Campus Kitchen leaders know the food waste saga States-side well. Advocates like Jonathan Bloom and his blog Wasted Food, regularly pop up in the sustainability-minded’s Google Alerts.

But are our friends across the pond better at reducing food waste? The release of Unilever Food Solution’s World Food Menu Report – and ensuing discussion in London – has U.K. sustainability advocates shedding some light, and discovering some insight into how different populations think about food waste.

Business Live reported that last year, the Sustainable Restaurant Association found UK restaurants and eateries wasted 600,000 tons of food.

The report, which polled both western and non-western countries, established some key findings on the subject of food waste.

Via UK foodservice publication Eat Out:

• 82% of respondents said it was important that ‘places to eat’ aim to reduce the amount of food waste that is thrown away every day 
• 40% would be prepared to pay more for meals in places that have a commitment to reduce food waste 
• 48% of consumers globally believe food waste is a government responsibility 
• 30% of consumers in the UK believe food waste is down to caterers and only 4% think it’s the government’s responsibility 

Unilever also commissioned a survey of 3,000 across 29 cities and towns and found women are more concerned about the food waste issue than men. Additionally, older generations are more likely to clean their plate than young people.

Eat Out cited WRAP (Working together for a World without Waste) as estimating the cost of avoidable food waste in the UK at 722 million pounds.

That’s over one billion U.S. bucks. Perhaps all countries can find reason in that number to work together and save some dough.

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According to a recent BBC News article, “The Printed Future of Christmas Dinner“, a team at Cornell University is building a 3D food printer with the goal of making it a daily use item like a blender or coffee -maker.

While many engineering groups have worked with 3D printers to construct objects, and some have even worked with food, Cornell’s scientists (the Fab@home team) are working to make printing food affordable and accessible to the home consumer.

This could mean an earthquake that rocks the food world.

3D food printers work much like 2D printers. A computer program communicates with a printer that holds “inks” – in this case, a syringe system – which layers ink ingredients as needed to achieve desired visual effect and textures.

I saw a rubber ducky in mid-print at Desktop Factory in Pasadena, Calif. a few years back. The print was two hours in, and the pint-sized duck still needed its head. My guess is, this technology has come a long way in a few short years.

Wikicommons 3-D Printed Objects

It could bring people so far, according to the article, that those lacking culinary skills could download basic recipe files (imagine what this could do for child nutrition?) A Chicago restaurant owner also told  BBC News that food ink could cut on waste from current production methods. Many items we use in the production chain that have negative environmental impact would become obsolete.

But regular use of 3-D food printers could churn up something else.

Many Americans are already disconnected with where food comes from and what whole ingredients do for the body. Some have argued the microwave and other shortcuts have separated us further.

If we could print a bar of chocolate to eat every day, would our understanding of nutrition float further from reality? If it only took a button to print potato chips, would our obesity problem grow? If our diets become increasingly synthetic, what happens when our printer jams? Do we go hungry?

And what happens to the joy of cooking?

These are questions we should probably consider before we deem 3-D printing the next necessary step in human consumption.

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“If we can get more food, I think we should get more food.”

That’s the motto the Campus Kitchen at Wake Forest University took on when Coordinator Shelley Sizemore posed the question of adding a local grocery store’s food donations last year to the plentiful donations she already receives from dining services. Her senior leadership team members thought she should. A little creativity could solve any space and distribution issues.

“A lot of times, a quarter of what we get from donations is rotten. I take it and put it in the compost bin,” says Graves. “I’m grateful for the three quarters that’s not.”

Over the past year,  the Campus Kitchen’s partnership with The Fresh Market has matured into a robust produce rescue program that works to feed members of three partner agencies in Winston-Salem, N.C.: The Shalom Project, El Buen Pastor, and Potter’s House.  Shortly after forming the unique partnership with the European-style specialty/gourmet grocery store chain, Sizemore says she noticed her team was exposing Winston-Salem’s underserved to goods they would never otherwise get to try. For the student’s who run the rescue shifts, the picture of wasted food also started becoming clearer.

Sizemore says a part-time Wake Forest University staff member who also worked at Fresh Market alerted her to the food waste coming from the specialty grocery store because of its patrons’ high-aesthetic requirements for food. Employees could not take home the food ready to be thrown out. The employee asked if Sizemore and her team could bag up the extras.

“We go directly to Fresh Market and we’ve guaranteed we will come everyday, Monday through Friday,” says Sizemore.

Fresh Market offers up grocery carts full of the food they’re getting rid of, which has been known to include Godiva chocolate truffles, gourmet nuts, lobster bisque, and specialty mushrooms in the past. The kitchen comes away with an average of 600 pounds a week.

