yeah. And then thinking aboutthat, like clan food or jarred
food or stuff, you know, thatjust expires before it's sold, I
think, right? Okay. So overallfood wastes makes up 22% of
municipal solid waste. So that'sdirect to our landfills.
(09:33):
You know, we talked about 20%and 22. Corridor. Yeah. And
that's, that's not composted?
Right. That could be composted.
Yeah. Right. So that's thetragedy of that, you know? Yeah.
And we talked about whycomposting is better last week,
because it if there's oxygen,methane is not produced. If
(09:54):
there's no oxygen like in alandfill. Methane is produced.
Yeah. So we don't want it inlandfills. So
Don't do that. Again. That'sproject drawdown. So that
accounts for 8% of globalgreenhouse gas emissions. Now,
RTS was the one that said thatwas 11%. Oh, right. Right,
right. Yeah. But I don't knowwhy they're different. And
Berkeley Economic Review saysthat according to the UN, if
(10:15):
food waste itself was a country,it would be the third largest
global emitter of greenhousegases.
So it's like us, China. Foodwaste. You know, my food waste
Island. Holy shit. Yeah, stains.
Yeah, insane. Bad News Bears,Bad News Bears. So this is a
real frickin issue. Okay, if youcare about the environment at
(10:35):
all, food waste is a big, bigissue. The New Republic reports
that every year 30 million acresof cropland 4.2 trillion gallons
of water and nearly 2 billionpounds of fertilizer are used to
grow food that's never eaten.
When according then That'saccording to a recent study. The
latter is particularlyconcerning since nitrogen based
(10:56):
fertilizer is a major cause ofwater contamination and a
significant emitter ofgreenhouse gases. So it's not
just that the waste itself isending up in the landfill. It's
what creates the waste that iscausing the problem, which is
another thing we found with fastfashion, right? It's not just
that you're getting a quick $5shirt from Target and then
throwing it away after wearingit once. It's also that the
(11:18):
amount of work it takes toproduce that is causing problems
in the front end. So yeah, it'sit's a candle on both ends.
That's very bad. Wow. So why doAmericans throw out so much
food?
This is interesting. I don't Idon't think anybody can pinpoint
this directly. But okay. 34million Americans, including 9
(11:39):
million children are foodinsecure, according to Feeding
America. So that means thatthat's people who have a hard
time getting three square mealsa day. Right? So that's a lot of
people. That's that is a lot.
10% Although, in America, foodis plentiful and inexpensive
compared to other countries.
(11:59):
Okay, I know inflation sucksright now. And eggs are $9. You
know, a does. A few weeks ago, Ijust posted. I just posted this
on Instagram, I saw a jar ofpasta sauce for like $7 $16. Was
it handmade by somebody's Nona?
Like it shouldn't. It had tohave been they had to fly Nona
over to New York. So they flewher over. I don't know. I was
like, What in God's world areyou living? It's insane. Yeah,
(12:21):
I'm with shortages and stuff.
Food is really expensive. Butreally, and this is something
that my I remember in highschool, when we had exchange
students from Europe, they werelike, food is so cheap in the
US. It's so cheap. So we take itfor granted. Yeah. But we
produce most of our own food isone of the things I mean, yeah,
you're getting you're out ofseason. Oranges from South
(12:45):
America, you know, but we doproduce a lot of our own food
here. We're pretty selfsufficient. Yeah, I mean, we
have a lot of land to do it.
Yeah. Yes. Number one, we justtake it for granted. Because
it's cheap. It's 60 cents to buya head of broccoli, and I don't
care about throwing away 60cents worth of food, right? is
cheap. Four out of five. Okay,now this is the other thing.
Four out of five Americans willthrow away perfectly good food
(13:06):
because it's past its quoteunquote sell buy or Best Buy
date. Okay, so yeah, okay. We'reafraid of food poisoning. For
sure. That can mean a totallybad weekend. But most who that
says it's past its expirationdate is totally okay to eat.
Okay, well, not expiration date,I should say sell buy or use by
date, best date. Okay. That'ssomething we'll talk about
(13:28):
again. Okay. Now, according tothe Atlantic, the problem is
that most expiration datesconvey only information about an
item's quality, with theexception of infant formula,
where they really do refer toexpiration dates generally
represent a manufacturer orproducers best estimate of how
long food is optimally fresh andtasty. Although what this
actually means varies widely,not least because there's no
(13:52):
federal oversight over labeling.
What? Yep, they just make aguess. Ah, I had no idea. And it
could be vastly different. Forinstance, I think I read that a
gallon of milk sold in Wyomingcan be sold 10 days later than
it can be in Montana or viceversa, even though like just
(14:12):
because they just have differentregulations about use by an
expired date. It's a it's not ascience. It's not so wait.
It's not federally regulated,but the states are the some
states do. Yeah. Okay. But it'sreally just up to the
manufacturer for them to getthem. How long is it going to
take for this broccoli to rot?
