Food Safety & Policy | The Rambling Epicure

France: How Reducing Food Waste is Part of Fighting Hunger

Published by Jonell Galloway + Tuesday, July 30, 2013 Permalink 0

France: How Reducing Food Waste is Part of Fighting Hunger

An initiative on the part of the French Ministry of Agriculture creates a link between professionals from the agrifood sector and public charities with the aim of reducing food waste and fighting hunger. It is referred to as the French National Pact against Food Waste.

A practical example: the “donation market”

The “donation market” is an initiative from the French Ministry of Agriculture to create a link between professionals from the agrifood sector and public charities. This idea arose out of the fact that professionals and charitable associations both have difficulty finding contacts, and don’t have time to give away food for free or find donors, says the French government. This public Internet platform responds to these difficulties and is easy to implement. Donors propose the kind of donation they want to make as well as its conditions of use and its transportation on the platform itself. As soon as it is posted on the Internet, all potential “receivers” are alerted by e-mail and can accept it. Donors can propose either food, equipment, transportation or knowledge on the platform.

As well as helping connect people and fighting hunger, this platform is also a way of reducing food waste, as it encourages people to give food rather than to throw it away and to offer extra room in transportation, for example.

Origin of Food Waste and Means of Action

In their Agrimonde and Dualine projects, French researchers from CIRAD, the French Agricultural Research for Development, and INRA, the French National Institute for Agricultural Research, examined possible systems of production and supply to feed the world in 2050. According to them, feeding 9 billion people by 2050 is possible so long as we:

increase yield in a sustainable way
reduce waste from field to fork
manage to change our food habits

They insist on the fact that wasting food also means wasting the energy, soil and water used to produce it, and will in turn be used to destroy the waste. Researchers also make a distinction between food loss, which occurs during the early stage of production (just after the harvest, during the first storage, transport, and first transformation) and which mostly concerns poor countries, and food waste, which is due to consumption habits (at home, in restaurants) or mismanagement of storage in the retail sector. Food waste mostly concerns rich countries. Food waste and food loss of course require different solutions.

To reduce food waste by 50% before 2025, the European Commission has proposed guidelines to Member States:

to educate people
to encourage better labeling and packaging
to ask Member States to favor partnership with responsible catering companies

Examples are also provided, such as:

to produce a new “sell-by date” label
to encourage new sizes of packaging for better preservation of products
to teach children good practices for proper use of food

Key Data

In the European Union, food waste comes from:

42% from domestic use
39% from the food-industry
5% from retailers
14% from the catering sector
every individual wastes 394 lbs. per year
89 million metric tons of food are wasted each year in the 27 countries of the EU

To learn more about this subject, here is the French National Pact against Food Waste.

Based on press release from the French Ministry of Agriculture

A Look At The Devastating Effects Of Food Waste [Video]
Food: from farm to fork and also waste.
World Wastes Half Its Food – Study Finds
U.N. launches campaign to combat food waste
Food industry criticised over waste

Culinary Chemistry: The Truth about Soy Sauce and Gluten Content

Published by Jonell Galloway + Tuesday, July 23, 2013 Permalink 0

Jenn Oliver, culinary scientist and gluten-free GF specialist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED (C)

Food writer, Culinary Chemistry, The Rambling Epicure

Culinary Chemistry: The Truth about Soy Sauce and Gluten Content

by Jenn Oliver

From the archives

Soy Sauce and Umami: Now a Staple in Western Cuisine

Soy sauce has been around as a staple condiment in Asian cuisine for thousands of years, used for flavoring all manner of dishes and foods. It’s prized for the “umami” character it gives to the overall taste of a dish, and can have a wide range of subtle notes beyond the obvious saltiness.

