I have a mission to reduce food waste in our house.

I’ll be the first to admit that this is an area that I struggle with. We aren’t the best at choosing healthy snacks if less healthy options are available. But, in my wish for us to eat more healthy food, I always pick up fresh produce. And a lot of it goes to waste. But I intend to change that, and it starts with me.

Firstly, I have stopped buying as much processed snacks. My kids get to choose a piece of fresh produce to go with their meals. Today alone, they have eaten grapefruit, strawberries and watermelon, and we only just had lunch.

My second goal is to find ways to use produce that isn’t fresh enough to be appealing on a plate anymore. And today I took a step in the right direction by using my shriveled blueberries in a smoothy.

I usually have at least one smoothie during the weekdays, typically at lunchtime. It’s usually the same combo of items, but I change up the protein powder depending on my mood…chocolate or vanilla. Adding some fruit that’s past it’s prime seems like a pretty easy change, which is what I did today.

What’s in my smoothie?

In a blender, I combine:

• 1 cup water

• 1/2 cup oats

• 1 scoop of Green Blends powder (going back to my propensity to let food go bad, I use this powder to get my daily greens)

• 2 scoops protein powder (I like Tera’s Whey…there are only 4 ingredients, it’s fair trade and it tastes really good)

• 1 medium to large ripe banana

• 1 cup ice

Going back to reducing food waste, I had some old blueberries in the fridge. They were pretty shriveled up and I knew that nobody was going to eat them, including myself. Old me would have just thrown them in the trash, felt guilty over it and moved on. But I’m determined to no longer do this. So I decided to wash them up and add them to my smoothie.

Disclaimer: I inspected them really good to make sure there were no fuzzies growing on them!

The end result was a beautiful purple smoothie that tasted delicious.

I think I can safely say that my experiment to reduce food waste was a success. I’m excited to find other ways to reduce food waste now!

Other ways I am reducing food waste

1. Cooking less per meal.

I am trying to be better at gauging the amount of food that we actually need each meal. Going forward, I would rather cook less than we need, rather than more. My reasoning is that if someone is still hungry after the main course, they can grab a piece of fruit.

This will also help us with portion control, which is something that my husband and I struggle with at dinnertime.

2. Encourage healthier snacks.

Left to their own devices, my kids would hands down choose the processed, carby cracker snack. And I get it, I’m the same way. I guess the apples don’t fall far from the tree.

But from now on, I’ll be encouraging them to choose a piece of fruit or some veggies for their snacks. This will definitely be a habit shift for all of us, but one that will pay off in the long run.

3. Having a leftover day on Thursday.

That is, if there are any leftovers. We have a plan to cook most days at home, except for Friday, which is family movie night and when we order takeout.

This used to be our cooking schedule pre-pandemic, but we have been eating much more takeout over the past year and a half.

Sometimes, it was the only exciting thing that we did in a day and we were able to support a lot of struggling businesses so I definitely don’t regret it. But we definitely need to make a habit shift for our health and financial goals.

4. Going through the fridge prior to grocery day and using up whatever produce is going bad.

We typically pick up groceries on Monday. So on Sunday, I have a plan to go through the fridge and use up the produce that’s not fresh anymore.

That might mean that I make muffins that day, or maybe we make a veggie stirfry for dinner.

5. On the off chance that I am unable to use up the produce, I will compost it.

In the city where I live, they don’t have a dedicated composting program. After doing some research this morning, I did learn that we can add food scraps and other organic materials to the city yard waste bags/bins during the months that yard waste is collected. It is then taken to a neighboring city compost area.

Which means that for at least 6 months of the year, we have roadside pickup. For the other 6 months, I will have to determine if I can manually drop off compost at that city’s compost area.

Every step we take to reduce our impact on the planet is a step in the right direction. The goal is progress, not perfection. We need a lot of people making sustainable choices, even imperfectly, than 1 person doing sustainability perfectly. That’s how we effect change.

How do you reduce food waste?

What actions, no matter how small they might seem, do you take to be more sustainable?

Are there sustainable actions that you’d like to take eventually, but haven’t been able to yet? I know that I’d love to add solar panels to my house but I haven’t gotten there yet.

Until next time,