Quit looking at yourself,especially sell by dates. That's
(14:33):
just to move to make you feellike you've got to buy it now.
You know,but I do find some pretty good
deals on meat. Yes. On theirsell by dates. Yes. And it's
always been good for me. It'sperfectly fine. Yeah. Okay.
That's, we'll get more intothat. Yeah. Okay. Now, the other
thing about food waste is wejust don't compost, which is
(14:53):
what we talked about last week,composting would be so much
better. This is partly becausethere just aren't
systems in the US systems inplace in the US to compost in
the first place. It's just noteasy, right? Not everywhere.
That's not sure. Yeah, accordingto GreenBiz, we don't have
funding for it. We don't havefacilities to send compost to in
the first place. We don't knowhow to fix contamination
(15:15):
problems, meaning we don't knowhow to like, pull out the little
bit of oil that got on the onething that's, you know, and we
don't have any data on it.
Nobody really knows about who'scomposting what and where we
just, we just don't, we justdon't care. Interesting. But
also, when they try to introducecomposting programs, Americans
just don't participate. So theytried, they did a pilot program
(15:37):
in New York, and they were allabout it. And only 10% of people
in New York City participated.
When offered. Oh, that'sinteresting. So was it like a
pilot for pickup? Yeah. Okay.
You municipal like you have athird Ben? You have your and
your Yeah, it was a city. Yeah.
Anyway, I wonder if people arejust like, I don't want to
(15:58):
slosh. My? I don't want to soup.
Soup down 18. Stairs, or 18flights of stairs? I don't know.
I mean, it is it is gross. Wetalked about this last week.
It's gross to keep you know,they have all these
recommendations on our Austinresource recovery website about
how you can keep chicken bonesand stuff in your freezer until
you're ready to take the compostcurb. Which makes sense. But
(16:18):
yeah, it's a it's an extra step.
And it's not getting yourgarbage out of sight out of
mind. The way we all want it tobe right. Yeah, hard. It's
frickin hard. I personally thinkpeople are a little afraid of
composting. And I think thatbecause I was well, yeah, it's
kind of magic. Yeah, it's alittle it's intimidating to I
feel like there's a lot of likepeople who do compost can can be
(16:41):
kind ofgatekeeping weighty. Yes, yes.
Yes, exactly. It's true. Becauseit is it's like, well, this
works for me. Yeah, there's likekind of alive who reels and
totally, yeah, totally. Thegreen badge. Yeah. And so now
that I'm home composting, I'm100% gonna do that to other
people. Oh, yeah. Like, compost.
(17:03):
Why not? Oh, good. I was so sadfor you.
Anyway, okay. Okay. So the otherthing is restaurants don't
compost either. Okay. Yeah, it'sa little shocking to me. So
according to the soulless group,in 2018, the National Restaurant
Association reported that only14% of restaurants composted any
(17:23):
food waste, and I think aboutthat. I know maybe two places
that I can think of that Ifrequent with any regularity.
Not that I can afford to eat outanymore, but that have a compost
section in there. You know, whenyou've got to throw out your
food? Oh, yeah. It's very rarethat they have a composting. You
(17:45):
know, yeah. I don't really blamethem for not doing that. Because
I feel like people would justthrow their trash in it. Yeah.
Yeah, I feel like in the alley,you there might be a way I tried
to convince this coffee shopthat I worked at to compost for
a while and he was not feelingit. So I mean, at least a coffee
grounds. You know, that's whatit was. Yeah. And the auditor,
he was like, It's too messy. Idon't wanna deal with it. So.
And that's exactly it. It's toomessy. Which is why we come up
(18:07):
with food hydrators ordehydrators. Kitchens, kitchens,
yep.
(18:32):
Okay, so what's a girl to do?
Okay, and incomes the ugly foodmovement, right? If you're on
social media at all, like me,you've probably seen ads for
imperfect produce Hungry Harvestor other ugly quote unquote,
produce boxes? Yes. So they sendsupposedly unsellable produce
that farms or manufacturers arejust gonna throw away to your
(18:53):
door every month.
This is the 16% or 20 billionpounds of produce that gets
thrown away every year frompounds from farms. Okay. They
say.
Okay, critiques.
I don't know if I talked enoughabout what they do to make it
worth just diving into thecritiques. But
(19:17):
so they suck. And here's why.
Well, here's the thing. The newfood economy, which is like a
group of charities that focus onon food waste, they say the
issue with these boxes is thatthey can modify and gentrify
food waste, right. So that thefood that goes into ugly produce
boxes really isn't going to gointo landfills in the first
place. Usually, that stuff isturned into other food. So stuff
(19:40):
that they can't put on the shelfbecause it's bruised or too
ugly. Like a bruised Apple isturned into applesauce. That's
what I was just thinking. Yeah,shredded carrots. Where do you
think they come from? Where doyou think baby carrots come
from? Ugly carrots. I always Iwondered about that ketchup
tomato pie.
used diced tomatoes anythingcanned? That's kind of a mush.
