
Much fridge food ‘goes there to die’ - EndXA
https://news.osu.edu/much-fridge-food-goes-there-to-die/
======
glup
Three things I have found that help to cut down food waste (and times pent at
the grocery store):

\- Develop a notion of cadence: how much food could you get through in a given
interval (3-7 days), and how will this be affected by visitors, eating out,
and travel. This might seem obvious but it's not — a lot of people have a
"stocking up" mentality — if I buy a lot now, I won't need to go to the store
for a while--that leads to suboptimal nutrition, more trips to the store, or
eating out more b/c the fridge is empty. Using a standardized interval makes
it much easier to learn adjustments.

\- Develop an inventory of "endgame" meals that are less perishable that you
can always have on hand so you can maintain your cadence. Examples: Halloumi
(grilling cheese, good for months), tacos (canned beans; refrigerated
tortillas, cheese, peppers and onions are good for weeks), pasta (olive oil
and parmesean). Things like charcuterie, esp smoked and jarred meats, and
fermented foods were originally invented by peasants to last for a long time
and they still have their use, whether you are peasant or not. By contrast,
there are "opening" meals like fresh seafood, which really should be eaten on
the same day as the trip to the grocery store.

\- Have so many food-safe containers on hand that any leftovers get stored
without a second thought. Then your endgame meals get pushed back.

~~~
r00fus
So much good advice there. I have noticed that (esp. when I'm dining alone at
home) I can get into the rut where a) I didn't go to the store and then b)
order takeout creates an a->b->a vicious circle.

Developing a habit of going to the store (even if you don't feel like it) and
getting some of those less-perishable items so you have endgame options is
key.

One thing I've found helps is to get really comfortable cooking. First I plan
a bit getting a recipe (this is best done @work or on the way back. I stop
over at a store. Finally, at home, I pour a small glass of wine/open a beer,
turn on music or a podcast (or netflix) and walk through my recipe.

This clearly takes time investment, so it's important to go through the habit
so you can 1) be comfortable with it and 2) optimize it for you. Rewarding
myself with desirable activities as part of the meal-prep is great. Taking pix
and sharing what I made is also fun (even if it's bad - can be a good laugh).

------
exhilaration
One of the best tips I learned about reducing food waste is to freeze bread
and avoid putting it into the fridge. Frozen bread stays fresh and can go
directly into a toaster or toaster oven:

 _Harold McGee replies: Good point to bring up! Bread and other lean baked
goods are the exception to the rule that cold storage is good. Bread stales
faster at refrigerator temperatures than at room temperature. So if you want
to keep a loaf for a couple of days, a breadbox is better than the fridge. For
much longer than that, the freezer is the best place._

[https://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/09/harold-
mc...](https://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/09/harold-mcgee-on-
bread-and-baking/)

~~~
novaRom
Why simply not to buy less, exactly as much as you will consume? Here at a
bakery around corner I simply buy fresh bread every morning.

~~~
electricviolet
You buy 2-3 slices of bread every morning? Or are you buying some kind of roll
or smaller unit of bread? The smallest unit of bread most people are able to
buy is a loaf, and for me, it takes a week or two to go through a loaf of
bread.

~~~
joshvm
This is pretty common in most of Europe (especially Spain and France). People
will buy a (demi) baguette or equivalent every day and it'll get eaten. We're
not talking about sliced bread.

~~~
mamon
Which is easy to do in Europe, because you have a bakery on every corner, so
it takes a 5 minutes walk to get fresh bread. In the US the nearest place
selling bread might be 10 minutes car ride from home.

~~~
eurg
Not in every place in the US you need a car, not in every place in Europe you
have a bakery around the corner. We are talking half-continent sized areas
with several hundred million people. There is quite a variance.

But more to the point, good quality bread has been more ingrained in the
culture of several (but not all) European countries than in the US, and while
the wheels are turning, it seems to take some time.

------
ciconia
I think the _main_ reasons why so much food is wasted are the same reasons why
so much water, petrol and electricity are wasted: all of those have become
commodities in endless supply, literally streaming out of a pipe (well, a
distribution pipe in the case of food) at the push of a button; and all those
things are in fact too cheap (the price for the end user does not reflect the
cost of production and of externalities like CO2 emissions, health and
environmental damage).

