at this stage, it was more than just about cooking. i wanted to figure out the impact food has on the world around us, and search for new ideas about how food shapes our economies, environment, health and, ultimately, survival. it’s something we experience everyday, yet is facing a growing dilemma.

by 2050, the world population will stand at 9.7 billion. that’s a third more mouths to feed. the solution may seem to be a no-brainer — just raise the amount of food grown globally — a 70% increase to be exact. but it doesn’t happen this easily. studies have shown that there is only 11 percent of arable land left in the world, and that almost all land expansion would occur in developing countries, where most of the global demand for food will come from. these heightening pressures for food production, inequitable food distribution and an impending environmental crisis make for a multi-dimensional problem at our hands. and the clock is ticking.

this complex debacle is what drew me to the global food challenge. over the past year, i’ve taken a journey to explore these philosophies, and met people who strive to make a difference for food security in their community. i’ve learned many things along the way, and questioned the feasibility of that seemingly obvious solution mentioned above. if increasing food production is not a sustainable possibility, why don’t we look at the way it’s distributed world-wide? what if food waste is the real culprit for food inequality?

to tackle this issue, you have to look at the way we value food. with the amount of food that is thrown out each year, it’s easy to say that we do give the respect that it deserves. we let produce be ridiculed for its size and appearance; unattainable aesthetic standards for fruits and vegetables, food safety misguidance, and outright ambiguity on sell-by dates have created hysteria over a bruised apple. i believe that by changing perspectives on food, we can help solve this future enigma.

(sources: “how to feed the world 2050,” un-fao; “feeding 9 billion,” national geographic magazine)

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about the project

this is final piece in a six-part series. waste not wednesday is a community engagement project created by ayse muratoglu, a 2015-2016 emerging leader for food security for the land o’lakes global food challenge program. the yearlong program takes 10 college sophomores who will work with land o’lakes experts to explore issues of food security, and find ways to feed the world. to learn more about the global food challenge, join the conversation at http://foodchallenge.landolakesinc.com/

as a kid, you were always told to finish your plate. there’s a huge stigma against this misuse of resources, yet a very paradoxical relationship between the amount of food we produce as a nation and the number of people that are hungry. approximately one-third of all food produced worldwide results in food waste or loss within food production and consumption systems. when this data is converted to calories, this means that roughly 1 in 4 calories intended for consumption is never actually consumed.

food waste is more than just scraping off your mashed potatoes after sunday dinner. in addition to households, food waste can be recovered from schools, grocery stores, and restaurants, many of which are prohibited from donating the excess to charities. food waste can occur at every step of the supply chain, streaming from producers, distributors, and finally, the consumer. every group involved is accountable for the overall problem.

in farming, fruits and vegetables that are either never harvested or lost between the harvest and the sale constitutes food waste at the production level. farmers also overproduce in an effort to compensate for inclement mishaps such as harsh weather events, or infestation. furthermore, farmers need to have a good eye for style — food style, that is. the aesthetic value of food is of huge concern to farmers for fear of not being able to sell the so-called “ugly produce.” as a result, only the best-looking produce is harvested, with the rest of this unappealing, yet perfectly edible food piling into a rotting heap.

at a glance, these truths can be very overwhelming. however, the solution to the food waste epidemic really starts with you—the consumer. anyone can reduce your foodprint by incorporating preventative steps into your daily life.

start out small

begin at home:

• save those scraps! repurpose leftover peels and rinds from kitchen prep and use them for homemade stocks and broths.
• fridge real estate: learn how to store your groceries in the fridge properly so that they don’t go bad early on you.
• preserve and please: preserving is so easy and can be actually be quite fun. get creative with pickled watermelon rinds, apples, and cherries.
• compost! no backyard? no problem! place a small compost bin under the sink or collect food scraps into a paper bag and stash it in the freezer.
• get the deets on the dates: you know those arbitrary deadlines stamped onto food labels? turns out they’re pretty flexible — it’s more of a suggestion for peak freshness. our sense of smell is a much better tool to gauge a food’s edibility. if you’re getting an offish vibe from your produce, it’s probably time to toss it — or compost it (please!) 

shop smart

• stick to your list: keep a running list of your favorite home meals and plan your grocery shopping accordingly. only buy what you need.
• know yourself, know your (food’s) worth: how often do you cook? are you really going to eat a week’s worth of quinoa? if you’re a college student vs. the head of a family of four, your shopping cart is going to look different. keep that in mind as you’re strolling through the aisle.
• buy ugly produce: it’s still pretty — and delicious — on the inside. if weird-looking fruits or vegetables freak you out, blend them into soups, smoothies, or spreads. it’s all the same anyway. no one will ever know.