(20:05):
You know, it's ugly food.
Now, another issue that theybring up is that a lot of these
crops often get donated to foodbanks. Okay, so they're
basically taking it out of themouths of the poor is what
they're saying, wow.
The other thing is that uglyfood can get sold to restaurants
because they don't care what itlooks like if they're just going
(20:26):
to chop it up and make it into apuree anyway, right? Right. So
that's cheaper food forrestaurants to get. It's also a
lot of this quote, unquote, uglyfood. And this kind of ticked me
off a little bit, but it's soldat a lower for a lower price to
grocery stores in lower incomeneighborhoods, or neighborhoods,
where again, it can be sold forless. So poor people deserve
(20:47):
ugly food, I guess it's kind of,you know, which,
when it comes down to it, whocares what it looks like, you
know, the nutritional value of acarrot isn't based on how it's
shaped like, Okay, we should allquit being so frickin bougie
about how our food looks? Yeah.
And I was gonna say one problemI could see is if somebody is
(21:07):
hesitant to, I'm just thinkingof kids really? Like if a kid is
like, oh, that's carrots. Weird.
I don't know. Well, you chop itup. Yeah, right. Yeah. I mean,
and maybe you just teach thekid. You can't judge a book by
its cover? Yeah, exactly. Maybethere's a teachable moment. Not
(21:29):
all food has to beInstagrammable mm. But another
pro tip, if you go to a lowerincome neighborhood, the produce
will be cheaper. It'll lookuglier. There is some concern. I
remember, a couple of years ago,when I lived in New Jersey,
there was someone who pointedout that produce and okay, we
lived in kind of the place wherewe lived in New Jersey was split
(21:50):
between like super, superwealthy $3 million homes. And
then like, just down the streetwas a much lower income
neighborhood. And the differencebetween the grocery store on
like, they were a mile apart,there was a whole foods at the
top of the hill and like apathway or whatever, at the
bottom of the hill. And thepurpose of the pathway was
uglier. And not in his goodcondition. It was cheaper. But,
(22:11):
you know, it's kind of it alwaysgave me the AIC you know? Why?
Yeah. Like, why, yeah, why? Howdoes Yeah, which people deserve
fresher food? What are thesesystems? Yeah, well, that like
one of the somebody wrote anarticle about it, and one of the
local papers, and she said, youknow, at Whole Foods, all of the
asparagus is stored in in water,standing upright and water at
(22:31):
the pathway. It's not, it's justkind of, you know, wilting sort
of like, yeah, I don't know.
It's, why do poor people deserveless fresh food? But yeah, they
don't. But at the same time,affordable food is more if there
are 34 million Americanssuffering from food insecurity.
fordable. Food Matters. SoRight.
(22:53):
It's more concerning that thesefood boxes would be taking
donated food away from foodbanks. I truly never would have
thought I would. Yeah, that's,that's really interesting. I
have done a lot of work withfood banks, I've there would
have, I don't think they shouldexist.
Because I think that we live inthe richest country in the world
and why they're hungry,especially children. Are you
(23:16):
kidding me? Hungry seniors andchildren, like we had a social
welfare network until the 80s.
And, you know, big capitalistgovernment got rid of it. And
that's when food banks cameabout this in the 1980s. We
didn't have them before then.
Whoa, I didn't know that. Yeah,that because we had a welfare
system that actually took careof people. So anyway, food bank
(23:36):
should not exist, in my opinion,but they do such important work,
just getting food to people whodon't have access to it. Anyway,
donate to your local food bank.
I'll get into that in a minute.
Anyway, okay. So I was gonnaask, but go. Okay, so the bottom
line, the biggest critique isinstead of handling food waste,
they're handling food surplus.
Okay. This means they'reincentivizing farmers to keep
(24:00):
producing excess food,especially big agriculture. Hmm.
They may be taking food awayfrom food banks, or even grocery
stores in lower incomeneighborhoods where it can be
sold at a lower price, you know,there are getting taking food
out of the mouths of lowerincome people or people who
can't afford it. So those aresome pretty big critiques. Also,
somebody pointed out in theBerkeley Economic Review, one of
(24:21):
the food scientists pointed outthat a lot of the food that's
wasted by farms isn't wastedbecause it was picked and
determined to be ugly, it'swasted because there is a labor
shortage because of ourimmigration policies. So the
food just isn't picked,especially in big agricultural
farms. It's just laid out towaste because nobody's picking
it. Okay, so ugly food box isn'tgoing to solve that problem.
(24:45):
Yeah, that's an immigrationpolicy issue. And, uh, you know,
farm labor union issue, that'sso much, you know, labor issue,
huge, huge other problem. Nowanother issue that people have
with the ugly foodimprovement is they may be
taking money away from CSAs. Socommunity supported agriculture,
(25:05):
which we've talked about now.