In my analysis, one of the best ways to reduce waste and over-consumption is
to stop subsidies for agriculture, water, oil etc, and let prices reflect the
real cost. Of course, in a growth-based economy this kind of change would
never happen.

But other solutions are also possible, even in the current system. Our family
of four is slowly transitioning to sustainable consumption, starting from food
and hopefully becoming fully autonomous someday with regards to water and
electricity.

One of the changes we've made is buying higher-quality products in smaller
quantities, preferably from local sources. Another change is to try and close
the waste loop. Any food not eaten by us will go to our dog and cat, and
eventually to our chickens, who provide eggs, meat and soil fertiliser.
Further optimisation is achieved by using dry toilets - our bodily waste is
composted on site, the carbon is sequestered and eventually turns into soil.

I strongly believe that "closing the loop" like that can be practiced on a
much larger scale, even on a national scale.

~~~
chillwaves
The pricing should penalize over-consumption. Let's say the first 10 gallons
of gas per week are taxed at a certain rate, the next 10 gallons a higher rate
and so forth.

~~~
new2628
Why the downvotes, this is an insightful (if inconvenient to some) point.

~~~
pessimizer
Why do you find the point insightful? A defense will work better than a
lament.

~~~
chillwaves
Think of it as a subsidiary for the poor. Market forces have not been
responsive to creating a sustainable planet, while we also have to recognize
the necessities for life/production in society. The cost increases at a higher
rate for those who go beyond the basic needs.

Secondly to incentivize less consumption.

------
jerkstate
There are some things that people just get a lot better at with life
experience, like managing your food. When I was younger my fridge was full of
moldy takeout containers. Now I use a meal planning app that generates a
shopping list for me (plus other staples that we go through like hand fruit,
bread, milk etc.) My grocery bill for home cooked breakfast, lunch and dinner
5-6 days a week for a family of 4 is about $200 a week. I think it's kind of
high, but we mostly eat fresh meat, veggies, and fruit, not much grain or
processed food, and we waste almost no food. We do spend on average an hour a
day preparing lunch and dinner, but that's usually family time where we're all
in the kitchen talking. One of my favorite feelings is after putting
everything away from a grocery shopping trip and seeing my kitchen and
refrigerator full of healthy food that I know will nourish my family for the
upcoming week.

edit: App I use is eMeals, I tried several and this is my favorite so far, we
are on the Paleo plan right now but they have maybe 8 or 10 different plans
and you can switch pretty much at will. If anyone else has one they love
please let me know!

~~~
Limb
Mind sharing the name of the meal planning app?

~~~
obelos
Not the OC, but I've used
[https://www.plantoeat.com/](https://www.plantoeat.com/) for a couple of years
now, cooking for a family of five. It's a wonderful tool, especially for only
$5 month.

------
mcfunk
An interesting related question -- can refrigerator design help to address
this issue? We have one of those side-by-side fridges with more shelf depth
than shelf width. The design results in food getting pushed far back where it
is easy to miss/forget food that is there and difficult to access food without
causing an avalanche of containers. I often wonder if our (rented) home had a
different style of refrigerator if we would deal with less forgotten/spoiled
foods.

~~~
rdtwo
Honestly I don’t think there is any innovation in the appliance space. The
companies take the same components slap a new face plate on them or a led
display and sell the same shit at different price points. In 2019 I’m still
not sure that you can get a PID controlled oven or fridge and that should be
trivially easy to implement.

~~~
eurg
Modern fridges have temperature sensors, per-drawer ventilated air-cooling,
auto-detection of when particular high-thermal mass un-frozen food (i.e. a
turkey) is added and start quick-freezing, and provide alarms when door or
cooling fail. Also, energy efficiency for the EU A+++ rated units is really
good.

And you get that already for the cheap units.

So, it's a freezer, it freezes, and it doesn't send a post to Facebook. The
only complaint I would have is their loudness. Modern extra-slow compressors
are often (perceived) louder than previous-gen units.