From there Sizemore sorts what she needs for the Campus Kitchen meals and then ships the rest to the agencies, who each created a protocol for processing and distributing it to community members. She says she sees the benefit of adding these specialty items to children’s diets in particular.

“Think about when you were growing up and your parents told you to try everything on your plate. They knew if you weren’t exposed, you wouldn’t know what’s available to you,” say Sizemore. “If we can get these kids to associate fresh items with something that’s accessible to them, that helps with nutrition.”

Sizemore says she has also witnessed students getting passionate about food waste issues after they see how much a specialty grocery store needs to get rid of. It’s become an educational program for her students.

For those looking to build a similar partnership with a local specialty store, Sizemore offers this advice: “Build those partnerships early and use them in a way that is not just beneficial for the kitchen, but beneficial for them to share with others and post on Facebook.”

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The Campus Kitchen national office is constantly combing through resources to share everything from cooking tips to food policy knowledge for Campus Kitchens, and everyone interested in student-driven hunger-relief.

As fate would have it, one of The Campus Kitchens Project’s major donors and a dining services provider at many of the schools that house Campus Kitchens debuted a new website and resource for campus advocacy against food waste.

The site, titled Food Waste, Don’t be Trashy, serves as a social media hub for all your advocacy needs in a drive to eliminate food waste on your Campus.

As written in Sodexo’s manifesto “Americans throw away about 25 percent of the food they prepare – that’s a quarter of their dinner plate…you can stop it today.” The site then provides social networks and links to share their manifesto with all your friends – whatever university they might attend.

Other useful resources including a video created by Keene State Project Portion Distortion, promotional posters, pictures, and links are also easily accessible on the site.

It’s almost as if they created this site specifically for Campus Kitchen groups. Visit Sodexo’s Food Waste site – and Don’t be Trashy.

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The work of Campus Kitchens – led by DC Central Kitchen, which is mentioned in the article – sets an example for the individual responsibility the author is asking Americans to accept. And one of The Campus Kitchens Project’s major contributors and partners, Walmart, is featured as ahead of other businesses and restaurants in reducing food waste and becoming more sustainable. (Walmart’s head of solid waste and recycling recently participated in an EPA roundtable.)

Slate.com  published two reports on the most recent number – a jaw-dropping 40 percent of American food goes to waste each year through the process – and compelled readers to send in their own advice of food waste fixes, many of which Campus Kitchens already put to use.

Some other painful figures revealed in the Guardian’s Sadhbh Walshe’s article:

• In the past decade, our rate of food waste has more than doubled
• 2 percent of American food waste is composted
• Food waste is the second-largest waste stream sent to landfills

The good news: organizations like your Campus Kitchen, DC Central Kitchen, Walmart, and people like Jonathon Bloom who authored an upcoming book about food waste in America are serving as mentors – and leading by example – to scale the rumblings of hunger and waste back to a murmur.

That’s got to feel pretty satisfying.

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With worry over waning summer meal programs climbing, news outlets like Slate.com are turning their attention to food waste.

Two recent reports by the online magazine shed some light on the most recent food waste figures, as well as ways Americans think they can reduce what goes in the garbage disposal.

Some good news for Campus Kitchens: many of the collective suggestions Slate.com compiled from nearly 200 readers are things our hair-netted, aproned volunteers already do.

The Statistic

The most recent peer-reviewed report that writer Nina Shen Rastogi found revealed 40 percent of food goes to waste from the time it’s created to before it reaches a person’s stomach.

“That’s not a measure of how much food individual Americans throw out,” she wrote

Instead, the figure factors in all food lost during its journey from farm, through processing plants, to supermarkets, left on restaurant plates, and rotting in your fridge.

In a perfect world, where there’s a Campus Kitchen in every city, CK volunteers would intervene somewhere in this cycle. Unfortunately, according to the National Institute of Health’s tally through the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, 40 is the current calculation, and there’s no telling how much is slop from food service outlets, or avoidable waste from the American public.

The Solutions

Slate readers answered Rastogi’s call for solutions with some simple, but very useful advice. Some of these practices may sound very familiar to Campus Kitchens:

• Create and then stick to a shopping list*
• Stick to a single cuisine to maximize efficiency
• Wash and prep fruit and vegetables right away
• Keep track of what’s in your fridge and pantry, with expiration dates (a no-brainer for all trained Campus Kitchens)
• Use the freezer – and use it wisely
• Schedule in your leftovers

For more on how to effectively put this list into practice, in your Campus or home kitchen, go here.

