Put your money where your mouth is.
Facts about food related subjects
Gas in Your Refridgerator?
According to a U.S. Department of Agriculture study, most of the 28 billion pounds of food Americans throw away annually is comprised of fresh fruit and vegetables. Many times, they go bad before there's a chance to use them.
When fruits and vegetables ripen, many of them release a colorless, odorless gas called ethylene. This gas causes other fruits and veggies to ripen, leading to a shorter life span. You can control the ripening process by separating ethylene producers from ethylene sensitive fruits and vegetables.
Fruits such as:
- apples
- avocados
- ripe bananas
- cantaloupes
- nectarines
- peaches
- pears
- tomatoes
are the biggest producers of ethylene.
Vegetables such as:
- broccoli
- cabbage
- carrots
- cauliflower
- cucumbers
- green beans
- lettuce
- peppers
- spinach
are generally more ethylene sensitive.
These two simple steps will help you extend the life of your fruits and vegetables:
First, keep fruits and vegetables separated.
Second, don't store ripened and unripened produce together.
If you're looking for a higher tech solution, there is a new product called "Extra Life", which contains a compound that oxidizes ethylene gas, slowing it's aging affect on produce. Each green disk lasts about three months, is non-toxic and can be placed in the produce drawer in your refridgerator. Ask about "Extra Life" at your supermarket.
Kids Shop and Compare
at Model Supermarket
The model Supermarket is a learning kit that gives students a chance to go shopping for articles they might purchase in a grocery store. Students are given a card to read with the purpose of their shopping trip. Each card presents a situation that requires shopping at a grocery store. Many of the situations are funny. They show the kids how silly it is that we pay extra for things like having tissues folded into tiny travel-pack squares.
Here's an example of what a card might ask.
The student may be told that a teacher is comming to their house for desert and coffee. They are asked to decide what they should buy for desert.
The choices may include:
- A chocolate cake mix yielding 24 cupcakes, costing $1.00, packaged in a 100% recycled box board box, or
- A chocolate cupcake microwavable product yielding 8 cupcakes, costing 2.30, packaged in a white backboard box with a recycled fiber sleeve and including a plastic measuring cup and eight foil cupcake papers.
Students are encouraged to evaluate the price per unit. They are also encouraged to look at the amount of waste created by each alternative. Thus, it is a lesson in comparison on at least two levels-cost and waste. More processing and more packaging usually result in more waste and more money.
Besides the immediate impacts, the students also discuss costs of transportation for products and trash disposal, landfill development, and maintenance and monitoring of closed landfills. This gives the student a true picture of what a product costs.
Compost
Be-Aware
While we encourage residents to compost as much organic material from yards and gardens as possible, some items just don't belong in a compost pile. For instance meat scraps and dairy products should never be placed in a compost pile.
Meat scraps, dairy products and grease, even when buried in the middle of a compost pile, attract pets as well as rodents. Pets, especially dogs, that dig through a compost pile in search of meat, cheese, or other items are susceptible to a disease called "Garbage Gut". Garbage Gut results when meat eating animals ingest partially decomposed items from trash containers or compost piles. These partially decomposed meat scraps, or dairy products contain toxins that can cause severe vomiting, diarrhea, dehydration and, in some cases, even death. So keep meat scraps, dairy products and grease out of your backyard compost pile!
Remember that kitchen vegetable scraps, grains, coffee grounds and teabags with the staples removed are compostable in a covered container, in a vermicompost bin or your backyard compost pile with your yard trimming. If you vegetable scraps, grains or grounds in your backyard compost pile don't dump and run. Instead, dig a small hole in the compost, bury the scrap mixture and cover it with at least 6 to 12 inches of partially composted yard trimmings, straw or garden soil. Burying the scrap mixture will keep flies and rodents away from your pile.
"Clean your plate.""
We've all heard that phrase, but were we listening? A report from the U.S.Department of Agriculture shows that Americans throw 28 billion pounds of food in the trash each year. On top of that, other food, such as fruits and vegetables, are pitched before we even see it, if it's not as good looking as consumers demand. All of this waste leads to more trash and more land filling. We have some helpful tips to reduce food waste this year.
- Make a grocery list based on what you need. Without one, you may but more of what you already have.
- Buy perishable foods in smaller quantities, so you will use them before they go to waste.
- Save your leftovers in airtight containers, so they last as long as possible.
- Label leftovers well, and keep them visible in the fridge so they won't be forgotten.
- If foods such as fruits, vegetables or breads do go bad, compost them. That way they can decompose naturally.
- After a trip to the grocery store, choose recipes using perishable foods first.
- Eat before you shop. A hungry stomach can mean an empty wallet and wasted food later.
- Store ripened produce away from unripened produce. Ripened items cause others to go bad faster.
- When freezing meats like chicken, place pieces or servings in seperate freezer containers, so you won't defrost more than you need.
- Check out some cookbooks on preparing leftover
Special thanks to Ecopartners Inc.
And the Ontario Co. branch of the
Cornell Cooperative Extension in
Canandaigua New York
for allowing me to reprint their Quarterly NewsLetter
distributed for Ontario County Dept. of Solid Waste Management.
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