Clean-up is what stops many people. Get a good titanium no-stick pan - I like “Our Place” pans. Get individual portion meats or frozen meats or buy bulk and freeze in portions. Do the same with vegetables. Heat your seasoned pan up then put some oil in just before you put meat in. Cook meat until almost done, then add vegetables to same pan - heat them up. Serve. Let pan cool while you eat. Refrigerate left-overs. Rinse and wipe pan down. Wash dish. DONE.
Sell your wardrobe fridge and replace it with a small one.
If the stuff does not fit in your fridge, don’t buy it.And what @technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com said. Over here, milk comes in 1L packets with a 2 day expiry. I only buy for 2-3 days at a time and every time I go out to buy milk, I also refill groceries.
Stuff over here is not more than 10km away, so I can use a bicycle.
No. I wait until the fridge is absolutely fucking empty and I eat every goddamn thing. You ain’t gonna find no expired food in my household. And I don’t buy things for the hell of it, and I don’t buy shit in boxes. Cook in a pan. Buy whole food. Prioritize which expires or rots the quickest. I used a cast iron that I found in the trash. I don’t understand how or why people have this issue. But I guess I’ve been poor for all of my adult life, so. If they drafted me, I’d say take me to prison bitch, because I ain’t gonna fucking die for this place. I kinda wish I was never born. People throwing away food. Gawd I hate this country.
Use a software/app to meal plane. (Mealie/Tandoor) You pick the recipes you fancy for the days/week/whatever period. It generates a grocery list containing exactly what is needed for the meals you chose, nothing else.
I haven’t thrown away anything in a couple years now. Oh and freeze leftovers if needed.
I live walking distance from 2 small super markets, I walk to those near every day and just get a few things and I also get hello fresh and I always cook those. So generally my fridge is pretty empty but I always eat well. Just in Time Home Economics you could say.
I just hunt and eat the homeless. I work for the municipality so I just leave what I don’t eat around park benches, bus stops and the front of stores to scare the rest away.
I do this sort of thing with pets from the animal shelter
Buy more fruit in summer and cereals in winter.
Meal planning is overwhelming to me, so I made a habit of rotating a selection of staple meals with fewer, more stable ingredients. PB or eggs scrambled with cheese on toast for a breakfast. A salad of chickpeas, carrot, broccoli and avocado with a whole-wheat roll, or a lentil/rice bowl, for lunch. Precook larger batches of freezer-friendly staples like chickpeas, lentils, rice, turkey burgers, meatloaf, tomato gravy - reserve 2-3 days’ supply and freeze portioned batches of the rest. Allow yourself less experimental ingredient buys per grocery run - so if it turns out they don’t synergize with your staples, you’re not accumuating a lot of dead-end ingredients.
Buy empty deli containers and food prep at least half the meals for the week.
Clean up fridge on day off, note overstock and old stock
Plan meals for the week using the over/old stock.
Use the pickup service at the market instead of shopping so you don’t buy stupid things.
When you buy raw meat, cook it within two days, even if you’re just going put it back into containers, it’ll last far longer.
Perishables take more planning. Get just enough and have a plan to use it. Use canned and frozen food to account for uncertainty. Be aware of expiration dates of your food and plan accordingly.
We cook and eat the food.
Go away, you tankies with your common sense
Please don’t waste food.
Oh thanks, I’m cured! /s
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Most of the food we grow for animals is not edible by humans.
Also the soil we use for growing that food is not suitable for growing human food, permanently or temporary.
One of the basics of agriculture is crop rotation. And this crop rotation usually need for foods that are good for animals but not so good for humans.
That while talking about food that is grown specifically for animals. A good part of animal food is just residues from human food. For instance, in my grandmother’s house I remember the chickens were basically a walking bio-disposal bin, at not point food was grown specifically for those chicken.
In the matter of wasted food, resources. A lot of it have to do with transportation from very far away places.
This is weapons grade copium.
The main ingredients in almost all animal feed for industrial farming (90+% of meat production) is grain/cereals. Like corn, wheat, oat, etc. humans eat those things. The protein sources for animal feed is usually soy… humans eat soy.
Please explain why “the soil we use for growing animal feed is not suitable for growing human food”
The only factual part of your comment is about your grandmas chickens eating food scraps. But I’ll bet you they didn’t live entirely on scraps. They still get grain to survive. Also, as stated before, 90%+ of meat doesn’t come from sustainable grandma’s chickens. It comes from hell on earth factory farms.
Do you know what “alfalfa” is?
I don’t know if that’s the correct english translation.
Widely used as a source of animal food. Good luck trying to eat that.
