Food waste

“ Make a second dietary for the same time and same number of people which shall give approximately the same amount of tissue and energy producing food from more expensive materials.
Food Waste in the Kitchen.—Much loss occurs in the improper cooking of foods. Meats especially, when overdone, lose much of their flavor and are far less easily digested than when they are cooked rare. The chief reasons for cooking meats are that the muscle fibers may be loosened and softened, and that the bacteria or other parasites in the meat may be killed by the heat. ”

“ Another source of waste of which few of us take account is home-made bread. Sixty per cent. of the bread used in America is made in the home. When one stops to consider how much home-made bread is poorly made, and represents a large waste of flour, yeast and fuel, this housewifely energy is not so commendable. The bread flour used in the home is also in the main wheat flour, and all waste of wheat at the present time increases the shortage of this most necessary food. ”

“ Much depends upon the quality of the food we take, for some foods are of very little nutritive value; and even of the most nutritive food, some parts may pass out as waste products, because those organs which elaborate and assimilate food may be partially, or wholly, changed by disease, and so unable to fulfill the work for which they are destined. ”

“ Food replenishes waste caused by the continual wear and tear incidental to daily life: the wear and tear of the muscles in all physical exertion, of the brain in thinking, of the internal organs in the digestion of food, in all the intricate processes of metabolism, in the excretion of waste matter, and the secretion of vital fluids, etc. The ideal diet is one which replenishes waste with the smallest amount of suitable material, so that the system is kept in its normal condition of health at a minimum of expense of energy. ”

“ This waste is in itself a very serious evil where so large a portion of the community often procure—as they do in England—with painful difficulty, and with the heaviest labour, even sufficient bread to sustain existence; but the amount of positive disease which is caused amongst us by improper food, or by food rendered unwholesome by a bad mode of cooking it, seems a greater evil still. ”

“ Most people are now aware that the chief necessity for food arises from the gradual and constant wearing away of the tissues and solid parts of the body. To repair and restore the worn and wasted parts, food must be constantly eaten and digested. And the faster the waste, the larger the quantity of food which must daily be consumed, to make up for the loss which this waste occasions. Now, the introduction of a certain quantity of theine into the stomach lessens the amount of waste which in similar circumstances would otherwise naturally take place. ”

“ Vegetarians, then, are correct in theory when they state that a diet of vegetables may contain everything necessary to sustain life. But a mixed diet containing meat is healthier. A purely vegetable diet contains much waste material, such as the cellulose forming the walls of plant cells, which is indigestible. It has been recently discovered that the outer coats of some grains, as rice, contain certain substances (enzymes) which aid in digestion. In the case of polished rice, when this outer coat is removed the grain has much less food value. ”

“ Waste, as applied to food, is something that could be used but is not, whereas refuse is something that is rejected because it is unfit for use. For example, the fat of meat, which is often eaten, is waste if it is thrown away, but potato parings, which are not suitable as food, are refuse. ”

“ It became economically unsound for so great a percentage of food producers to spend their time in producing meats and staples, only part of which could be consumed by themselves and their near neighbors, the rest going to waste. The great waste of the surplus products set the minds of men of genius to devising ways to preserve the foods of abundant harvests for the seasons of scarcity. The result is before us in the form of modern cold-storage plants, refrigerator cars, volume-curing and pickling of meat products, and volume-canning of fish, meats, fruits, and vegetables ”

“ Now, no matter how persistently and effectively the lessons of economy may be preached in the kitchen and at the table as much in the home as in the army, and notwithstanding the infinitesimal degree to which the proportion of spoiled food may be reduced by the introduction of superior methods and skill, a certain amount of waste is unavoidable. It cannot be overcome in its entirety. Tastes differ so widely that odds and ends are certain to be left untouched upon the plate, while a certain accumulation of gristle, bone, fat and other inedible portions must be expected. ”

“ We are losing enough life, Heaven knows, on the fields of battle; we do not want illness and the spread of disease at home. We can be sparing and careful of grain and precious with our “white flour,” but we need not debilitate or poison our people with food which they cannot digest or which in any way proves injurious to women and children. Waste is encouraged by the making of bread which the people dislike. ”

“ Throwing away the water in which vegetables have been cooked wastes their characteristic and valuable element—the mineral salts. Cooking them so much that they become watery; under-cooking so that they are hard and indigestible; cooking more than is required for a meal; failing to use left-over portions promptly as an entree or for cream soups or scalloped dishes—all these things mean an appalling waste of valuable food material. Good food material is also lost when the water in which rice or macaroni or other starchy food has been boiled is poured down the kitchen sink. ”

“ She ought to bear in mind the fact that the chief value of any food lies in its adaptability to repair the waste of tissue that goes on constantly, and endeavor to supply as far as possible the ideal meal, which is one in which nitrogenous, non-nitrogenous and mineral substances are supplied in the proportion required to repair the waste, and with the minimum tax on the digestive powers. ”

“ Thus we see that in eating meat, we are eating animal waste-material similar to that thrown off through our own body-cells. The waste material in meat being soluble, passes through the walls of our digestive organs, and enters the circulation, where it is added to similar poisons which are constantly being produced within our own bodies. It is the universal law of animal cell-growth that the waste matter of the cell acts as its own poison. ”

“ Poor Economy
In these days of increased destruction and decreased production of human foods, it is of great importance to know how to secure a maximum amount of nutrition from a minimum expenditure of money. The world is facing a food shortage that in some places has assumed the proportion of the gaunt specter of famine. In view of this fact, it is well to remember that flesh is the most costly source of food. Sixty-two per cent of the best beefsteak is water. Flesh foods contain but twenty-five per cent nourishment, and seventy-five per cent waste matter. ”

