10 Teched-Out Techniques for Saving Food

Hey America : You waste almost 40 pct of the intellectual nourishment you produce . WTF ? Sure , you could address that by make behavioural change , but , uhm … drilling ! Fortunately , we can restore this . With gear .

Dehydrate

Water may be the essence of lifetime , but its presence actually makes food go badly quickly . desiccated food = long life-time . Just ask your 7 - Eleven clerk how long the beef jerky spliff have been sitting there . you’re able to dehydrate food to draw out its usefulness with a mixture of home food dehydrators . And dehydrating stale firecracker and chips can bring them back to living like that holy water in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade . Plus , it ’s heavy to turn down anything with model names like “ Snackmaster ” or “ Jerky Xpress . ” While most base dehydrators are pretty wonky looking , theL’Equipwouldn’t look out of place next to that host rack in your kitchen .

Cool It

Like the Cold War nuclear arm race , refrigerator company have long act as a secret plan of one - upmanship ( minus the terror of atomic disintegration ) . Today , it seems that every electric refrigerator maker is blow its own engineering to slow up waste . GE has itsClimateKeeper2System . Bosch brag aVitaFreshtechnology where sensors let each compartment regulate its own humidness . Liebherr offer a similar function with itsBioFreshTechnology . But you know what ’s credibly just as useful ? Low - technical school solution : fridge with glass door or more space or French doors that insure you could see what foods you actually have . My readers systematically say their biggest source of wasted food comes from detail getting pushed to the back of the electric refrigerator .

Get Informed

Wondering how long a food detail stays skillful ? TheStillTastyApp for iOS has you track — from “ Angel Hair Pasta , cooked ” to “ Ziti - dry , uncooked . ” Most utile is the “ alert me ” function that admonish you when sure items in your fridge are approaching the not - so - tasty phase . Or you may stick with the old - fashioned method - make an ‘ eat me ’ ledge in your fridge . StillTasty ’s internet site is also helpful and answers life ’s persistent question , like : boxer or briefs ? Must I refrigerate ketchup ?

Sign, Seal, Devour

In addition to being an oxymoron , freezer burn is preventable . Or at least delayable . keep the air out of the food you freeze is the winder . Vacuum sealer of all stripes will do the trick here , butFood Saverhas the most technical school - ish looking at version . These stationary vacuum sealer have the spirit and finger of a laser printer . By comparison , using Reynolds’Handi - Vacis reminiscent of the dot matrix printing machine experience . And do n’t underestimate the power of a sharpie here : Label your base with the name of the intellectual nourishment and the appointment . Make certain you let in the year , Mr. Dewey .

Call Now?

Ethyl alcohol = utter intoxicant = grain alcohol , which has its undergraduate U.S. . But ethylene — the flatulency give off by many fruits and veggie as they ripens — speed raise ’s disintegration . So enclosing ethene in supermarket plastic bags is often counterproductive . informercial to the rescue?Evert - Fresh Green Bagsclaim to make fresh food last 3 to 10 time longer andDebbie Meyerboasts a 30 - day life history for some intersection stack away in her Green Bags . Butword on the internetis mixed about whether or not the bags are a total FAIL .

Donate

Your parents say you to ‘ make clean your plateful because there are people starving in [ some land ] . ’ Some of us might have storm out in a fit of teenage rebellion , giving our blessings to get off their left - over dinner to the less fortunate . Nobody has quite figured out how to do that yet , but you may donate the excess from your backyard fruit Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree or garden thanks toAmple Harvest . The situation allows those with homegrown copiousness ( or even that traditional donation can good ) to find local food for thought banking concern nearby .

Plan Ahead

supermarket are , like , project to make you buy too much , which basically ensure you ’ll waste solid food . Epicurious ’ iPhone Apphelps you quash that fate . Choose one of the 25,000 recipes , and create grocery lists from the required ingredients — so you you grease one’s palms only what you ’ll actually eat . resist that six pack of memory - bake donuts is on you , though . The app also helps you encounter another recipe to expend up the residual of that Rosmarinus officinalis or turnip cabbage .

Watch Your Snack

The world can be a rough piazza . Your yield needs defending — like a football game helmet protects the brain . OK , tough deterrent example . But when the bet are slenderly lower , such as the number of gouge in your banana , theBanana Guardis a vital addition to Western Civilization ( and something indisputable to puzzle post - apocalyptic archaeologist ) . Fortunately ( for us and the archeologists ) , the same company now offersnon - phallic fruit protection . And in the knit category , there ’s a whole line of fruit sweaters , includingApple Jacketsand the pun - freePear Jackets . If you end up with bruised product despite all your yield - babying , one gismo can salvage that yield — a reamer .

Put it in the Ground

Even when you ’re super argus-eyed , some solid food will still go bad before it ’s consumed . And then there ’s the inevitable peels and fight . For many of us , that means compost these remains . But for apartment indweller and urban center trickster with no outdoor blank , there ’s the uber - nerdyNature John Stuart Mill . The car compost continually , emits amazingly minimal odors and looks just like an old desktop PC . What you do with your newly made fertiliser is another question …

Looking Abroad, Ahead

The Europeans are really dependable at reducing waste . Hopefully , as with The Office , Survivor and that Idol show , we ’ll see imported versions soon . One German supermarket usesRFID tagsto stay on top of when kernel has reached its expiry , hustle it off the shelves so you do n’t end up with expiring or expired intellectual nourishment . But for shelf - static foods , the expiration date is often nonmeaningful . Enter Britain’sApproved Food and Drink , which sells these cast away , but utterly good items on its website . And the UK company Kitchen Waste Bags prepare an app thattallies the price of the food we ’ve run off , hopefully providing a bit of motivator to avoid succeeding occurrences .

Jonathan Bloom persist the blogWasted Foodand tweets as@WastedFood . His Scripture on the topic , American Wasteland , come out October 12 . blossom lives in Durham , N.C. , where he ’s been known to relish a barbecue sandwich or three .

Original art by guest creative person Chris McVeigh ( AKA powerpig ) . you’re able to catch all his work at flickr.com/powerpig , and fall out him on Twitter . ( @Actionfigured ) Original minifigure image allow for by Lego .

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