Also: given that even DIY ovens usually start with "get a cheap PID controller
from e-bay", I doubt that commercial ones use anything else.

~~~
rdtwo
My fridge is modern but pretty simple. It’s really just a freezer with a vent
that regulates fridge temps. It’s got some othe functions like defrost and
seal warming but it’s a remarkably crude device

------
dcolkitt
I'm pretty guilty of food waste. In particular fresh produce. But to be honest
I'm unrepentant about it.

The health benefits of a diet high in fruits and vegetables are just enormous.
I'd much rather over-buy than under-buy. If someone in the household ends up
eating junk food because there was no fruit/veggie option, that's a disastrous
failure condition. The solution is to make sure that we never run out of
fruits and vegetables, which necessarily entails keeping excess inventory that
will eventually be thrown out.

Is this financially wasteful? In a very narrow sense, sure. Yet even in just
economic terms the health benefits from a diet high in fruits and vegetables
overwhelms any grocery bill considerations. At the end of the day produce is
much cheaper than insulin.

~~~
ticmasta
certain aspects of nutrition are best met with fresh vegetables, and
definitely taste desires, but supplementing with frozen fruits and veggies can
be just as healthy, reduce waste and let you stock up in-season for later in
the year.

It's pretty hard to freeze leafy greens for a nice salad though...

~~~
dcolkitt
That's an excellent point about freezing. And we certainly do keep the freezer
stocked to the brim with frozen options.

Like you alluded to the biggest challenge is the taste factor. Eating veggies
over junk food is already enough of an uphill battle willpower wise.
Especially with kids in the house. Combined with the inconvenience of
dethawing, they're just not that popular.

I wish American super-markets would stock a wider range of fermented
vegetables. In terms of long-term preservation, I find fermentation to be more
appealing than freezing for most cases. Frozen veggies typically just taste
like a flatter version of their fresh counterparts. Whereas fermented veggies
have a unique taste that's appealing all on its own.

------
neap24
I’ve been thinking this for a while, but always thought the problem wasn’t
overestimation of food needs, but rather aversion to making more frequent
grocery trips (pushing people to “stock up”.

~~~
jbattle
We have three kids and the amount each of them eat varies wildly from day to
day. Sometimes they are fighting over who gets the swipe the last sauce out of
the pot, other days they are "not hungry" and hardly eat anything. So some
days we have a lot of leftover.

I suppose if we had like 100 kids then the variances would probably average
out and we'd waste far less leftovers. I'll bring that idea up with the
spouse.

~~~
reubenswartz
"Dad, we need way more X!"

"Are you sure? That seems like a lot..."

"Yes-- we ate all of it in 2 days last week."

"Well, OK."

...

A week later, 90% of X is still sitting there. I try not to get too upset,
because I remember doing the same thing when I was a kid. I'm better at
predicting what I will actually eat these days.

------
moosey
My partner and bought a CSA share, and the entire food planning for each week
is based on that CSA share. Often times, food is prepared on the weekend, and
we eat only left overs all week. We also have a small garden outside. Between
the two, we have little need to buy anything but proteins, all of which are
vegan, and perhaps a few additional food items like bread.

Our food waste and costs have dropped dramatically, but we did have to make a
'sacrifice' of choice. Each week, the food that is produced for consumption in
the house is decided not by us, but by what is produced and distributed by the
farm. Due to this process, we might have lost choice, but we have gained,
surprisingly, variety.

To expand on this idea: I think that the prevalence of choice in our
supermarkets (example: fresh fruit in the middle of winter, wtf?) is massively
inefficient, and should be reconsidered. Of course, when human society decides
to get its collective act together and fight climate change, the point is
moot. The entire 'choice regime' is dependent on high density fuels, and
energy density will make these choices for us if/when carbon based fuels are
made more expensive.

~~~
dllthomas
You get back a little bit of choice if you pickle some of the produce.

------
mr_tristan
It sure seems the size of the refrigerator itself is significant: if you have
tons of space, you just store more, and it's easy to lose track of.

