Average American sees 50% waste of food, what is it like on your homestead?

[seedspreader]

Half of US food goes to the dump!

So what would be the rate on a viable homestead do you think? How much food do you loose or waste?

[comfortablynumb]

heck I dont waste a mouthfull... even the dogs have to convince me to give up my last plate scrape.

I reheat 2 day old coffee.... I am a hopeless tightwad.

[tinknal]

Depends on how you describe "waste". I recently had a freezer poop out. Didn't catch it right away. Lost 200 lbs of meat. I boiled the meat in my turkey scalder and have been feeding it to ducks, chickens, turkeys and dogs for the last 3 weeks. Is this waste? All our household scraps go back to our animals, all who produce more food, except for the dogs.

[Vera]

I very rarely have leftovers (*eats like a hog*). Everything edible that's not fit for human consumption goes to the chickens or rabbits, and if they don't eat it, the compost gets it. No food waste here

[seedspreader]

Originally Posted by tinknal

Depends on how you describe "waste". I recently had a freezer poop out. Didn't catch it right away. Lost 200 lbs of meat. I boiled the meat in my turkey scalder and have been feeding it to ducks, chickens, turkeys and dogs for the last 3 weeks. Is this waste? All our household scraps go back to our animals, all who produce more food, except for the dogs.

I would say food that goes to the dump is a waste...

[Quint]

From working in the restaurant biz as a teenager I can attest to massive waste of food from the restaurant itself and probably more so from the diners.

I'm pretty frugal with food so I would say very little goes to waste in my house unless it is truly inedible. Wasting food was seriously frowned on in my house growing up and it rubbed off. Due to spoilage and whatnot maybe 5-10% but probably less.

[tinknal]

I guess since the dogs protect my birds from vermin I could say that they produce food too, in a way.

[FrankTheTank]

If I waste anything its because it was rotten, spoiled, or moldy...I then compost it or feed it to the local crow population...figure they'll turn it into a natural fertilizer...

Its sickening to see all that waste...

[michelleIL]

I would have to say that when I cook, I waste quite a bit, so I don't cook very often. I work in a place that gives free food, but that gets old quickly, plus it isn't beneficial to me health wise. If I had a compost pile, or animals to feed things would be much diffrent though.

[MorrisonCorner]

One of the BIG stressors in my life is that cheap meat comes in big packages. If I break the packages down with ziploc bags, the bags add to the cost of the meat, making it much less of a bargain. And we don't have a whole lot of tupperware (no anyplace to store it).

So I defrost this huge package of chicken... and now I have to use it up, with two people, before it spoils. If I do meal after meal of chicken, the DH rebels (heck, even I get sick of it).

So I end up having panic attacks at the end of the week that the last of the package will spoil before I get to it.

But fruits and vegis that aren't quite up to snuff I can turn into soup or sauce... peelings and cores go to the chickens...

I can sure see why the government encouraged people to keep a pig during WW2. I'm sure it was an eye openner to some people how much "extra" they had at the end of the day.

[diane]

MC.....the good quality ziplock bags can be used over and over again.

Nothing gets wasted here......as those above have said, with all the critters what very little food doesn't get eaten at the table feeds something else.

It use to be that those diners etc. in town could scrape that waste into barrels and us folks that had pigs could pick it up and feed it. Those days are gone because of some legislation regarding the dangers of feeding waste to hogs or something.

[Terri]

For me, it depends how you define "food". I don't use quite a bit that is technically edible, like beet tops and onion tops.

I don't waste much else, though. I go through my fridge about weekly, and if we don't eat it the chickens will. Weather permitting. I won't go through a blizzard to give the chickens a tablespoon of macaroni. A bowlfull, maybe. But not a tablespoon full.

I am not a fanatic about it: I just see the uneaten food as free chicken food.

[gilberte]

Nothing wasted here, even bones (after they've gone through the stock making process) are burned and dumped in the garden. Can't remember when we ever threw out a scrap.

MC, break down and get that Food Saver

[Ravenlost]

Originally Posted by MorrisonCorner

One of the BIG stressors in my life is that cheap meat comes in big packages. If I break the packages down with ziploc bags, the bags add to the cost of the meat, making it much less of a bargain. And we don't have a whole lot of tupperware (no anyplace to store it).