For example, Japanese tamari is often wheat free (I stress, not always). Still, most of the soy sauces available on store shelves contain wheat. While there is some debate as to exactly how much gluten from wheat survives the fermentation and processing, the Celiac Disease Foundation Foundation does list soy sauce as a food that may contain gluten and needs to be verified. The Mayo Clinic also states that soy sauce should be avoided unless otherwise labeled. There is also considerable anecdotal evidence of experiences of people being “glutened” by soy sauce (my husband included). Therefore, for those who must eat gluten free, soy sauce immediately becomes a food that requires attention and is a complicated topic.

New Food Vocabulary: What’s a Foodalanche?

Published by Jonell Galloway + Thursday, May 30, 2013 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

Foodalanches and Properly Packed Fridges / Food Storage

There’s nothing more amusing than looking up outlandish words and definitions about food (or other subjects) on the Urban Dictionary site.

Today’s word is “foodalanche,” meaning “an occurrence during the process of opening a fridge or similar container and having all the food fall on top of you.”

A properly packed fridge allows circulation of cold air around every article

Who amongst us hasn’t been guilty of filling the refrigerator so full that when we open the door, everything comes tumbling out like an avalanche? Just the vibration and movement caused by the opening of the door causes all those tightly packed goodies to come plunging forth into a pile on the kitchen floor, leaving broken jars, burst packages, and milk splashing onto our shoes and clothes. And then there’s the mess to clean up, of course…

An overpacked fridge like this does not allow circulation of cold air around articles, so cooling is inefficient. It also causes foodalanches!

It is important to realize that simple physics tells us that food doesn’t cool properly when it doesn’t have air around it, since the refrigerator cools the air, and the air in turn cools the food. But does that mean we’re not guilty of it?

Example of usage of the word

foodalanche:

Here we go again. There were so many beautiful fruits and vegetables at the farmers market today that I just couldn’t avoid buying them, so when I opened the door, there was a real foodalanche! (Yes, that’s really me talking.)

Daily Food Quote: Mahatma Gandhi on Hunger and Eating

Published by Jonell Galloway + Friday, May 24, 2013 Permalink 0

Daily Food Quote: Mahatma Gandhi on Hunger and Eating

There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.–Mahatma Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, more commonly known as “Mahatma Gandhi,” was born on October 2, 1869, in Porbandar, India. He studied law and became a defender of Indian rights both in India and South Africa, where he lived and worked for some 20 years. His method of opposing British rule and treatment was through mass non-violent civil disobedience, which has made him a model for peaceful revolution around the world.

Gandhi believed in living a simple life. He wove and made his own clothes, was a vegetarian and used traditional Indian fasts both for self-purification and protests against British discriminatory legislation against Indians. His philosophy of life and political “action” remain a beacon of hope for oppressed people around the world.

What we’re reading at The Rambling Epicure

Published by Jonell Galloway + Sunday, April 28, 2013 Permalink 0

Click here to catch up on your food-related reading for this week:

food art exhibit in Valencia, Spain
3 books more filling than food
is French cuisine a victim of its own success?
Monsanto doesn’t want you to know what you’re eating
can eating healthy actually save you money

and much more.

America is the only country to provide food aid in the form of food, says The New York Times

Published by Jonell Galloway + Sunday, April 28, 2013 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

Common sense might well tell you that it is more likely that the food really gets to the country in need of aid if you send it in the form of food and not dollars. According to more than 30 studies, the custom of “shipping food overseas in American-flagged vessels is inefficient, costly” and even harmful to the very communities the U.S. is trying to help. This information is supported by experts, who say this manner of distribution drives down the price of local produce by as much as fifty percent. The U.S. is the only country to give food aid in this manner, and Obama is proposing change that could matter.

Click here to read The New York Times editorial.

Official photographic portrait of U.S. President Barack

When Food Isn’t the Answer to Hunger
Barack Obama budget calls for sweeping overhaul of US food aid
Aid groups: US should send cash, not food, abroad
Documentary: Building a Slow Food Nation

Jonell Galloway: Mindful Eating: Farmers, the Land, and Local Economy

Published by Jonell Galloway + Monday, April 1, 2013 Permalink 0

Mindful Eating: Farmers, the Land, and Local Economy

by Jonell Galloway

Many times, after I have finished a lecture on the decline of American farming and rural life, someone in the audience has asked, “What can city people do?” “Eat responsibly,” I have usually answered. Of course, I have tried to explain what I mean by that, but afterwards I have invariably felt there was more to be said than I had been able to say. Now I would like to attempt a better explanation.