Basically, a smaller fridge might comes with lifestyle changes, but, also a
much smaller cognitive load. If you can't store that much, you don't have to
recall when you bought it, or what you still have.

In our house, a lot of food waste is in cooked or par-cooked food, which comes
without a label, stored in a container.

I'd be very curious, but I do notice that the US wastes a ridiculous amount of
food (~30% I've read in recent articles). We also have the largest
refrigerators.

Of course, I seriously doubt you'd ever get any kind of regulation on
refrigerator size in the US. But, it would be interesting to see how that
compares with label changes. My suspicion is that in the US, the effects from
label dates isn't that great. We just have too much stuff.

~~~
esotericn
Having a large fridge seems super daft to me.

A large freezer - now that's a lifesaver. Buy in bulk or cook batches and win
the game.

But a fridge? Once you go beyond N days of food per person, you're literally
wasting food! It's impossible to use the space for the most part other than
some condiments.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Soda? Beer? Cheese? Preserves?

Lots of things have long shelf-lives and want cooling. Its not all about
leftovers and vegetables.

And even vegetables have their place. We preserve (can/freeze) garden produce.
Where to put it between harvest and processing? The fridge.

~~~
esotericn
Heh. I guess I forget that soda is a thing. Doh :P

------
EndXA
You can find the original study here:
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092134491...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921344919303350)

Study highlights:

> Institutional signals of food quality drive consumer food waste behaviors.

> Food-related routines affect whether refrigerated food gets eaten.

> Ambiguous date labeling decreases the odds that refrigerated food will be
> eaten.

> Respondents are systematically over-optimistic that refrigerated food will
> be eaten.

~~~
finaliteration
> Ambiguous date labeling decreases the odds that refrigerated food will be
> eaten.

Honestly this is part of why I throw food out maybe more frequently than
others do. The plethora of dates is extremely confusing. Pair that with the
fact that I’ve had awful food poisoning a few times in my life and I end up
tossing food out that’s probably still fine to eat, but I just don’t want to
risk it.

~~~
MichaelApproved
Did you get food poisoning from home cooked food or when you were eating out?

Find the pattern and avoid those situations. There's no need to be wasteful by
blindly following those arbitrary dates.

It's usually easy to tell when most food has spoiled by smelling or examining
it. Another important aspect is making sure the food is cooked thoroughly.

~~~
DanBC
> It's usually easy to tell when most food has spoiled by smelling or
> examining it.

Buy 100 fresh chickens from the supermarket. Then tell me which ones are
contaminated with campylobacter just by smelling them. You can't.

You can't.

All smell tells you is when the food is rotting, but no-one eats rotting food
because it smells foul and because it tastes foul.

People get food poisoning because pathogens often are not detectable by smell
or taste.

~~~
NLips
It disingenuous to ignore the parent's very next sentence, which recommends
cooking food properly. It's estimated that the majority of raw chicken sold in
the UK carries campylobacter, and a major factor in making sure it doesn't
poison you is cooking the chicken through. No one is recommending eating raw
meat and using your nose to tell whether that's OK.

~~~
DanBC
Let's use reheated rice instead of chicken.

Cook rice. Chill the rice. Store it correctly. Reheat it thoroughly.

Sniff it at every stage.

Can you smell the bacillus cereus, can you smell the toxins they produce? The
toxins are not destroyed by heat from cooking, and this is a very common form
of food poisoning.

Stop telling people they can smell food poisoning. They can't.

> It disingenuous to ignore the parent's very next sentence,

No, because parent poster is talking about ignoring the "arbitrary" food
safety dates. If you ignore the date you significantly increase the risk of
food poisoning, and not all of those are fixed by thorough cooking.

For many people food poisoning might be a few days of unpleasant illness, but
we need to remember that it can also be a life-changing illness.

~~~
OJFord
> No, because parent poster is talking about ignoring the "arbitrary" food
> safety dates.

Most of what I buy has a 'best before end' (BBE) date, not a 'use by', which
is not a 'food safety date'.

Many supermarkets in the UK are removing BBE dates from vegetables because of
exactly this issue (and as discussed in the article) - people blindly chucking
food that's fine because the date is yesterday's.