CSAs are really good for farmwaste, because they're small
scale farms. And the way thatmost of them work is you have a
subscription from stakeholderswho pay in advance. The Farm
knows what its membership sizesand plants crops accordingly. So
it doesn't grow excess food. Itknows exactly who it's going to,
(25:30):
you know?
Okay, so the samples are happybecause part of my see Yes,
exactly. It's it's a much moresustainable, it's local. The
farmer is also financiallyprotected in that sense, because
if a, you know, crop fails,okay, sure. The stake
stakeholders, I mean, membershave taken on a little bit of
the risk. So you might not getas much arugula this year as
(25:50):
last year, but the farmer is notcompletely out of money because
they put all their money intoarugula for you know, 2 million
people and they didn't have acrop. So Right. Yeah, we got we
get all the zucchini. Yeah, andthen nothing else. Yeah, I think
we had months of months of justlike, potatoes. Yeah, we had
problem potatoes, y'all. Like,here's some potato recipes.
Exactly. zucchini bread up thewazoo. Yeah. Imperfect foods and
(26:14):
hungry harvests, which are thetwo biggest ones have advertised
themselves as CSA style boxes.
Oh, I don't know, whichundercuts CSAs without
addressing why CSAs exist in thefirst place, right? They're not
really Community SupportedAgriculture. They're trying to
mitigate food waste, differentproducts, they're, you know, so
anyway, however, okay, so intheir defense, imperfect produce
(26:38):
claims, they save 30 millionpounds of food and 900 million
gallons of water from beingwasted every year. When asked,
you know, why do you work withbig ag? So one of the issues
that came up was that if theyget ugly produce from big
factory farms, they areincentivizing the big factory
(27:00):
farm to over produce, right?
If whereas if they were onlyworking with small farms, that's
a completely different story. Sothey said, so imperfect foods
claimed that only five to 10%total of their produce comes
from industrial producers likedole. Okay. Which means it
probably wasn't destined for thelandfill in the first place.
(27:21):
Hungry Harvest says they getmost of their food from farms
under 500 acres that were justleaving excess food in the
fields in the first place. Sookay, they Hungry Harvest didn't
have exact numbers on where,which farmers they're working
with. I don't like that either.
No. Like you want sometransparency. Again, imperfect
produce has a calculator thatshows your impact, personally,
(27:41):
if you use our service alone forgroceries, so if you only buy
one of their CSA, CSA styleboxes, as they call it, you can
save up to 384 pounds ofrecovered food for being tossed
in a landfill. 9000 Plus gallonsof water 38 hours saved
shopping. So if you just havethe box come every week, and up
to 288 pounds of carbon dioxideconserved.
(28:09):
Okay, I don't know how theycalculate all of that. But yeah,
that was the thing with mill.
They just were very transparentabout doing their own math.
Yeah. And they're like, thismight change later. But for now,
this sounds really good. Likewhat? Yeah, I don't know. I
don't know if they're doing thesame thing. But well, I mean, it
sounds like, okay, they canaverage how many pounds of
recovered food they sell everyyear. So that makes sense. I
(28:30):
don't know about the waterthough. Right?
I mean, the hour save shopping.
Yes. Right. Fine. Okay, theyalso don't charge a subscription
fee. So you pay by the box.
Okay. It is an annual, like amonthly, like, my CSA was the
same way you could cancel ifyou're going to be in town or
(28:50):
something. You could cancel thatmonth. But you really Yeah. This
we pay attention. Yeah. Butyeah, you basically you have a
week to change the items in yourbox around if you want to, and
then they just ship it to you.
Now they do also do what Radwelldoes. So they have like everyone
in your zip code get service onthe same day to reduce carbon.
Okay, but that's nice. Yeah. Sonow the smaller scale farmers
(29:14):
that they that the ugly foodcompanies do work with and
purchase from. They do say theydo donate less food to food
banks. But oh, this can be goodfor them because they make more
money to offset their costs.
Because that's the issue whenyou donate to the food bank.
Yeah, maybe you might get alittle tax break. But it's
(29:34):
always better to sell the foodfor a small farmer. Okay, that
makes sense. Yeah. smaller farmsmeans less Big Ag right. And we
want less Big Ag. We want lessfactory farming. We want
thoughtful consumers.
Also, the ugly food folks don'tconsider CSAs as their main
competitors and the imperfectfoods CEOs said that when they
(29:58):
did a survey only one in 10 oftheir cars
Farmers had ever used a fooddelivery service at all
previously, so they're notreally stealing, you know, and
the CSA people who said thattheir sales had gone down 30% or
whatever didn't really say ifthere were other market
conditions like, okay, you know,maybe, maybe people just quit
pre buying groceries in thefirst place, you know? Yeah.
