Back in February, the Outline published an article by Austin Bryniarski, “The war on food waste is a waste of time.” The first time I read it, I admit, I felt almost offended. Food waste is super important! No one should waste food! In this economy? But then I read more closely and realized that Bryniarski isn’t saying that caring about food waste is pointless, but rather that the food system which creates such massive waste is terrible for almost everyone except the few moneymaking kingpins at the top, and that is what people should be focusing on.
In other words: centering the individual action while never questioning the collective forces at play only serves the powerful few who keep exploitative systems in place.
Avoiding food waste is a supremely valuable life skill on so many levels. It’s a skill that’s learned — just like cooking — so of course there’s a never-ending (excessive?) supply of articles and cookbooks to address it. I’m not here to dis the coverage (for I too, contribute to it), but more to connect the dots between why you, a person who might care about not wasting food, should keep caring while also examining the source of your food in the first place.
(You know how I said earlier that I’m a slow writer? I started this two weeks ago and still didn’t get it finished in time to send last week. But I also realized that I’m trying to pack too much into one newsletter and it’d be better to break it down into little chunks — both for you to not be deterred by a rambling missive, but also for me to be able to actually write on a schedule. So here’s part 1 of … many).
First thing’s first: the biggest reason I try to avoid wasting food is to save money. The more ways to eat something that I can squeeze out of it, the less money I’ll spend on something else in its place, and the more value I feel I get from my investment. A chicken, for example, can be roasted whole to provide enough meat get at least 10 servings (if the serving isn’t chicken-heavy, which recently, they were mostly just chicken sandwiches and chicken tacos, i.e. good ways to stretch an ingredient across several meals). I use the bones to make stock, along with scraps and stems from other vegetables. Boom, now I have chicken broth. And if the broth develops a nice layer of fat while it chills, then I can skim it off and have schmaltz.
I pay about $25 for a chicken from the farmers market. Seems like a lot compared to grocery store chickens (which, Walmart grocery tells me, might be about $6), but consider the chicken and the people responsible for getting that chicken to retail: the farmers market chicken is “allowed to scratch and forage”; the $6 chicken is probably factory farmed, which leads to a whole host of other issues. Much more important than the life of the chicken are the lives of the workers responsible for processing the chicken.
Working in a meatpacking plant was already extremely dangerous and low-paying. Now, meatpacking plants (along with other big food processing plants) are coronavirus hotspots. And:
A CDC report earlier this month found that 87 percent of workers infected by the virus at poultry, pork and beef processing plants were people of color, and at least 86 workers had died.
Worker advocacy groups have filed a civil rights complaint against meat giants Tyson Foods and JBS with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, alleging the companies’ failure to prevent novel coronavirus outbreaks among largely black and Latino workers amounted to racial discrimination. - Laura Reiley in The Washington Post
And also:
Unlike meatpackers, two-thirds of whom belong to unions, only about a third of poultry workers are represented by organized labor—and those who are unionized face mounting pressure. The industry, which is dominated by large multinational corporations such as Mountaire, has grown increasingly concentrated, expanding its political influence while replacing unionized employees with contract hires, often immigrants or refugees. These vulnerable workers are technically hired by temp agencies, relieving poultry plants of accountability if documentation is lacking. Trump has weakened federal oversight of the industry while accepting millions of dollars in political donations from some of its most powerful figures, including Ronald Cameron, Mountaire’s reclusive owner. In 2016, Cameron gave nearly three million dollars to organizations supporting Trump’s candidacy. - Jane Mayer in The New Yorker (if you hit a paywall there, you can listen to her NPR interview here)
So, yeah. I’m gonna pay $25 for my chicken. And that’s why I’ll go to the trouble of keeping the bones, making stock, and also hopefully getting some chicken fat out of the deal, too. But: I’m in a place financially where I’m able to do so. (We also buy chickens, like, twice a year, so.) I know not everyone is able to pay that much for chicken. But everyone is able to consider the price behind it and question if, perhaps, they ought to find another source of cheap protein. (Like beans! Although don’t worry, I’m sure there are plenty of worker issues related to beans. Another newsletter.)
—— Please don’t take this isn’t a judgment on shopping habits, snarky comments dripping with disdain aside. As Alicia Kennedy wrote in a recent newsletter: “There is something wrong with that system, but there isn’t something wrong with surviving within it.” There should be no shame in eating what you can afford. The shame should be placed on the systems that produce affordable food at the expense of a worker’s well-being.) ——
This week’s recipe, adapted from a recipe by Jamie Simpson in Waste Not*, will be extremely free-form and without pictures because it’s getting late and I am hungry. Remember last time, with the kompot recipe, I asked you to save the peach pits? Once you’ve accumulated about 1/2 a cup’s worth (keep them in the freezer until you do), let them defrost, then wrap them in several layers of a clean kitchen towel, place that on a steady surface, and smash them with a hammer. Transfer the cracked pits (and any peach flesh that remains, if you had clingstone peaches) to a quart-sized glass jar and cover with vodka. (I use the Kirkland brand or Luksusowa for infusing.) Let steep for about a week, then strain and decant into a bottle. Ideas to use your peachy almond-scented vodka coming soon. :)
*Yes I do appreciate the irony of referencing this cookbook in this post. Another newsletter.
Questions? Comments? Feedback? Reply to this email, and until then, catch you next time.
Kara