------
kuon
It took me (us as we are a family now) to get a good system to manage food.

With a few exceptions, like going on vacation, I never throw away meat or
fish, it's not that hard to manage, if I don't eat it within 1-3 days, I
either freeze it, salt it or boil it. What you can do with what product
requires a bit of experience, for example chicken must be boiled, pork and
fish can be salted...

It's much harder with vegetables, because they are not all equal, you might
keep an egg plant for a month and another one for a week. I highly recommend
fridges with a vegetable compartment that monitor humidity and keep
temperature just above 0°C, you can keep a salad in good condition for weeks
in it.

For milk derived product, I think the date on the product is a big culprit
here. You can eat yogurt weeks after the "best by" date. Same for cheese. The
good thing is that it's easy to tell if a yogurt or cheese has turned bad. For
cheese we don't eat quickly, I use a vacuum pump with a hard container. There
are also some little tricks like putting old yogurt in front at the height of
the kids.

------
mixmastamyk
We have little to no food waste. Here’s what we do:

\- Wait until the food is 90+% gone before going to the grocery again. On the
last day we might eat out once.

\- Eat fresh food first, frozen/canned last.

\- lots of containers for leftovers, they get gobbled in 24-48 hours.

\- Walk to the local market when a few in demand items run out, like bananas,
baby spinach, or coconut/almond milk.

------
leejoramo
For my family, the simple trick of getting a smaller fridge cut down on food
waste. This has worked great, even though, we are avid cooks who almost always
make meals from scratch.

~~~
specialist
+1 smaller fridge

Changing how I eat greatly reduced my food waste.

Now eating a lot of bulk foods with high soluble fiber. Porridge, beans,
lentils, seeds. Instapot for the win. Uncooked (dry) stores very well.

All my excess produce goes into smoothies, also greatly reducing my waste.

------
k__
This doesn't surprise me when I see how big the fridges in the US are.

~~~
bobthechef
I’m not sure why you were downvoted. In my experience, one reason why food
goes to waste is because the further it travels back to the fridge the more
likely it is to be forgotten. Of course, that isn’t the only reason and that
process seems to be biased toward certain kinds of foods. Worth examining,
though. Perhaps shallower fridges make sense.

------
davidw
It's like that joke: saving leftovers makes you feel good twice; once when you
put them away, and the next time when you pull them out and realize you dodged
a bullet by not eating them.

My wife certainly treats the fridge like 'write only media' at times.

------
antidaily
I've figured out meats. I can vacuum-seal, freeze and throw right into sous
vide. Veggies and especially fruit have to be eaten almost immediately or they
go bad (mold). I eat a lot of zucchini and carrots because they'll keep a
while.

~~~
MichaelApproved
> _Veggies and especially fruit have to be eaten almost immediately or they go
> bad (mold)._

That seems like an exaggeration or maybe you're not storing them correctly.
What do you buy and how do you store it that won't last several days to a
week?

~~~
jerkstate
Mold is a common problem for small soft fruit that come in plastic clamshells,
like blueberries and raspberries. Often it has a little mold right from the
store. I try to wash these in water with a some white vinegar as soon as I get
home from the grocery store and then right in the fridge.

~~~
MichaelApproved
And they last for several days in the refrigerator, right?

~~~
jerkstate
There can definitely be too much mold to eat right when you open it. You can
usually return it, but for a couple of bucks it's a hassle. And if you don't
wash it right away, even a small amount of mold will grow to more than you
want to try to wash/cut off in a couple of days.