(30:19):
Another thing is imperfectfoods. And what does that Hungry
Harvest? What did I say it washungry, I can't even remember
the name. I startedcalling them IP and hh thing
because I was like, I'm tired oftyping hungry, hungry, I really,
really wait. They also do somecharitable work on top of to
fight hunger on top of their,you know, suppose saving food
(30:41):
waste. So imperfect Foods has areduced cost box program. So if
you qualify for SNAP benefits, Idon't think you have to be in
the SNAP program. So SNAPbenefits are for it's lower cost
food. And you usually get an EBTcard that, you know, you get
some money from the governmentto be able to feed your family
(31:01):
usually, yeah. If you are in theincome level that qualifies that
even if you're not in theprogram, they'll send a box of
ugly produce for less than itwould cost to buy it from the
grocery store. They say, okay,okay, so this isn't quite as
good as getting a free box fromyour local food bank or
community organization. Yeah,but it's still a sign that you
know, they're thinking about lowincome. Can you use your snap
(31:23):
card on? You can't yet. Okay,you can't use your snap card.
really help but okay, well, theother thing is, the program is
completely full, so you can'teven sign up anymore. Gotcha.
Which says a lot about the stateof America. You know, it does
are hungry, y'all. Okay, butthey do partner with other
suppliers to supplement yourproduce box is another thing. So
(31:46):
you're not just getting uglyproduce. So imperfect foods are
imperfect produce. I call themimperfect foods, but as an
imperfect produce. I thought itwas imperfect foods. I think
it's imperfect produce, okay.
You're probably right. No, it isimperfect foods. Okay. That
chain okay, it is i Okay.
(32:08):
Imperfect foods. Correct me isimperfect foods, ladies and
gentlemen. They have sustainablefood partners that they work
with for their own line of foodswhere they make like, you know,
yogurt dip pretzels from rescuedwith rescued sprinkles, right?
Or upcycle the food or leftoveringredients from other food
(32:30):
producers, so they're takingother types of food waste and
making new snacks out of it. Didyou just say rescued sprinkles?
Yes. That's the example theyuse. Oh, my God. I know. I was
like a sprinkler rescue. And Ilike the idea of upcycled food.
I mean, they're taking greenhooey words. And but it is an
interesting concept, right?
(32:52):
They're using what otherproducers are throwing away and
making a new line of food thatyou can put in your grocery box.
Right, right. So I kind ofthought that was kind of a cool
idea. Yeah, it's a cool idea.
Just don't call it rescuedsprinkles. I know. Stupid. I
know. I'm like no and you'rerescued sprinkles for your
rescue. Pitbull. Exactly.
(33:14):
Exactly. Okay, so they have allthese initiatives and and I feel
like they kind of responded totheir critics pretty well. I do
not.
I don't know it is again. Ohboy, another rich people thing
you can do you know, to feelbetter about yourself, right?
How much you might get intothis. But how much does a box
(33:34):
cost? That I actually didn't getinto? I need to get into that.
Let me look that up real quick.
I don't know. I don't know ifthere's like a standard x. I'm
just curious if it would be morethan my CSA because I go I come
away with my CSA with like, somuch food. Yeah.
Okay, let me see. I know theyjust started let's let's you can
just come with me on this.
Right. So on. Let me put in myzip code get started. Okay, so
(33:56):
they rescue food from going towaste you shop during your
window, we deliver your blah,blah, blah. Let's see. What am I
shopping for one adult.
So here's your window.
This is not a very good website.
Okay. I don't care aboutorganic. So they asked you that
too, to have any dietaryrestrictions. I eat it all.
Okay, what do I buy each week?
(34:21):
You can decide. I do meat andfish. I do produce pentreath
dairy. Or they they send me to?
Yeah. Interesting. Okay, they'resaving my answers. Let's see.
Jamie's Just kidding. Yeah, no,well, yeah, I think that's one
of the things I do. What, okay,so 36 to $46 for one adult per
box. I guess it depends how muchhow much food there is. But
(34:45):
yeah, or what items like if youdon't get meat when we are you
don't get there. Yeah, I'm freeto get to that person. Yes,
that's probably about what Ispend. And okay, and if they do
charge for delivery, so it'sfree delivery for order.
is over 60 bucks. Okay, so I useInstacart. And that
(35:08):
might actually be more for mebecause I always have to if I do
$40 I get free delivery.
But then I tip. Yeah, Instacartactually jacks up their prices,
like the prices of the products.
It's not just you're paying afee. I did a comparison of
Safeway. Yeah. And I did likeInstacart Safeway versus regular
Safeway on their website, and itwas the actual products were
(35:30):
more expensive. Yeah, well, andthey, they actually started a
new thing where that it showslike, for a lot of their items,
if it's similar to what's in thestore, okay, but I think that's
mostly for like total wine orlike alcohol. Okay, I just, I
hate going to the grocery storeso much.