*The White House just put out its pilot episode of the Let’s Cook series, which teaches families how to make a week’s worth of affordable, nutritious meals. Check it out:

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Owning a pressure canner is your gateway to eating fresh and local, all year round. It is a safe, easy, and fun way to save those bountiful summer harvests and to make sure you’ve always got something in your Campus Kitchen pantry. Here, I will  provide basic, step-by-step instructions for canning tomato sauce when harvests reach their peak and tomatoes are plentiful near the of summer. Come winter, you will be able to crack open these jars to make spaghetti sauce, chili, lasagna, or any other tomato based dish.

With a 23-quart pressure canner, you can fit 7 quart jars at a time (plus several smaller jars).

You will need:

• 23-quart pressure canner ( I recommend Presto 23-qt pressure cooker/canner. About $80)
• 1 large pot (for scalding tomatoes)
• 1 large bowl of ice water
• Jar Funnel (I recommend buying a canning set)
• Jar grabber
• Quart-sized mason jars (Ball or Kerr jars can be found at most grocery stores or dollar stores, like Wal-Mart or Big Lots)
• Large spoons and ladles

Step 1: Pick your Tomatoes! A bushel of tomatoes weighs approximately 53 lbs. and will yield about 12 quarts of sauce.

Step 2: Sterilize the jars and lids. This is most easily done in the dishwasher. Start your dishwasher before you begin anything else, so that it will be done by the time you are ready to fill the jars with sauce. If you don’t have a dishwasher, you can boil a large pot of water and submerge the jars and lids in there.

Step 3: Scald the tomatoes. This is to remove the skins. Submerge the tomatoes, a few at a time in boiling water for 1 minute. Quickly transfer them to a bowl of ice water and then slide the skins off.

Step 4: Drain excess water from tomatoes. Slice them in half and place them in a strainer as you work through the bunch. Draining the water greatly reduces cooking time and results in a thicker sauce.

Step 5: Transfer tomatoes to large pot. Bring to a boil and let simmer until the volume is reduced by about one third (thinner sauce) or one half (thicker sauce). Stir a bit to break up large tomato chunks.

Step 6: Fill jars. Using the funnel and a ladle, transfer sauce to jars, leaving ¼ inch head space. Add 2 tbsp lemon juice/quart jar to help prevent spoilage and to retain color and flavor. Then, using a dry and clean cloth, wipe the rim of the jar before covering with the lid and tightening the ring.

Step 7: Pressure canning! Follow the directions that came with your canner.

Step 8: Finishing up. Once the time is up, remove the jars with the jar grabber, making sure to not bump the other jars. Place them in a cool, draft free place, overnight. As the jars seal you will hear “pop!”. You can check to see that they have all sealed by gently pressing in the center of the each lid. If it pops up and down, it is not sealed.

For helpful tips/questions see my favorite, trustworthy canning website

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 The conference got underway Friday morning and, might I say, was a huge success. The whole weekend was catered by the amazing Fresh Start catering program through DC Central Kitchen. At the conference, students got to hear from many guest speakers and gained valuble tips and insights from them, as well as from fellow attendees. Topics at the conference included: fundraising, local food, nutrition, grant writing, community relationships, social media, leadership, and nonprofit professionalism. The conference came to a close on Saturday evening at a delicious local restaurant, Busboys and Poets. DCCK/CKP founder, Robert Egger, gave the closing speech and left the students and staff with a renewed sense of purpose.

The CKP staff would like to thank everyone who attended the conference as well as our awesome speakers and the generous donors and sponsors who made it all possible! Another successful conference as we enter into ‘Our New Millennium’…

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For the full article: http://www.abpnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4422&Itemid=53

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A mere two days before the class of 2013 began to arrive at W&L, I went with Jenny to make CKP’s first food pickup from Walmart.   After some initial confusion about which of the many back doors we were supposed to go to, we made our way to the egg bunker where we met the women who would be facilitating the food pick-ups.  As they took us to the back of the store, I was stunned by the sheer volume of food.  The women gave us a brief tour and then we started loading up the cars.  My first impression of these two women was how excited they were that this food was not going to be wasted.  Despite the fact that they had to do some extra work to give us the food, they were more than happy to do so and just as excited as we were to be rescuing this food that otherwise would have been wasted.  Walmart has high standards on what can be sold, so there is an abundance of perfectly good food that they cannot sell because of damaged packaging.  The number of eggs that they were throwing out was unbelievable.  After saving the eggs for only two days, they were able to send us away with over 500 eggs.  From now on, CKP will be picking up from Walmart three times a week, which will supply more than enough food to fill the fridges and many hungry mouths, if my experience is any indication of a normal Walmart run.                            - Austin Branstetter

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