24°
The guilt of throwing away old food
Orange you glad I didn't say banana?
3:00 am Feb 3 - by Clair McInnis – Buzz writer
I have a problem. Currently on my kitchen counter there are four half-bad oranges.
When I bought the whole bag of oranges, I intended to eat all that I could and turn the rest into juice before they rotted. I forgot about my intentions, however, and the four remaining oranges torture me daily. I can’t stand to waste food. I hate thinking about the time when I will toss them in the trash can.
Actually, the nutritional value of the food wasted is directly proportional to how bad I feel about throwing it away. Give me a bag of stale potato chips and I’ll chuck them without a second thought. But when it comes to something like oranges, wholesome fruit that could have gone to an impoverished person who gets most of his meals from a can, I feel sickening remorse.
I think there are two reasons as to why I am torn apart about wasting food. The first is my mother. While I was growing up, Connie could always find a use for the food in our house that needed to be eaten before it went bad. Now that I fix my own meals, I find it remarkable that the woman was able to use the food she had lying around to create such delicious meals. Connie avoided waste at all costs.
The other reason is that I know extreme poverty exists. I know that starvation is rampant not only in Africa and various developing countries, but that people are hungry in the United States and even central Illinois. How can I buy groceries (with food prices on the rise) and allow vegetables to rot when there is someone who needs the nutrition in my own back yard?
I know my obsession with the fate of four oranges makes me seem a little fanatical, but I can’t excuse careless waste. Just because I am lucky enough to be able to buy more oranges doesn’t give me the right to squander what I have.
Nikki (Nikki Blight) said on Feb. 4, 2008 at 10:37 am:
Fruit, I'm pretty good with as far as not letting it go to waste. If it starts to go, most of it makes for good muffins and/or pancakes, if nothing else (it's resulted in some odd recipes... pineapple muffins were surprisingly tasty, though...).
Meat, on the other hand... I can never tell if it's still good or not, and I'm too paranoid to risk finding out if it's been in the fridge more than a week. And as I come from a family of cheapskates, I hate wasting money on things that don't get eaten.