Oh, that's funny, actually. Kindof like, Yeah, I know, my, the
(35:53):
guy I'm dating loves the grocerystore. But I, it's just for me,
it's like, I get overwhelmed.
When I go to the grocery store.
It's just easier to havesomebody else do it. And also, I
get that. It's an hour likeparking is no, no, no, I know. I
get it. My grocery store is kindof lovely. Because it's
Suburban. So yeah, there's roomthere's always parking. Yep.
You're not like elbowing people.
Obviously, like I'm stuck inline behind the one person who
(36:14):
can't who's like writing a checkor something, you know? Yes.
Probably my grandma. Yep.
Anyway, is it worth it? They aresupporting small farms. They
donate a lot of their proceedsto fight hunger. And they're
fighting the stupid aestheticstandards that we all have for
food, right? They're like, makeit we don't need food to be
(36:35):
fashion. Okay, but they may beperpetuating big agriculture's
incentive to over produce. Yep.
If you're already groceryshopping and buying other
produce anyway, you're justadding another rung on your
carbon footprint via delivery.
Although we did talk about howhaving if you're only shopping,
if you're only getting your foodfrom imperfect foods, it might
be better anyway, because you'resaving a carbon footprint that
(36:56):
way. Yeah, but Let's also notforget to mention, I feel like
box. Yeah, well, I was gonna sayI feel like the chances of you
getting every single item youneed from this box for your
entire weeks where the food areso slim. I don't know I wonder
about because I that my CSAstarted selling dairy and meat
(37:16):
and stuff. And it was when theyhad like rice. You know, it was
it was actually like a one stopshop. And I found that you know,
as to shopping for me, that'sanother thing, right? If you
baby items, and you know, theother thing is like, I'm not
buying my shampoo from them.
Right? So, yeah. But yeah. Or,you know, like, you need a
bottle of Coca Cola. They're notgoing to have it. Not that
(37:38):
anyone needs a bottle of CocaCola.
But yeah, I mean, it's apossibility there also Okay,
Hungry Harvest only delivers toMaryland DC. Philly, Southern
New Jersey, northern Delaware. Ispell Delaware really funny in
this Dalloway, yourW A. Ye are I guess I was
thinking about it phonetically.
(37:59):
And then Raleigh, NorthCarolina, imperfect foods is in
the west, south central region,the Midwest, the Northeast and
the West Coast. Okay, they didhave I looked him up for my old
zip code in Albuquerque, NewMexico, and they had a partner
that they worked with calledmisfit something. So yeah, I've
seen that. Yeah. So it lookslike imperfect Foods has a wider
reach by I don't know, justbecause there's so much nuance
(38:21):
to it. And I'm, I'm kind of likenot really sure you need to buy
ugly food. You know, like maybejust buy from your local farm. I
my granola rating. I gave it achewy. So three out of five. Did
we talk about what this is? Ourgranola rating we did it
beginning a little bit but I'llgo into more detail we we rate
all of our products and serviceson a scale of one to five
(38:41):
granolas one being soggy whichis bad five being breaker too
tough, which is good because youwant crunchy granola crunchy or
the better. This I gave a chewy,which is chewy medium. Okay,
three out of five. Yeah, theywill be doing some good. They
may be rescuing some ugly food.
Again, if you're gonna get yourgroceries delivered anyway, why
not get it from that seems likethey're affordable. It's you
know better probably than buyingjust from a local grocery store
(39:06):
that just go straight to bigagriculture. You know, you're
definitely they have options fororganic and you know, other
other food structures. So it'skind of like a CSA, but I you
know, I don't know, maybe it'sbetter to get a CSA
right. What I want to talk aboutis, you know, where do we go
from here? Okay, imperfect foodsisn't solving the whole problem
(39:27):
because it's higher up the foodchain. We need big ag to quit
producing extra food but we alsoneed the biggest thing is we
need you and me the individualconsumers to stop throwing food
away. Just stop. Only buy whatyou need. It's the leading cause
of wasted food in the US. Yeah,I'm really amazed. I know. This.
(39:47):
A lot of stuff is like we feellike we can't really make an
impact but like this we reallythis is the one this fast
fashion quit buying new clothes.
Quit throwing new clothes awayand quit buying new food. Just
quit. Yeah, noOkay, don't quit like don't buy
food.
I was gonna say, I for a whilewas, I felt like a big food
(40:07):
waster. Because I don't know, Ijust felt like really frenzied,
and I didn't plan.
I didn't, I didn't have time formeal planning and all that shit.
I didn't think I did. And Istill don't. But,
um, but then what I did was Ijust stopped buying as much when
I went to the grocery store.
