Can Do! (Stop Wasting Food, For Your Own Good and the Planet’s)

Between years spent in service to the Siren, being a parent, and now working at a food bank, I seem to spend my whole life surrounded by food.  I’m not complaining; I’m bragging. 

But one question seems to come up again and again.  And again.  And it’s one of those things that I’ve come to slowly realize I’ve been completely wrong about my entire life.

Do me a favor.  Go into your kitchen, take a look in the cupboard, or look through your fridge.  Find some food that is expired.

You know, food that’s past the date printed on the package.  Expired.  No good.  Dangerous.  Something that you need to throw out right now before it gives you botulism.

I know you have some.  We’ve all got some.  Because none of us ever eat all the food we buy.  We always buy that extra can of soup, because it was on sale and we thought, “Hey, I might be in the mood for soup one day.”  Or your daughter begs you to buy those breakfast granola bars, only instead of eating those for breakfast she insists that you make her chocolate chip pancakes.  And like a sucker, you do.  (Just me?  Tell me it’s not just me.)

So, grab something, anything, that expired yesterday, or last week, or last month.  (Or last year…)

Now, don’t throw it out. 

Because, it’s not expired.

I’ve believed my entire life that the dates on food packages are expiration dates.  And I’ve believed that food past this expiration date is suddenly gross, unhealthy, even dangerous to eat.

I’ve been wrong.

Before I really dive into this, if you don’t mind, all this talk of food is making me hungry.  And I just made myself some noodles which I mixed with a little hoisin sauce and this spicy chili-garlic sauce that expired five years ago. 

I’m going to have a few bites.  If I die, this will be a very short essay.

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(Sorry, guys, no such luck.)

Because no matter what the date on the bottle might say, the food inside is probably just fine.

Those dates on the cans and bottles and boxes that we buy contain good information, no doubt about it.  But no one has ever bothered telling anyone who doesn’t spend their entire life working with food exactly what that information is.  And at the same time, those dates actually hide a terrible reality about our food supply that we are very, very good at overlooking:

We throw out too much food.

How much are we throwing out, exactly?

While no one is weighing it all, the USDA estimates that between wilted lettuce, uneaten leftovers, and canned goods left in the closet for a generation, Americans throw out about 300 pounds of food every year.  Each.  That’s every single person in this country.  And most of that 300 pounds you threw out was probably still edible, even probably still delicious.  (Maybe not the lettuce.  I’ve never described lettuce as delicious.)

Picture it this way: You go to the grocery store, buy three bags worth of groceries, and on your way out the door, you drop one entire bag in the garbage

That’s how much we’re throwing away.

“No way,” you’re saying.  “Not me.  I don’t throw that much out!”

Maybe you don’t. Or, maybe you do.  I’m not sure because I’m not watching your every move, paying attention to every meal you eat.  That’s Facebook’s job.

But on average, estimates of the value of wasted food work out to roughly $1,600 for an average American household per year.

That means you’re probably throwing out $1,600 every year.

And every can of food that is thrown out is not just a can of food, it’s also all the resources that went into growing the food, processing the food, packing the food, transporting the food.  Every single piece of food that we consume (or don’t consume) has a carbon footprint attached to it.  Now, estimates of exactly how much food waste contributes to global climate change vary, based on methodology, but the variations are somewhere between “really bad” and “even worse,” so the wide variance doesn’t really matter.  Under the study done by Project Drawdown, it turns out that changing our habits to reduce our food waste is the third most effective means of reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

(Yeah, I know.  Every time I mention Global Climate Change, someone has to chime in that it’s all a hoax by the Chinese, the climate changes according to natural cycles, and there is no scientific consensus about whether or not humans are causing climate change.  I’m just going to leave this here, and go back to talking to the grown-ups in the room:  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2014/may/23/john-oliver-best-climate-debate-ever)

And it’s not just that we throw out tons of food every year.  We also have a problem with food insecurity.  At the exact same time that we fill our garbage bags with food, millions of people, families, children, retirees, have so little food and so little access to food that they often have to make terrible choices, like buying food or buying medicine, or feeding themselves or feeding their kids.  These are decisions no one should have to face.

Let me say this again:  Our country is throwing out billions of pounds of food.  And we are letting people in our country go without enough food.

It doesn’t make any sense, does it?

This raises a massive moral question: Are we so pre-occupied with income and profits and capitalism that we will let people go hungry because they don’t have enough money to buy food, even when we have plenty of extra food that will likely just get tossed out after it “expires”?