I begin with the proposition that eating is an agricultural act. Eating ends the annual drama of the food economy that begins with planting and birth. Most eaters, however, are no longer aware that this is true. They think of food as an agricultural product, perhaps, but they do not think of themselves as participants in agriculture. They think of themselves as “consumers.”

—Wendell Berry, The Pleasures of Eating, Center for Ecoliteracy

The Times They are a-Changin’: Move Towards a Local Economy

After a few very difficult years, we are now only starting to talk about the importance, and even necessity, of maintaining and supporting a local economy. This is important not only to our health and taste buds, but also to our vital economic self-sufficiency. It is perfectly in line with the concept of Mindful Eating, and, by definition, involves local farmers as well as others who contribute to eating and drinking.

Daily Food Quotes: Farm Philosophy from Wendell Berry

Published by Jonell Galloway + Sunday, March 24, 2013 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

For 50 or 60 years, we have let ourselves believe that as long as we have money we will have food. This is a mistake. If we continue our offenses against the land and the labor by which we are fed, the food supply will decline, and we will have a problem far more complex than the failure of our paper economy. The government will bring forth no food by providing hundreds of billions of dollars to the agribusiness corporations.

Wendell Berry, “in the op-ed piece he published with his old friend and collaborator Wes Jackson, shortly after the economy crashed in the fall of 2008.” (Michael Pollan, in introduction to Wendell Berry’s Bringing it to the Table: On Farming and Food).

Wendell Berry speaking in Frankfort, Indiana

Local vs. Non-local Food: The Arguments

Published by Jonell Galloway + Saturday, January 12, 2013 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

I think we got spoiled by eating cheap food from all over the world. That put us out of sync with nature and skewed the price of local produce and products vs. produce and products from distant places, leading us to waste what we once had held precious because it was seasonal and local and therefore rare. Slow Food USA and Josh Viertel were right in fighting for fair wages for our own farmers and trying to lead us back to a way of eating that is in line with nature, which of course means paying a little more, but improving our health and local economy.

There are many more arguments to be put forth. Let’s talk about it: the pros and cons, your experiences, your convictions, etc. We’d love to get a big discussion going here.

Click here to watch Building a Slow Food Nation, outlining the history of Slow Food in the U.S., and including Josh Viertel’s view.

Salone del Gusto versus Good, Clean, and Fair: Part 1

Published by Diana Zahuranec + Wednesday, December 12, 2012 Permalink 0

Salone del Gusto versus Good, Clean, and Fair: Part 1

by Diana Zahuranec

Salone del Gusto, an event held biannually in Turin, Italy by the organization Slow Food, gathers artisanal producers from around the world in five days of selling organic or biodynamic, high quality, artisanal, innovative and traditional products; tasting workshops; and conferences about the state of the world’s food system and what can be done to promote sustainable growth. It’s an amalgamation of the green movement and everything it could possibly stand for before such a thing as “green washing” existed.

So what were the Italian supermarket COOP, the internationally famous Italian espresso company Lavazza, and the ubiquitous road-side Italian convenience store Autogrill doing at the Salone?

A supermarket is the antithesis of Slow Food’s “good, clean, and fair” motto. Products are available at any quality, starting at “low” and often not reaching above “decent;” produce and packaged goods come from all over the world, with little thought as to what other countries deem as “safe” pesticides, and with less thought about the energy used to transport everything; and finally, it’s anyone’s guess as to how many products lining the shelves were made under unpleasant or dangerous working conditions with low wages as poor compensation.

Coffee beans are notorious for their high demand pitted against their low cost, possible only through unfair working conditions and wages. Coffee plants are harvested using mono-cropping methods, which is environmentally friendly only in the interests of that particular crop.