It's not like I had a betterplan or a better system. I just
(40:29):
stopped buying as many mealsworth of food. Because a lot of
them were like, fingers crossed,I'll make that food. Yeah, no,
that's, that's my thing is Ihave really helped. Yeah, I have
greatly overestimated mycapacity for making food. Yes,
in the past few years, becauseI've just been worn out and
exhausted and I just don't havethe bandwidth to bring a meal
together. And the thing is theway that I solve that problem is
(40:51):
I buy premade meals. Yes, hithim up, because I just can't
right now. Like I have all theingredients to make things and
it's like, something in me. I'm,I'm too exhausted to chop an
onion, which is so depressing. Iknow. No, but a lot of us are in
the same boat. And yeah, but Iactually I did notice like, I
think I was worried if I don'tget all my food right now then
(41:14):
I'mgonna have them on a night where
we don't have anything to makefor dinner or whatever. But that
hadn't happened. And it actuallymade me less stressed about all
this shit to cook. Yeah, youjust have to jump. Just take the
plunge. I mean, there'ssomething about like, Girl
dinner. Right? Have you heardabout girl dinner? No. It's kind
of like whatever you have in thepantry. Oh, like a 20 year old.
Who comes home and is like, Idon't want to order UberEATS
(41:38):
again, so you end up with like,popcorn. I have popcorn for
dinner a lot, huh? But it's justlike whatever. Like a bag of
Cheetos. Real glass of wine andsome cereal. Yeah, cereal is a
big girl dinner. Giant girl. Imean, when you don't have kids,
it's different. I mean, when youhave to make mealtime and I I do
enjoy I miss cooking. i Oh,yeah, I was supposed to make a
(42:00):
sauce today and make spaghettiand I just just couldn't do it.
So I had a pre bag. Oh, paroubeksalad. And the here's what I
wanted to start this off with.
Okay, again, stop relying onsell by dates quit throwing your
food out just because it sayssell by or Best If Used By
unless it's infant formula.
Right? Refrigeration is awonder. We can keep it a lot
(42:22):
longer than our ancestors evercould. RTS said the two things
best of us buy or sell by meansit may lose quality, but it'll
be safe to consume after thisdate. So you can still eat these
things past their dates used byis the rare but highly
perishable item that may have asafety concern over time. This
is the stuff you need to becareful about some meat. Yeah,
(42:44):
okay. The rule of thumb is ifit's moldy, especially if it's
bread or clearly rotten, yeah,throw it away. Okay. Generally
food is probably still okay ifit's past its quote unquote,
expiration date, even meatsometimes the Atlantic says
follow your nose smell stuffthat has passed pass its date.
If it smells rancid if it stinksreally bad, doesn't smell like
(43:06):
it's supposed to don't eat it.
Even then it's highly likely itwon't kill you. So don't be
quite so worried about you know,and some things if you just cook
them it kills all the bacteria.
I don't want to advocate liketaking the four month old meat
stuff, free stuff if you're notgoing to use it. I bought
chicken the other day and Irealized I hadn't eaten it. I
(43:27):
was out of town and I called myroommate and he put it in the
freezer. I have something achicken. Yes. And then you're
like, Yeah, chicken, chicken.
But you can use stuff thatsmells a little off some of it
like spoiled milk. If it's if ithasn't curdled you can actually
bake with it. Oh, baking? Yeah,that's interesting. See, I might
(43:47):
do that. I wouldn't just drinkit. Yeah, but maybe don't miss
it because it's gonna smellmight put you off. But you can
also make paneer which is a kindof cheat. It's really easy. You
just add lemon juice. To what Ilove paneer Yeah. Pina I had no
idea. Yeah. Okay, so slightlyolder milk. That doesn't smell
right. But isn't. I mean, evenif it is a little curveball, you
can still make cheese out of it.
(44:09):
Amazing. Yeah, I use eggs. Mymom told me like eggs are good
for like a month after they're.
Yeah, maybe longer eggs areprobably especially if you
refrigerate them Yeah. Stalebread you can make an A bread
crumbs or croutons or the theway the French dude is they make
French toast out of it. Pan BLTmeans last bread and spreads.
It's gone stale. Love it. Andwho cares if your cereal is a
(44:29):
little stale if you're justgoing to soak it in milk anyway.
Yeah, exactly. So yeah. Could Iuse this stainless? I used to
make homemade bread and I usethe smallest possible bread. I
was like, I'm gonna getsomething make some Yes, I use
it for French toast and it waspretty chewy. Yeah, also
delicious. It's I mean, just gotto soak it a little longer in
(44:50):
the milk mixture. Yeah, yep. Putmore syrup on it. Exactly. Free
stuff before. If you thinkyou're not able to use it
broccoli, meat, everything justThrow in the freezer. Also, if
you have jars of stuff thatyou're not going to use, donate
them. Go to the food bank. Yeah,my neighborhood has a free
fridge by one of the restaurantsthat you can just Yeah, I have
(45:10):
like a jar of harmony that Iended up with. And I'm not going
to use harmony, right? Nobodywill
make a solely but I use frozenpersonally I don't use like
canned hominy Give me a breakhere. Okay, also composting,
start composting.