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about the project

this is part five of a six-part series. waste not wednesday is a community engagement project created by ayse muratoglu, a 2015-2016 emerging leader for food security for the land o’lakes global food challenge program. the yearlong program takes 10 college sophomores who will work with land o’lakes experts to explore issues of food security, and find ways to feed the world. to learn more about the global food challenge, join the conversation at http://foodchallenge.landolakesinc.com/

in a world full of monster-green juices, pricey juice cleanses, and upscale organic juiceries, it can be hard for cold-pressed juice to stand out from the rest of the crowd. especially you’re a misfit. 

misfit juicery is a d.c.-based, cold-pressed juice startup founded by recent georgetown graduates philip wong and ann yang. the two friends took an entrepreneurship class together, and after spending a summer in rwanda, returned with a vision to change the food system for the better. the concept is simple, yet ingenious — make juice, but with ugly produce. surplus fruits and vegetables bound for the landfill are repurposed into fresh, healthy beverages that are sourced locally. they gather up twisted carrots and dimpled apples to create delicious, aptly named concoctions such as offbeat and 24carrotgold.

their website claims that misfit “is not a juice company,” instead a socially conscious effort that is packing a punch against food waste. their main opponent is what misfit juice refers to as “produce prejudice,” or our obsession with perfect-10 fruits and vegetables. consumers, grocery stores, and other retailers are the culprits — their high standards of aesthetic value discriminate against produce that’s been bruised, blemished, or banged up. for some, it may seem ridiculous. we are literally judging food by its cover — color, shape, and size — like it’s some botanical beauty contest. but it’s in our nature. you may have heard the old adage that we “eat with our eyes,” and science has shown that this is largely true; the visual cortex composes a substantial portion of our brains, and visual stimuli can actually affect taste. the downside of this biology is that it leads to perfectly good produce ending up in the trash can.

misfit juicery is selling wholesale at 50 different locations in d.c., and was recently named one of “fifty+ under 50: #foodheroes that transformed dc’s food system.” “people are psyched about the brand, and i think we want to get our brand and message out to as many people as possible,” co-founder philip wong says. “at the same time, i really want misfit to be not only about the juice, but also about reimagining how people engage with food.”

although it’s drawn quite a following, co-founder philip wong believes that there’s still a long road ahead: “it helps that we’re getting a lot of attention around it, but with the scale of the issue, there’s a lot more to be done.” he cites further that households share the blame in the annual 70 billion pounds of discarded food, and that waste can come from a multitude of sources such as meat consumption. “there’s agricultural waste, food waste in the home, but also something like eating meat is super wasteful. you put so much water and energy into a cow and get 10 percent of the calories out of it. there’s waste all over the food system right now. in terms of what’s going into our food, we’ve still got a long way to go.”

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about the project

this is part four of a six-part series. waste not wednesday is a community engagement project created by ayse muratoglu, a 2015-2016 emerging leader for food security for the land o’lakes global food challenge program. the yearlong program takes 10 college sophomores who will work with land o’lakes experts to explore issues of food security, and find ways to feed the world. to learn more about the global food challenge, join the conversation at http://foodchallenge.landolakesinc.com/

i caught up with elizabeth bennett, founder of fruitcycle, a d.c.-based social enterprise serving up sustainable snacks in the form of apple chips and kale crisps. they not only satisfy late-afternoon cravings and pack a nutritional punch, but are also rooting on the fight against food waste in our nation’s capitol.

the apples and bunches of kale she uses as ingredients are “seconds,” or ugly produce that was once on the verge of being thrown away. fruitcycle is not only giving opportunities for blemished goods to be redirected into new products, but also has a key social-justice component for women empowerment. while it sources produce that would ultimately go to waste, fruitcycle provides jobs for women who have been formerly incarcerated, homeless or are otherwise disadvantaged.

where did the idea for fruitcycle begin?

it began with a trip to a peach orchard during the summer of 2013. i was astonished by the thousands of pounds of fruit that i saw on the ground in front of me going to waste. the peaches were healthy, presumably delicious, local and nutritious, and here it was going to waste while we had one in six americans who were hungry at the same time. those statistics put together is an absolute ridiculous paradox that we have so much food waste, throw out 40% of our food, while this many people go hungry. i thought that maybe there was a way to recover that fruit before it went to waste, and turn it into a shelf-stable product that would be a healthy to boot, and then also something that would become a job opportunity for women who needed them. these were women who may be formerly incarcerated, homeless or at risk of being hungry.

what are your thoughts on the paradox of food that we suffer as a nation?

i’m optimistic that people are starting to talk about it finally, but obviously the fact that food waste still exists is a travesty. we do waste so much food as a country at all levels of the food chain, particularly at the consumer level, where it’s more or less avoidable. i think that some of the other things that are causing food waste definitely need to be addressed from a more systemic approach. but yeah, it’s great that food waste is becoming an issue that more people are talking about, and that there are more organizations such as fruitcycle coming together to fight this and developing many solutions. hopefully things will change going forward.

what do you think of the potential for millennials to become aware of food waste and why should they get involved?

