Wasting Food

A conservative commentator at the National Review looked at a privately funded soup kitchen that spends its money wisely and concluded that offering gourmet meals to poor people is a waste of food.

As noted at the DailyKos discussion in Calouste's diary, most of the food was made from relatively inexpensive raw ingredients. Garlic is delicious, true, but it doesn't cost $100 an ounce. Indeed, the idea that tasty food had ought to be an expensive preserve of the wealthy is downright pernicious.

When Sharon Gruber from Bread for the City talked about the cooking and nutrition classes she holds for low income families, she made clear that many of the disease of poverty are diseases of malnutrition, even in the unhealthfully overweight. Making sure that people in need of food aid can get fresh, whole foods as ingredients, and also have a few ideas about what to do with them, does a lot to improve quality of life and lower costs of living.

And when it seems as if everyone and their brother has forgotten what food is, we could all stand some reminding, even if we don't qualify for food assistance.

Less meat, less junk, more plants. Eat food. Eat real food. - Mark Bittman

The real waste of food, I think, is the production of what's essentially poison from healthful, raw foods. Food like meat, we don't need that much of. Food like grain actually needs to have a lot done to it to make it unhealthy - with the grain that makes it into most junk food having been husked, de-branned, ground and bleached, it can seem like a wonder that people look at you funny for asking that less be done to it before eating.

So, waste. It's surely unecessary insulin and heart medication, pain medication taken for joints that are needlessly over-compressed, greenhouse gas emissions that didn't have to be and things we never needed at all, like chese puffs.

By contrast, I don't think healthy food eaten in reasonable amounts can ever be considered wasted.