I buy and eat a lot of fruit and my experience agrees with OPs, at least in
some cases.

~~~
MichaelApproved
> at least in some cases.

So most of the time, fruits and vegetables keep for days and don't have to be
eaten immediately, right?

I'm being not picky because this is a conversation in a thread about how
people throw out a lot of food. That waste is due, in part, to false sense of
spoilage and OP was furthering that false sense.

------
tmaly
I try to batch cook 1-2 large meals that everyone in the family likes. This
lessens the likely hood that food would be wasted.

I have also made it a habit of freezing half the meet or seafood when I buy in
larger quantities. It is good to label when you freeze something as there is
still a shelf life.

I remember several years back there was a post on HN about a food expiration
database that showed true dates food was good until. Many times the sell by
date is not the same as the good until date.

------
Wowfunhappy
I live by myself and I eat very little. When I have to throwaway food, it's
often because I wasn't able to purchase small enough portions in the first
place.

One example is eggs. They only stay good for 2–3 weeks, and I can't buy less
than a half dozen. If I decide to make pancakes one morning (which I do
occasionally, but rarely), that's one egg. I'll maybe find a use for one or
two more before the batch goes bad. :(

~~~
dredmorbius
Perhaps buy a smaller variety of foods, and make more items from from those,
especially basic scratch items such as eggs.

Boiled or scrambled eggs are a fast easy meal, and can be made in units of 1.

My solution generally is to have standard stock meals and buy for those. There
can be variety, though it's around the basics. And eating within a range
rarely proves fatal.

------
bash-j
Maybe supermarkets and their suppliers could stop selling bulk quantities at a
huge discount? You can sometimes be paying double the price per kilo for the
smallest packet, so you end up picking up the bigger packet thinking you're
saving money, but how much will end up spoiling before you get around to using
it? Supermarkets also often have specials where if you buy multiple packets
you save a few dollars.

------
vallismortis
A lot of produce is already molding by the time it gets to the shelves, it
just isn't visible to the consumer. I would love to see that problem fixed.

------
nrjames
Good thing my parents keep it around and eat it anyhow. My dad once made me a
sandwich with mayo that had "expired" nine years earlier.

~~~
mikelyons
What's wrong with eating 9 year old mayonnaise?

~~~
nrjames
It was kind of crystalized and ew.... I just shudder thinking about it. To the
point of the article, however, I didn't get sick.

------
vnorilo
While thinking about this I feel most of my fridge graveyard is because I'd
rather eat something else.

That's horribly entitled and now I feel bad.

------
danans
A basic traditional trick to minimize waste is to repurpose yesterday's
leftovers into today's entree. Nearly every culture has a version of this,
from Asian fried rice to American casserole.

------
mensetmanusman
Instacart has helped our family because we can have 2-3 deliveries a week with
fresh produce. Before, it was such a hassle to bring kids <5 yrs old shopping
that we would stock up...

------
spodek
Restore home economics to school, along with reasonable lunch time and recess.

People think packaged food is more convenient or cheaper. Cooking from scratch
isn't more expensive or time consuming. _Not knowing how to cook and shop_ is
expensive and time consuming.

Here's a great guideline for "best by" and other dates: if the product has
one, _don 't buy it_. I don't think I've bought a product with one in several
years.

~~~
phonypc
> _Here 's a great guideline for "best by" and other dates: if the product has
> one, don't buy it. I don't think I've bought a product with one in several
> years._

This doesn't make sense to me unless our locales differ greatly in labelling
practices. Virtually everything but fresh produce comes with a date. Even
independent butcher shops close the wrapping paper with a date sticker.

~~~
spodek
I challenged myself to avoid packaged food for a week. It went so well that I
continued, in the process learning to cook from scratch.

I was surprised to learn that it took less time, cost less, tasted better, and
led me to see packaged food as unnecessary.

I wrote a bunch of posts on it since I felt my ignorance and inexperience kept
me from a better life and wanted to make the experience available to others
[http://joshuaspodek.com/avoiding-food-
packaging-2](http://joshuaspodek.com/avoiding-food-packaging-2)

------
edoo
I was raised on the concept that we are lucky to have an abundance of food and
that there are people going hungry in the world. In my house almost no food
goes to waste. I would feel like a scumbag if I was throwing out food.

------
juskrey
Much of the vaccines storages are going to die and are regularly replaced just
to die again, but if you keep highly optimized storage just for current
purposes, you are screwed big time in the case of outbreak.

Same here.

~~~
pjc50
How does that analogy work? You're keeping your fridge overstocked in case of
an outbreak of .. hunger? Unexpected guests?