So I defrost this huge package of chicken... and now I have to use it up, with two people, before it spoils. If I do meal after meal of chicken, the DH rebels (heck, even I get sick of it).

So I end up having panic attacks at the end of the week that the last of the package will spoil before I get to it.

But fruits and vegis that aren't quite up to snuff I can turn into soup or sauce... peelings and cores go to the chickens...

I can sure see why the government encouraged people to keep a pig during WW2. I'm sure it was an eye openner to some people how much "extra" they had at the end of the day.

Ummm...wouldn't using a ziploc bag be more thrifty than having spoiled meat? And you can wash out and reuse the bags, making them more economical.

[sisterpine]

Greetings from Montana: I am with most and feed all scraps and leftovers to the dogs , chickens, compost pile . With the exception of chicken carcasses (dont make soup yet) they go into the wood stove so the dogs will not get into them!

[BobBoyce]

Like many have said, nothing here goes to waste. It took a little while at first to get DW used to the idea of saving all food scraps for the livestock. If it's something they can't eat as is, I'll process it (cut, grind, pulverize) to make it edible for them. Even eggshells get pulverized and fed back to the chickens as free choice calcium.

I even try to reuse cans and jars for other projects. If only I had the equiptment to smelt cans into usable metals... I'll have to ponder that one a bit.

Bob

[MorrisonCorner]

Originally Posted by Ravenlost

Ummm...wouldn't using a ziploc bag be more thrifty than having spoiled meat? And you can wash out and reuse the bags, making them more economical.

:haha: Yea, it probably would be... but I don't lose any of my meat. I just stress over it all over the place! Worst case scenerio it gets turned into soup. I can put a whole pot of soup in my chest freezer. Stuff that is getting into that "gray area" gets souped, and poured on top of the last batch that got souped, until I have a whole pot (big pot) which then comes out of the freezer and forms the basis for..

A whole lot of soup. Well... isn't this what friends are for? To help you eat big pots of soup?

Anyhow, if this is terribly unsanitary, don't tell me. I've been doing it for years and nobody has died yet!

[Beeman]

Obviously on a homesteading board you are going to get a majority of people that use every last drop of everything. If you look around at the majority of the country they in no way have that mentality. Todays people living in so called poverty are extremely wasteful.
Someone mentioned the food restaurants waste. With all of the restaurants you see it makes you wonder what percentage of peoples meals are consumed at restaurants instead of at home.

[seedspreader]

Good question, I know that when I was involved in the rat race office job, that we ate out a lot, at least one or two meals a week and we were looked at as old-fashioned by some in my office because we didn't eat out "that often"... LOL

But here is something to think about, after spending a couple weeks in the mountains of south-central Mexico (the most remote location I have ever been to) and then in the city of Tepic, I wonder if much of our waste in America isn't due to packaging and health laws that have gotten out of control. In Mexico you could buy a liter of milk (just the amount you would need or use) in a sealed plastic bag, that's it, no box, carton, jug around it and the price was the same per liter whether you bought just one or the bigger 3 or 4 liter bags.

Packaging is so disposable now that we just throw everything away and don't reuse it. The mentality continues to our food. I like the days when I was younger and they used to charge a deposit on a pop bottle, and you got the money back when you brought the bottle back. Then those who were wasteful still could be, but those who were frugal could make a buck or two collecting bottles.

I am as guilty as we all are in America, and I want to change that, not because I have to or because I believe we are destroying the earth, but because it is the responsible and right thing to do.

[All country]

We try not to be wasteful, but I refuse to serve questionable food to my family. I have a fear of everybody getting sick because of something I fed them. I'm known as a good cook and would like to keep my reputation. I will not allow my family to eat anything that's been in the refrigerator over 3 days. If it's something they like it's usually gone by day two. I do freeze a lot of leftovers for later meals. The 3 day rule does not apply to frozen food.
I clean out the refrigerator weekly. I usually have a small 3 qt. bucket full of scraps that go out to the animals. I don't really conceder it a waste because it goes to the animals that feed us. I figure that with the stuff animals get into it won't kill them. Chickens and pigs can eat just about anything. They come running when they see us with the bucket.
Dogs get the meat and bone scraps.