Love it, that's if you're gonnathrow food away, or scraps,
(45:31):
compost it. I know not everyonehas access to compost. But it
can really help start lobbyingyour city or state to create
composting programs forresidents and to get restaurants
and farms to be mandated to doso. That's a big one. Because if
43% of our food waste comes fromus, you know, as individual
consumers 40% still comes fromrestaurants, right? Because this
(45:54):
consumer grocery stores, theyneed to be composting. Yeah,
that's huge. Yeah. Wow. We'rewe're also going to talk about
too good to go, which issomething that my roommate uses,
which is when stuff is a littlebit past, it's, it's like, it
didn't sell the day it wasfresh, like doughnuts. And
they'll just put it up on thistoo good to go. app and you can
like sign up to go get it andyou get it for free. Wow. So
(46:17):
like bagels and things thatdidn't sell or don't. Oh my
gosh, this just reminded me whenI was young, when I was young. I
was like probably early 20s Iwent dumpster diving. Yep. And
we it was just a one night thingbut we actually found clean
trash bag. A trash can with aclean bag wind, you know,
(46:40):
perfectly clean, perfectly safe,full chock full of same day
Panera bagels, you and other.
They can't donate. Yeah, yeah.
So yeah, we took a shit. We gotlike bread and bagels and
everything. We took it home andfroze it. It was great. Yeah, I
used to forge in a coffee shopin college. And we couldn't
donate our bagels at the end ofthe day. And so whoever worked
(47:02):
the last shift just took themhome. Yes, freezer full of
bagels. You get so sick of themafter a while.
But I mean, they're nice. It'syeah, that's great. You know,
let's mitigate food waste. Imean, first of all, it shouldn't
be. You would want restaurantsto be able to manage the numbers
enough to know they're not goingto need that many. But what can
you do? Yeah. Well, well, inother ways, you know, sign up
(47:26):
for a local CSA because localfarming is better than big ag.
It's also really fun. It's aweekly ritual every Friday.
Yeah, I missed I need to lookinto a CSA here. Maybe that'll
that's the thing when I hadbunny rabbits, you know, like,
it was great to have a CSAbecause they would give me like
a giant bag of greens. And I'dbe like, alright, I always look
very healthy. I was not it wasfunny. Yeah, that's a funny day,
(47:48):
the greens, but yeah. Okay. Andlastly, quit caring what your
produce looks like. Love it bythe bruised apple.
Maybe try and go to a lowerincome neighborhood and see what
it's like to shop there. Yeah,you're cheaper produce. I mean,
I again, I don't want toadvocate like, I don't want so
much wrong with that in so manyways. Yeah, I was gonna say it
(48:11):
could be really eye opening,though, to go and see how
different it is if it isdifferent. Right. Or like if
it's cheaper, but it's stilledible. Yeah. Or, you know,
like, not even just edible, butlike, it's still good food. You
know? It just has a bruise. Oh,my dog just busted in here. He
is ready for his evening walk. Isee you. Hi. Okay, ma'am. It's
(48:32):
time. It's time. He's like, getdone here, lady. All right.
Thank you for listening tonight.
And I hope this helps with itsfood waste and the ugly food
movement. I might try it. MaybeI'll try it and see. Yeah, I
would be curious. I woulddefinitely love to hear if you
do try it. But I mean, now I'mquite a bit more skeptical of
it. But yeah, I mean, but yeah,it's a mixed bag. Like a lot of
(48:53):
things. Yeah, like so manythings. So we'll see. Anyway.
Well, thank you for listeningagain. Hit us up on on your
review down there. Give us fivestars if you can, it really
helps us out. Yay. Please dothat when we appreciate your
listening to us. And we willtalk to you next week. No, what
are we talking about next week?
(49:16):
Oh, yeah. Good call. Let me see.
Bulk shopping. Oh, yeah. It's acat cat two in a row. Cat, cat,
cat, cat cat back to back.
You're talking about bulkshopping and try to Yeah, try
examining whether that helps.
Yeah, take those reusable jarsthat you saved and go buy your
food in bulk. And I know WholeFoods interested. There's
(49:38):
there's book sections. I wantOh, yeah, I might try it out.
Yes. I will let you know how Imight try it out to actually
okay, because there's we havetons of like healthy, healthy
food source. So yeah, and thisis like,
what do you mean? I can't orderInstacart but, you know, this
could be a fun date for me andthe man who loves going to the
grocery store. There you go.
Perfect.
(50:00):
It's gone by bulk. I think he'sbehind on listening. So he's
gonna be like, Why are youtalking about me on your blog?
Because you're so great. Okay.
Anyway. All right. I will talkto you next week about bulk
foods. Yeah, that sounds good.
All right. No better. Thank you.
Bye
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