Search which cultives tend to be part of healthy crop rotations and most of the times you’ll find a crop that’s used for animals and cannot be eaten by humans.
Also not are grains and soy are created equal or are as suitable for human consumption in a healthy diet as other plants. Or almost most planta that are used for animal consumption. There’s two fact here, first that many times there’s a mixed use (part of the plant goes to the animal and part of the plant goes to the human) and other times even when everything is for the animal, there tend to be different varieties. The corn dedicated to human consumption is not the same corn dedicated to animal consumption. It grows different and can take different amount of nutrients for the soil, or take different economic requirements. Human food tend to be much more expensive overall, because our stomach cannot digest plants as easily as herbivores.
Do you think human beings have been farming animals and those “extra crops” just for funsies. It’s the most efficient way to feed human population. That’s why it have been done for millenia.
Search which cultives tend to be part of healthy crop rotations and most of the times you’ll find a crop that’s used for animals and cannot be eaten by humans.
Yeah that’s a choice. There are plenty of crops that can be rotated for human consumption. It’s a choice to waste land and destroy the planet so carnists can torture and murder animals.
Do you think human beings have been farming animals and those “extra crops” just for funsies.
Do you think that’s the only option? Do you think agriculture hasn’t progressed in 2000 years?
It’s the most efficient way to feed human population. That’s why it have been done for millenia.
You gonna start promoting the keto diet next?
Your oversimplification was maybe a relatively efficient way to feed small populations 2000 years ago. Now it’s the most inefficient. Literally starving people while destroying the planet.
why are you so aggressive?
Yeah, alfalfa is the correct translation. I tried to do a quick search for how much land is used for forage crops (like alfalfa and hay) but didn’t come up with any decent stats. However, I looked for the global crop production stats and the top 4 globally are sugarcane, corn, rice, and wheat. These 4 contribute almost 50% of total arable land use. On the graphics for production— forage crops don’t even get an honorable mention. So unless you have some info on how much wasted land alfalfa grows on, I’m going to say it’s not all that important (land use wise)
Second, using different cultivars for animal feed and direct human consumption is true. We don’t eat dent corn. We eat sweet corn. Two very different varieties. However, saying that one variety can be grown on this patch of land and the other varieties cannot is simply false. Yes there are differences in adaptability of different varieties, but they aren’t massive. Especially when you read about how much fertilizer and water we dump on our animal feed crops each year. Any damn plant could grow with those kind of inputs.
And lastly, your “appeal to tradition” argument is a classic logical fallacy. So I won’t try to refute it.
There’s a economical difference. Growing plants for animals is cheaper. Plants for animals are easier to take care. We dump a lot of fertilizer on animal crops. But we dump even more in human crops.
They amount of care and soil usage is always going to be higher on crops destined to human consumption.
This could grow if we tried to grow only human based food? Yes, but with much higher economical effort andes yield per sqrmeter. When nutrients grow thin in soil is not only that things straight up do not grow, is that less things grow and they grow smaller.
It’s not tradicional. It’s observation of history. Humans have not grown as omnivore because of tradition. We have not domesticated animals because of tradition. We have done it because it’s the most efficient way to do things.
You for instance are vegan because of tradition. Not because economics or efficiency dictate it, but because a series of moral considerations that were passed onto you thus modifying your behavior. But most humans population if faced with the nutritional challenge will both grow plants and farm animals because it is the most efficient way to do things.
Traditional exceptions would be the opposite. Like the cultures that forbid certain foods because religious reasons.
Gonna need a source for that claim on higher inputs for human food.
If economics is your excuse for raising animal feed instead of human food then it’s just another knock on capitalism. (Although if you calculated the economic cost of raising/slaughtering/shipping all that meat, I’d wager it’s not cheaper than growing plants for humans to eat)
Also, we farmed animals in the past because they are a good storage for calories when it’s winter and you can’t grow food. We live in a global society now. It’s not necessary. Animals are grown and killed because their meat is pleasurable to eat; simple as that.
They amount of care and soil usage is always going to be higher on crops destined to human consumption.
It doesn’t matter because the other costs of raising animals (eg water, land, waste) completely outweight any supposed, tiny advantage from growing plants to feed them.
It’s not tradicional. It’s observation of history… We have done it because it’s the most efficient way to do things.
I love this dishonest change of tense. Even if it was once “efficient”, the current state of industrial murder is literally destroying the planet. Completely unsustainable.
We also throw away approximately half the perfectly good food we produce in the U.S.
But do we really want 15B people?
The billionaires do, otherwise their tiny little egos will shatter for not feeling speshul
So that’s why Elon makes all these kids …
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Meal plan. Write what you’re cooking for the week, buy only ingredients for that.
