What We Throw Away*

I've already mentioned that I work at a cafe. It's a smallish espresso bar that serves hot and iced drinks, pastries, and also sells wrapped sandwiches, tofu, yogurt, and soda beverages. One of the reasons that I took this Anthropology of Food class was because I find myself at an interesting point in the industrial food chain almost every day. When I close the cafe, I am responsible for "wasting" any leftover pastries and packaged food that is past its expiration date.

When David Giles, a PhD candidate at the University of Washington and the Anthropology Department's resident Punk came to talk to our class last week, I could relate to a lot of what he was saying. David spoke with us about Dumpster Diving, a topic that also came up in this week's reading, The Raw and the Rotten: Punk Cuisine by Dylan Clark. David talked a lot about why, specifically, mainstream society throws away so much food. He divided them into three categories:

• Convenience. We throw away a lot of our food because it is inconvenient to do anything else with it. If you have food left over at a meal, but there isn't enough to really bother with putting it in a tupperware, you throw it away. And if you've made too much caserole, but you know you won't want to eat it tomorrow or the next day, you could, perhaps, go find a hungry person on the street to give it to. But most of us won't do this, because it's uncomfortable and unorthodox and takes up time - it's inconvenient.


• Decay. There are many conventions of society that tell us when food is no longer "good" to eat. Use-by dates are probably one of the biggest reasons to throw out food. I know last week I cleaned out the fridge, and there were 3 packages of hummus that had all expired. However, only one was actually growing things - the other two probably would have been safe to eat. But the use-by date was past a month, so, encouraged by my roommate, I went the "safe" route and threw it out. But there are conventions other than the use-by date, such as color and softness (I'm thinking specifically about produce here), or mold on things like cheese. I was actually taught by my grandmother to never throw out a moldy block of cheese, because you can always just cut off the mold and eat what's inside. After all, cheese is just moldy milk, right?


• Obsolescence. This, David told us, is why most of the food in supermarkets is thrown out. Produce, even perfectly good produce, is continually rendered obsolete when a newer shipment comes in. Like an apple that has been bruised - one could easily cut the bruised part off (or just eat the bruise, like I do). However, when an unbruised apple is sitting right next to it, a consumer will reach for the more perfect fruit. There's also something in here to do with the economics of shelf space - essentially, it costs more for a seller to keep an obsolete product on the shelf, with the liklihood of its being purchased becoming less and less, than it does for them to cut thier losses and toss the obsolete product, thus freeing up space for a newer, more sell-able product.

One thing that I wanted to ask David was about the categorization of "compromised" merchandise. For example, we occasionally recieve a box of yogurt where the foil lid has been slightly torn. And sometimes a sandwich will come unwrapped, and we can no longer sell it. What of these products? They have lost their exchange value - we can no longer charge people money for them. But it's still perfectly good food. I would imagine that this sort of situation would fall under obsolescence, but I am not perfectly sure.

Most of the time, what I throw away falls into the category of Obsolescence. The pastries can no longer be sold, because those delivered fresh the following morning render them obsolete. I've always wondered if we could wrap them in plastic wrap and sell them at a discount, but HFS (the company I work for) makes it a policy not to sell day-old pastries. I'm guessing that the chief reason for this is to maximize the number of fresh pastries that are sold. In a University setting, at least, there are enough consumers that are strapped for cash to prefer the day-olds over the fresh pastries. But if the day-olds aren't available, then students are forced to pay full-price for a slightly fresher donut.

But this is where I sit - at the exact moment where food goes from being a commodity to being waste. I try my best to mitigate my feelings of guilt - for that is what I feel when I'm forced to throw out food. If the amount of waste is small, I'll bring the pastries and sandwiches home for myself and my three roommates. However, if there's more (and very occasionally, there's tons - 50+ pastries!), I'll wrap them in plastic wrap and cart them to the University Food Bank. There are pros and cons to this. I know that pastries aren't nutritious, and that the foods that people can't afford are healthy ones. And I know that this particular food bank is housed in a church, making many hungry people wary of going there for fear of being preached at. However, at the moment, this is all I can do.