Well, this is again for my other survival, if so. Have you ever noticed a large number of garbage trucks on our roads today? Our waste seems their benefit. Today I did some past readings and was amazed at the amount of food we spend. As I thought more and more about this issue, I decided to do one of my writings based on survival on this topic. As a nation, we are currently endowed with an excess of food, which we generously share with the world. I remember how a teenager read, how we shared wheat with the Soviet Union, although at that time we were rivals in the Cold War. Despite the fact that we have an abundance of healthy food, we also spend most of it.
You can sit at a computer reading this and silently ask you to comment that your waste is very insignificant. Of course, you cannot generate a lot of waste compared to total tons, but if there are mountains of garbage with each person’s waste. As a country, our total food waste is more than two tons per second. This is an amazing amount of food that is thrown away.
It is not only the end user who contributes to this waste, but also puts it all in the way of the farm and up to you, each of whom makes his share of wasted food. According to statistics, from 17 to 25 percent of the products grown on farms are actually wasted on this farm. This waste includes food that may not be very attractive to the public. An example would be tomatoes, which may have flaws or defects in them. Another source of waste is located in the center of the packaging, where additional products result from minor imperfections. From there, the products go to homes and restaurants, where the "share of lions" waste is found.
Sixteen percent of all potatoes disappear in the kitchen here in America. This figure is even higher for other products, such as 24% for salad, 20% for bread, 21% for yogurt and 15% for chicken. This is a great meal that survived the trip from the farmer to the final destination on your table. Now, not all of this waste can be contributed to farmers, markets or consumers, since many of them can be blamed for regulators used by both state and federal governments, which for some reason “refuse” products. It may be allowed to sell only fruit without stains. This leaves the lowest varieties to rot in the farmer's field. We see this in our area every year, as the perfect watermelons lie on the farm fields, subject to possible plowing.
The point here is that each of us must know about this waste and in one way or another play a role in reducing the amount of waste. You may ask how you can reduce this amount of waste in your own home. Small steps one by one will work wonders. This can be done in several ways. In our case, we find that these imperfect tomatoes are really useful for us. We have a local farmer who puts all his imperfect tomatoes in the basket. At a simple price of $ 5.00, you can fill a good-sized box and take them home. We use these tomatoes for making spaghetti sauce, which we dehydrate and put in our room for emergency care for future use. We stopped this practice a few years ago, as it was impractical, but now we have resumed it because of the high market value of cans of pasta sauce in grocery stores these days.
Another way we contribute to waste reduction is to buy reduced products in the store. Harris Teeter often removes its day or so old products and places them for sale at a much lower price. Although we will never pay premium prices for products that are less sophisticated, we will consider products such as their drying and dehydration, provided that the prices decrease accordingly. Unfortunately, our current food businesses do not usually see this as a viable alternative. We take these products and dehydrate them for storage. An example would be a carrot. We can buy a big bag of low-priced carrots, perhaps for ninety-nine cents. We take them home and immediately prepare them for a dehydrator.
As a rule, one of our local producers sells their not-so-perfect apples with a sharp saving in price. They are good for making applesauce, apple cider and dehydration for future cakes or trees.
Finally, we found that we should make less food. We abandoned cooking with oils, fats and fats, and now we find that if we make more product than we need, we can also dehydrate it. Suppose we make too many green bean vegetables for our food. Not a problem, if no-oil or fatty substances are added to it, we can dehydrate the rest. They are perfect for adding to soups and stews.
If you happen to grow your own vegetables in your personal garden, then share some with your neighbors, and do not let them go bad on the vine. Waste as little food, perhaps by donating some of your fresh food to local food banks. If we all do our parts, we will be able to cut back the products spent, at the same time saving money and ready for disasters and emergencies.