Anything uncooked goes in the freezer, you can defrost and cook/reheat a lot of food, stop throwing stuff away.
Problem is that some of us have freezers the size of matchboxes, so it is very limited what leftovers we can put in the freezer. It’s something I have attempted to tell my parents who have big freezers and lots of good ideas to how you can buy this and that in bulk and just freeze it for later and save so much money!! Cool. But my freezer is still the size of a matchbox.
That doesn’t stop you from Meal Planning ahead and only buying what you need for that week.
And leftovers can often make great soups, stews, and curries. They can last in the fridge for about a week.
Sure, but I just wanted to point out that some of us do not have freezers that can store a lot of food. Whenever I see people being like “just freeze the leftovers” I look at my freezer like “how?”. If I put a bag of beans, a bag of ice and some springrolls in there, it is filled to the brim.
People shouldn’t assume that everybody have tons of space to store perishable foods. That’s all.
In my household we usually go for small packs of food when we shop groceries. Meats and vegetables etc. We go for small sizes because we don’t want to end up throwing out food. It’s not cheaper, but it is less wasteful in the long run.
I have a reasonable sized freezer, not a huge one, but I feel like if I put a bag of ice in it I’d have very little space. Ice cube trays will leave you with more room.
Very true! It does feel like playing tetris with that little box sometimes, haha.
This is valid and identifiable!
I gave multiple ways to reduce food waste. You only responded about the freezer and clung to it, you’re still talking about it. If you have your own method to not waste food then this post and my comment aren’t about you, stop playing the victim.
I’m not playing victim. I’m just pointing out that some people have tiny freezers.
Then use any other of the methods suggested, stop going on about freezers!
You really do not have to be this aggressive, my dude. I don’t have meal planning issues, I just wanted to bring up one aspect of meal planning that doesn’t always work for everybody.
People work with what they have, I just wanted to mention the thing about freezers because people tend to always assume that everybody has a lot of freezer space, which isn’t the case. That is all. No need to get all bent out of shape over it.
Protip: Save up, buy a dedicated freezer. Like a “redneck hunter’s garage” style one. Nothing fancy, just a white box with a dial on the front for how cold you want it. Cheaper than the fancy flashy fridge freezer combos, and much more usable space (although you have to stack stuff inside). A lot cheaper than you’d expect. They also come in a variety of sizes, from small to “I need space for three bodies”.
Awesome. Where should I put it? I live in a small apartment. My kitchen is the size of a shoebox.
If you have space for like a bedside table, or a coffee table, or even a table table, you have space for a small chest freezer. It doesn’t necessarily have to be in the kitchen.
Looks like the average small ones are only about 3.5 cubic feet. I’ve rarely seen 1.2 cubic feet ones as well.
That said, if all you have is one of those small kitchenettes with barely enough space for a microwave, you’re kind of kneecapped in terms of food prep in other ways as well.
Pro tip
Move to a bigger house
Can’t afford it atm. Not everybody is rolling in money xD
Pro tip: earn more money
What a wonderful community this is.
Drawback, you’ll likely have to defrost those regularly.
Defrosting isn’t a big deal. I decide what I want to eat tomorrow, I take it out the freezer and put it in the fridge, by the time I want to eat its defrosted and good to reheat.
Edit: ignore me, I was thinking of defrosting food not defrosting the ice build-up in the freezer
Pretty sure they mean in terms of scraping out ice that can build up on the walls of the inside.
Oh of course! Now I feel dumb.
I’m lucky my freezer has some anti-frost thing built in so I haven’t had to yet, but yeah my old freezer was a pain for it.
I buy stuff that lasts. For bread, I find that rye takes weeks longer than white or wheat to start going bad, and bagels last ages too. I make smoothies with mostly frozen fruit. For dinner stuff, if I’m not feeling like cooking I either buy things I’m going to eat in the next few days or I get these sealed precooked things from Aldi that are great and keep well. Coconut milk also tends to keep better than cow milk and lately I’ve realized I greatly prefer it.
About the only things that are super perishable that I keep around are bananas and avocados, and I just tend to eat these a lot. I also keep spinach or kale around for my smoothies, but I rebag them into separate smaller bags as soon as I get them. If my bananas are getting overripe, they get frozen for smoothies.
I also tend to buy canned soups, which last ages.
When I was cooking regularly I’d make a lot of chilis and pasta sauces. They’re good to freeze and they keep well on their own. Chili is arguably better after freezing and having more time to develop.
You can definitely eat pretty healthy and keep plenty of food in the house without constantly chasing waste.
Don’t mourn, organise!
