Wasting Food?

[cannabisprime]

Originally Posted by jackalprime

Im I crazy, or should I just adjust to this country's faux pas about eating unused food. Should I be ashamed of myself? Should I just adopt this culture of glutton?

1. No
2. No
3. No

I'm currently working for an airline catering company and I know all too well about wasted food unfortunately. Most of it has to do with HACCP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazard_Analysis_and_Critical_Control_Points) policies for food preparation and storage in general. I know that at work once food is taken out of the storage freezer, it has to be used within two days otherwise it's garbage time. Those sandwiches they now sell you everytime you fly? Yeah, unsold ones meet the garbage bin once the plane lands. Your meals get preheated prior to take off only to have your flight come back and get delayed? Heated meals = garbage.

[Track Attack]

I used to be one of those poor students living off cereal and ramen noodles. Seeing good food get tossed out made me feel bad then and still does.

[pud333]

Ugh. I just ate a whole Costco case of Yogurt this past week. It was going to go bad so I had to eat it all. I don't think I can be around Yogurt for a while...

[Protoman]

I worked at Burger King for a number of years during my youth and waste was just the name of the game. They would sooner throw out 50 Whoopers at the end of a shift before giving it away. But the crazy thing, is the same applied to toys. If a toy promotion didn't do well, they would check the whole CASE of toys into the dumpster and make way for the next promotion.

[TwinTwistR]

Yeah I had an employment stint at the golden arches quite a number of years ago. Between the government food safety standards and the "circle the wagons so we don't get sued" policy I saw enough food wasted to feed nearly an entire shelter each day.

It was sad then and even more so now with the economy being what it has been for the last couple years and shelters and food banks are really struggling to keep open.

[Cheers Ian]

On a side note, I used to work at a food distribution warehouse and one of my jobs was getting all the damaged food ready for the Food Bank truck to come pick it up.

There was TONS of perfectly good food that got donated simply because a box was crushed or someone had felt the need to crack open an entire case of something and steal one thing out of it.

So there is a lot of food NOT being wasted out there.

[Mega-Prime 316]

A few years back (about 15) I dated a girl that worked at Tim Hortons here. At the end of each shift they tossed out the day old donuts and pastery. I asked if they ever gave that stuff away and the manager said that they used to give it to the food banks, but they had complaints from the food banks saying that the food was day old and not very fresh, so the policy after that was to toss it away rather then deal with the complaints of the ungrateful.

I also work in the grocery business and the amount of stuff that gets tossed out everyday, I'm sure could feed a family of 4 quite easily. However the health and safety policies that are in place will not allow us to sell product that is below grade, or a dented can, or even vacuumed sealed meats ect with a good seal ,but close to the best before date has to tossed. I think some of it is for health and safety but there is also the customer base that will only buy the "reduced stuff" or the intentional damaging of goods to get it reduced is another factor.