“ The secret, as you will readily see, is that they waste practically none of the nourishment in the food, as they extract practically all that it contains. They do not burden their system with waste material, which clogs up the machinery and causes a waste of energy in order that it may be thrown off. They obtain a maximum of nourishment from a minimum of food—a full supply of food-prana from a small amount of material. ”

“ Then, as always, it receives food from its environment; while the appropriation and assimilation of this food, as well as the elimination of the products of disintegration and waste, are accomplished by means of the same processes of absorption, chemical combination and decomposition, which constitute nutrition at all periods of existence. ”

“ Food in its preparation has long been subordinated to the sense of taste, and, ingested in excess of the amount required to make good the losses incurred through physical and mental activity, has entailed much unnecessary labor upon the processes of digestion and disposal of waste. Because of almost universal violation of the natural law of nutrition in respect to overeating, this vice, apparent though it be, and weakening and distressing in its effects as it is, calls for correction as does no other in the long list of offenses against nature. ”

“ No one has seen the cook drinking out of the water bottle, tasting the food, and handling the salt, the dough, the waste-pail, the dish cloth, the berries and the bread with fingers that are licked instead of being washed every time she handles these things and her hair, but would wish to possess the jaw and juices of an animal to enable him to save the wages, waste and culinary wantonness of a cook; and avoid the appendicitis, gastric ulcer, fermentation, diabetes, Bright’s disease, entero-colitis and acid fermentation that have developed with the development of the art of eating. ”

“ He has described it at length in his ‘Science of Nutrition,’ 1892. He argues that the attempts to combine cooking with the warming of a room or house are absurdly wasteful; that almost the whole of the fuel used in cooking is wasted; and that nine tenths of the time devoted to watching the process of cooking is wasted; and he estimates the waste of food from bad cooking in the United States at $1,000,000,000 a year. ”

“ Even in the living animal this effete unexpelled poisonous waste breeds vermin, such as have been found in pork, which cannot be destroyed by ordinary cooking or by the process of digestion, and hence live and generate in the human body, producing disease and death. I am not now making a plea for the absolute disuse of animal food, but against the bad quality of very much of it, and also against the inordinate use of that which may be good in quality. A certain amount of animal food is useful for our nourishment, especially in winter time, because of its heat producing qualities. ”

“ I keep in mind, too, that much of the food taken into the average American kitchen is wasted, and that progress in the science of feeding the man will ultimately prevent this waste and, by adding to this better preparation and combination of foods, will increase to some extent the nutritive value of our present food supply. ”

“ A more recent writer comments instructively on "French Thrift and British Waste":
"In a French household such a thing as waste is almost unknown. The positive waste of odds and ends in this country is simply appalling. Look not only under the vegetable stalls in our streets, but also in almost all dustbins, and you will see as much as, if it had been kept clean, might have given health literally to thousands of people. ”

“ There, however, the waste is comparatively small, as the red man is in the habit of saving the greater portion of the flesh and robes. Of the above twenty million pounds of meat left to rot in the sun, and taint the air of the plains, the greater proportion would furnish sweeter and more nourishing food to the poor classes of our cities than the beef which they are able to obtain. ”

“ The whole problem of perfect health and efficient activity is in keeping the supply assimilated food equal to the demand, in keeping a forceful circulation that the nourishment may freely reach all tissues and the waste be eliminated, and in full breathing habits that sufficient oxygen be supplied to put the waste in condition for elimination. ”

“ Waste consequent upon lack of knowledge of food values is the waste that is doubly expensive for it not only wastes food but it also wastes the system whose energy is exhausted in trying to assimilate improper alimentation. ”

“ When we enquire more minutely into the chemical constitution of the different alimentary materials, which promote the growth, support the strength, and renew the waste of our body, we find that animal substances are not suited to form the whole of 9our daily food ”

“ Waste occurs in any or all of the following ways: (1) needlessly expensive foods containing little real nutriment are used; (2) there is a failure to select the foods best suited to the needs of the family; (3) a great deal is thrown away which ought to be utilized; (4) bad preparation of the food causes it to lose much of the nutriment which it does contain; (5) badly constructed ovens diffuse heat, instead of confining it, and cause enormous loss of fuel. ”

“ My theory advanced against the use of meat because of nitrogenous decomposition products, holds true with fish, though in a somewhat limited degree. The decomposition products of cold-blooded [262] animals are not identical with those of mammals, hence their consumption as food does not add to the percentage of human waste-products so directly as do other meats. ”

“ They consist almost invariably of a flood of water containing but a small percentage of refuse food, urine, soap, filth of the laundry, grease—everything, in fact, except fecal matter and the coarser garbage and ashes—constituting the waste of the household. ”

“ Garbage, consisting chiefly of trimmings of meat and vegetables and the waste from the table, if stored in open buckets soon becomes offensive and is an ideal breeding place in warm weather for flies "that drink of cesspools, dine at privy vaults, eat sputum and are likely to be the most familiar guests at the dinner table, sampling every article of food upon which they walk, leaving in their tracks disease-producing germs which have adhered to their sticky feet where they have previously dined." ”

“ The bits of moist food, scraps of meat, vegetables, and other refuse, very quickly set up a fermentative process, which, under the sun's rays, soon breeds miasm and germs; especially is this true if the receptacle into which the garbage is thrown is not carefully cleaned after each emptying.
A foul-smelling waste-barrel ought never to be permitted under any circumstances. The best plan is to burn all leavings and table refuse as fast as made, which may be done without smell or smoke by opening all the back drafts of the kitchen range, and placing them on the hot coals to dry and burn. ”