Cut your food waste with a few helpful tips

Cut your food waste with a few helpful tips

Too often perfectly safe food is being thrown away, as much as 90 billion pounds a year

Did you eat the potatoes I gave you?” I asked my son. He has been living in an apartment for a couple of months now. I had given him some large baking potatoes. I thought they would be the basis of an easy meal. Just scrub, poke a few holes and bake. I bought him

Almost all food is packaged, creating a lot of waste. But what if that packaging was edible?

Eat your package

Edible packaging could reduce waste and improve food storability

Scientists are developing an edible form of packaging which they hope will preserve food more effectively and more sustainably than plastic film, helping to cut both food and plastic waste. The packaging film is made of a milk protein called casein, scientists from the U.S. Department of Agriculture said at a meeting of the American


drive thru neon sign in the window of a restaurant.

Opinion: Consumers need to manage food packaging waste

Since early in May Tim Hortons has been removing garbage bins from drive-through lanes. Some have been placed in less obvious locations on the store properties. Tim Hortons is concerned customers don’t have enough time to properly sort their garbage into bins placed alongside drive-through lanes, so it has taken the trash cans away. They

A glowing nanotube nose

A glowing nanotube nose

A new way to decide whether your meat passes the 'sniff test'

Deciding whether to cook or toss a steak that’s been in the fridge for a few days calls for a sniff test. This generally works well for home cooks. But food manufacturers that supply tons of meats to consumers require more reliable measures. In a new journal called ACS Sensors, scientists report a simple method

“If you look at our regulations our obligation is not to sell anything that doesn’t meet standards, which is Canada No. 1 and Canada No. 2 in the case of onions. However, we will try to find them a sale in processing or anywhere we can.” Larry McIntosh.

Veggie marketing wars continue

A second grower is taking aim at Peak’s practices

Another Manitoba vegetable grower is claiming Peak of the Market rejects too much produce, which costs growers and wastes food. Idzerd Boersma of S. B. Vegetable Growers near Portage la Prairie has joined Jeffries Brothers Vegetable Growers in calling on Peak to allow farmers to sell their own produce if Peak won’t. And it appears


Ernie Jeffries holds carrots taken from the brown box. They’re too small to grade Canada No. 1 or 2 so they have to go for cattle feed along with carrots in the beige box culled because they are too big, too small, broken or misshaped. According to Jeffries the small carrots and many of the culls are fine for human consumption.

VIDEO: What’s up doc? Too many carrots seen going to cows instead of people

Jeffries Brothers blames Peak of the Market and worries about the 
future of their operation and Manitoba’s carrot industry

Manitoba’s largest carrot growers say the grading practices of the provincially regulated vegetable-marketing board threaten to push the family farm out of business. Ernie Jeffries, who operates Jeffries Brothers Vegetable Growers with his brother Roland and father Dave, wants permission to sell carrots rejected by Peak of the Market outside of the regulated system. Jeffries

Editorial: Just print your food and eat it?

Those of us who still garden have a rather quaint view of food and technology. We plant seeds, help them grow, harvest and eat (cooking optional). Meat or other sources of protein are a bit of an afterthought compared to the taste of those first seasonal bites of melt-in-your mouth potatoes, beans, beets and carrots.

man making bread

Beer from bread that never became a sandwich

A Brussels brewery is making beer out of stale bread to reduce waste

A small Brussels-based brewery has embarked on a project to make beer from leftover bread, harking back to antiquity, when bread, rather than barley, was the main ingredient. The idea for brewing with bread came when 31-year-old Frenchman Sebastien Morvan talked to a friend about food waste, specifically the bread thrown away because supermarkets, eager


Ralph Martin

Increasing food production not the answer to population growth

In developed countries people waste food by eating too much of it, causing health problems and additional social costs

It rots in fridges, in fields, on trucks and in stores — food. A lot of it. Enough to feed one billion people, according to Ralph Martin, Loblaw chair of the Sustainable Food Production program at the University of Guelph. Speaking at the University of Manitoba last week, Martin made the case that oft-repeated mantras

food waste

Let’s waste less food in 2015

Food bloggers and various groups love talking about what’s ‘in’ on the food scene as a new year begins. For 2015, we’re told to expect sustained interest in local food and how food production impacts the environment, eating healthier, a fondness for ‘mini’ food, more meatless Mondays, demand for more intense flavours and so on.