Moving Away From Wasteful Thinking

By, Rachel Kahn-Troster

One of my favorite light-hearted pieces from the Talmud is from the tractate Brachot, 50b, in which three rabbis are eating a meal together and one starts a food fight. There is then a classic rabbinic disagreement about throwing food: whether one is forbidden from throwing food at all or just certain types of food, whether one can only throw food that won’t become spoiled when thrown, and what type of food can be thrown at weddings (which depends in part on the weather).

Beneath the surface of this argument is a real concern about wasting food—that which is a gift from God shouldn’t be treated with disrespect. The Jewish value of bal tashchit has been understood to be a prohibition against misuse of the world’s resources. We might think about this on a larger scale, such as the destruction of a forest, but it is also true on a small scale, in the ways that we might take the food we eat for granted, buying too much, throwing out that which we could save for later, and letting food go bad.

Food waste is a real problem in the United States. Between food left in the fields, by-products of manufacturing, restaurant and grocery store waste, and uneaten food headed for our garbage can, the average American wastes one pound of food a day. The blogger Jonathan Bloom has documented what American food waste looks like in a series of amazing photos on his website, WastedFood.com. And Mark Bittman (aka the Minimalist) had a good article a few months ago on how to avoid food waste by using the freezer.

Personally, the summer tends to be season when I waste food the most: all the gorgeous local produce tends to dazzle me at the farmers’ market, causing me to cast aside all my carefully planned menus and load up on just a few more peaches and plums. I’m trying to be responsible about using it all, especially my CSA produce (though I’ve had to get creative with all the zucchini and squash). The food we eat comes about through a blessing from God, the result of the hard labor of human beings and the miracle the right weather in the right seasons. We have a Jewish obligation not to just throw it away.

Check out the National Center for Home Food Preservation for tips and instructions on canning, freezing, drying and pickling excess produce. And, though you might not always think of it, properly composting food scraps is an efficient way to make something productive from something that might ordinarily be wasted.