Anne Murray: What to eat—a consuming problem

Food loss during harvesting and processing occurs worldwide, while food waste by retailers and consumers is mainly an issue for industrialized countries. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s 2011 report Global Food Losses and Food Waste, the average western consumer throws away 100 kilograms of edible food per year, a total of 222 million tonnes a year. This is about 30 percent of all the food purchased, worth US$48.3 billion. Overall, a staggering one billion tonnes of the world’s food is wasted every year!

Not only is this an issue of wasted food, which could have been more equitably shared among the world’s poor, but it also signals a huge loss of environmental resources, particularly water. As the International Water Management Institute points out: “Tossing food away is like leaving the tap running”. Access to fresh water is increasingly the limiting factor for global agriculture, a deteriorating situation in a warming world. Food waste rotting in landfills generates methane, a potent climate-change gas. Industrial-scale agriculture is responsible for the widespread presence of pesticides in the environment. Populations of Canada’s insect-eating birds, that migrate south for the winter, are suffering rapid declines almost certainly linked to widespread pesticide use and the destruction of forest habitat for agriculture. Much of the interest in organic produce stems from people’s concern about the prevalence of toxic chemicals in their diet.

There is not a one-size-fits-all solution to food waste. Fridges break down, plans change, we get carried away by the lure of “buy one, get one free” offers. A shortage of time in highly-stressed daily lives; ideological mindsets that abhor the parsimonious, skinflint approach to life; and inherited cultural values all affect our choices regarding food purchases and food waste. Yet the provisioning, preparation and consumption of food is a daily occupation for all of us, in some form or other. Choosing what food we eat is a democratic, independent act: we can affect how our local, regional, and global landscapes develop and what ecological and environmental impacts occur. As consumers, we are powerful, and there is a growing economic impact that cannot be ignored.

With that in mind, I offer here a few more thoughts on food waste and food choices, as I restock my refrigerator.

Avoid waste

Much of the food that gets thrown away is still in its wrappers. Some tips from World Vision Canada on avoiding waste include: think before you shop, store food safely to keep it fresh, prepare leftovers properly, and freeze what you do not plan to eat. Either have a compost bin or use your municipality’s composting services. (This can be a challenge for apartment owners, but not all options are possible for everyone.)

The question of cost

There are some parts of Canada where buying fresh fruits and vegetables is a huge expense, but for most of us living in the south, carrots, potatoes, onions, and other staples are cheap. So cheap that it is hardly worth the price for farmers to grow them, and as a result, many hectares of farmland are paved over every year. Eating fresh food in season and preparing it oneself is an inexpensive way of feeding a family. To reduce waste, one can buy higher quality food but less of it. It will be delicious and every scrap will be eaten.

Eating lower down the food chain

The rearing of beef cattle is associated with environmental degradation, water demands, and methane emissions. Meat can be expensive, especially if one buys organic. Frances Lappé’s 1971 book Diet for a Small Planet was among the first to advocate eating less meat and more grains, fruits, and vegetables, as a means towards sustainability.

Organic foods: are they healthier?

Canadian organic standards are among the best in the world. Sales of organic food in Canada in 2010 were $2.6 billion and growing, and yields are increasing. People choose organic food because of taste preferences and concerns about family health, the treatment of farm animals, or the environment. Pesticides have associations with cancer and conditions such as Parkinson’s disease. The prophylactic use of antibiotics in the meat industry has been linked with the rise in antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Although a recent Stanford University meta-analysis found organic food to be no more nutritious than conventional foods, that conclusion is controversial. The analysis looked at a couple of hundred very-short-term studies, and while nutrient levels appeared to be equivalent in conventional and organic foods, pesticide residues were considerably lower in organics. According to the authors, “there have been no long term studies of health outcomes for people consuming organic versus conventionally-produced food.”

Buy local, support our farmers

Whether organic or not, most local B.C. farms produce fresh food of high quality. Supporting open field agriculture has a profound effect on the environment in the ecologically important Fraser delta. The farmland south of Vancouver supports millions of migrating and wintering birds, including snow geese from Russia, shorebirds from South America, and ducks from across the Canadian prairies. These birds depend on fields that grow food crops for the rest of the year. When farms are sold for industrial and urban developments, or criss-crossed by truck highways, we not only lose the capacity to grow food locally, but we put at risk whole populations of birds migrating on the Pacific Flyway. Conservation stewardship, such as the winter cover crop programs of the Delta Farmland and Wildlife Trust, benefits farmers and birds.

Grow a garden

Nothing beats eating super-fresh food grown within steps of one’s kitchen. We need an eco-solution to caterpillars in the cauliflower though.

Bird-friendly, shade-grown coffee

Products that we import from other countries have a significant effect on the ecology and sustainability of people’s livelihoods around the world. There are many thoughtful ways to support both wildlife and humans when making choices at the supermarket.

Anne Murray is a writer and naturalist, and the author of two books on the natural history of Boundary Bay—Tracing Our Past: A Heritage Guide to Boundary Bay and A Nature Guide to Boundary Bay—both available at bookstores and from Nature Guides B.C. She blogs at natureguidesbc.wordpress.com.