But even people who are food insecure will look at the date on a can of beef stew, see that it is past date, and throw it out.  It has been so ingrained in us, from an early age, that you need to look at expiration dates on food, that someone who is forced to regularly choose between buying food and buying expensive prescription medicine will throw out past-date food instead of eating it!

So you have economics, physics, and morality, all telling you the same thing:

Stop throwing out so much food!

And the solution starts with that date on that can of stew.

What does this date mean?

The date that ends up on a can of stew or a can of tuna or a jar of Grey Poupon is placed there by the food manufacturer.  

But of course.

There is no standard as to what these dates mean or how they are arrived at.

In practice, most shelf-stable food (packaged food that requires no refrigeration) could, probably, survive until our country becomes a Mad Max movie after our society collapses because we threw out so much perfectly good food.  BUT, leaving food on the shelf of a grocery store for years waiting for someone to buy it doesn’t make the money flow in, so manufacturers have to have some way of getting food to be taken off the shelves so stores have to buy more food to refill those shelves.

Now, this is probably more than a little cynical, but it seems like they fully expect us consumers to do the exact same thing in our homes.  Oh sure, I want milk in my coffee, but that milk was dated for yesterday.  Throw it away!  Go to the store and buy more milk!

The thing is, food dates, be they called Best-By, Sell-By, Use-By, have nothing at all to do with food safety.  Food that has been sitting on a shelf for too long is not, by nature, unsafe.  The factors that contribute to making food unsafe have nothing at all to do with the amount of time the food is properly stored.  Food becomes unsafe only when something wrong happens to that food.  For example, if a pathogen is introduced into a food at any point in the manufacturing process, like salmonella, listeria, E. Coli.  Or if something in the manufacturing process goes wrong, like a can is not properly sealed.  Or if food is not properly stored, like if canned food is frozen, damaging the integrity of the can.  These things can make food unsafe, and it really doesn’t matter what the date on the package says in these cases.  The food is just bad and should not be consumed under any circumstances. 

How long does properly preserved shelf-stable food actually last?

A long time.  Canned food, including oysters, tomatoes, and mixed vegetables, were recovered from a steamboat called the Bertrand, which sank in the Missouri River in 1865.  They were opened in 1974.  No foodborne pathogens were present.  The food was still safe to eat.

Again, we are separating the idea of food quality from food safety.  Would century-old food taste good?  Probably not.  (Nobody actually ate the food from the Bertrand; they only tested it for bacteria.)  But about a quarter of the fresh food I cook at home doesn’t taste good, either.  (More, if you ask my kids.)  The point is that the food is safe.  It will not make you sick.  Will it taste funny?  Maybe, but that is why you have hot sauce. 

So, this whole issue around Best-By dates seems to have a simple fix, right?  Just get rid of the dates!

Not quite.  Best-By dates serve a legitimate purpose.  A couple, in fact.  In the event of a food recall (think salmonella-contaminated peanut butter), they can help consumers identify and dispose of unsafe food.  And yes, food will generally taste better if eaten before the Best-By date than it will if eaten, say, five or six years after the Best-By date.  Though, not THAT much better.

But we still call them expiration dates.

That’s what needs to change.  Not the language on the cans, but our language, our understanding, our mental attitude toward preserved food.

Because these are not “expiration” dates in any meaningful way.

My point here is simply this:  Before you throw out food, stop and ask yourself if you really need to throw it out?  Does it look funny?  Does it smell bad?  Is the can bulging like a squirrel trying to fit one-too-many acorns in its cheeks?  

If the answer is no, there is a very good chance that the food that you are about to throw out is safe, nutritious, and tasty. 

We’ve been conditioned by the food manufacturers to think about food in terms of freshness and expiration dates.  We need to learn to ignore dates and think about food in terms of social, environmental, and economic impacts.  Food is vital to health, it is energy, it costs money, and access to good food is a basic human right.

Worried about getting sick?  Practice good food safety in your home: wash your hands, wash your counters, store food properly, and don’t forget to wash your hands.

And the next time you catch yourself looking at a date and saying (or even thinking) the word, “expired,” stop and say, out loud, “It isn’t expired.”

You know those cans of “expired” food you pulled out of your pantry?  Don’t throw them away.  Instead, save yourself money by turning them into dinner.  Don’t be afraid.  They’ll taste fine.

And when you’re done, take the money you would have spent on buying new food and donate it to your local food pantry.  They can use it to save more food that would otherwise end up in a landfill and give it to someone who needs that food but can’t afford it.  Save money, save the planet, save another human being, and enjoy a delicious dinner while you’re at it. 

Expired has never tasted so good.