i think that they should definitely get involved, and honestly that’s where a lot of this push is coming from. i think that millennials are really interested in food and learning about where it’s coming from and how it’s produced, sort of the more hands-on approach, like learning to can ourselves. i think it’s only natural that millennials care about food waste. especially because food waste is becoming, as it should, the next environmental issue. food waste just has so many impacts, it’s not just the food that we’re wasting, it’s all of the inputs that went into that food, whether it’s the water, or the oil that was used to transport it from california to d.c., with many stops in between. or it’s the fact that if we’re putting food into the landfill, it’s contributing more methane gas. you know, there’s more food in landfills than almost anything else, so it’s creating all sorts of problems for us, really. so, yes, millennials should care about food waste, and i think they will or already do.

how has fruitcycle been received? have there been any challenges marketing your brand to people who may be unfamiliar with food waste?

not necessarily, because food waste has been getting so much attention, people think it’s really great and are supportive of the idea. i know that other people in this space have experienced some hesitation over the fact of people not really understanding why the produce was going to waste and thinking that maybe they were using, you know, rotting fruit or something, which obviously isn’t the case. i’ve never experienced that personally, but everyone that i have interacted with, whether i’m doing demos or at events, they love the mission and think it’s amazing. especially the tie-in, that we’re not just providing second chances for the produce, but also providing second chances for women and so people really respond positively to both of those things.

fruitcycle’s mission is “to do good – for its suppliers, its employees, its customers, its community, and its planet.” you spoke about providing not only second chances for the produce, but also for women who have been formerly incarcerated, homeless, or are otherwise disadvantaged. did this social-justice aspect of sustainability develop in tandem with fruitcycle?

it was simultaneous, i knew that i was going to combine both of those things when i had the idea. that came about because of the food paradox in the us, and the volunteer work that i had done with various different organizations in d.c., particularly d.c. central kitchen—i’m heavily inspired by them, and specifically work i had done there with a case manager who had himself been previously incarcerated. even though he was male, just the struggles that he faced trying to re-enter into our society, and turn his life around really resonated with me. i had worked with some women in organizations in the city and sort of just combined those two things.

i worked with two non-profits, the first was called together we bake, a training program based in alexandria, virginia for women who are formerly incarcerated, homeless or otherwise disadvantaged, and my first employee came to me through them. it’s an 8-week long baking-training program where women get their food handlers’ license, learn how to make cookies and granola, and stay in this program centered around empowerment and development. there’s classes on overcoming some of the issues that they face, they do yoga, and some other activities in addition to the production and business side of things. as a side note, as of jan. 1, fruitcycle is now a part of together we bake. the other nonprofit that i have worked with is n street village, a community of empowerment for homeless and low-income women.

when you were developing your product for fruitcycle, why did you steer towards snacks as opposed to juices or other beverages?

i had the idea, and it took a while for me to get to what the actual products were going to be. when i was first thinking about it, you know, i got the idea from a peach orchard, so i was thinking about peach products—peach chutney, because i had a really good peach chutney recipe, and frozen peach cobbler, because i also had a really good recipe for that. and then i started with apples partly because of timing, so the idea was in 2013, i didn’t actually launch until the fall of 2014, and at that point it was apple season. i was thinking about shrub, are you familiar with that?

no, i’ve never heard of that!

it’s basically a drinking vinegar, a historic, colonial-era way of preservation. it’s fruit, vinegar and sugar—i know it sounds revolting, but they’re primarily used as cocktail mixers or for mixing with soda water for an italian soda, so i made a bunch of shrub. i realized ultimately that it wasn’t the right product for me for a few reasons, one of which was from a consumer education standpoint, although there are now quite a few shrub companies in d.c., naturally! but then somehow i ended up at snacks. healthy snacking is really important to me, and with hunger, there’s a general correlation with obesity because of the quality of food that people are getting, and as someone who is concerned with health and nutrition, healthy snacks just made sense, especially given how snacking is so prevalent in our culture now. people are eating more snacks than they are meals, so it made sense from a business perspective as well as a personal mission. simultaneously i realized that i could dehydrate as a preservation method, and so, apple chips it was. it’s super healthy, i only mix the apples with cinnamon, we don’t add any sugar or preservatives or anything, and people are always really astonished by that because when they try them the natural sweetness of the apple comes out.

where do you see the future of fruitcycle going?

so we just merged with together we bake, effective jan. 1, and that’s been going really well. i’m so happy with how it turned out because now i have the opportunity to have a positive impact on the lives of more women with the training program. going forward, fruitcycle is very much tied to the future of together we bake now, and i think that there is a possibility of some new products down the line. together we bake makes granola, we make apple chips, why don’t we make a granola with apple chips in it, for example. last summer, also, i did a variety of jarred products sort of as an experiment. i wanted to preserve the bounty of summer fruit that was available, so i think that that’s another area where we can use some of those recipes.

more importantly than that, i think that ultimately down the road, we need our own facility. together we bake currently operates out of a church kitchen, so we need to eventually move into our own space that will enable us to increase our capacity thereby taking in more women as trainees and/or as employees from our graduates of the twb program. if we have a larger kitchen space, it helps spread our mission. and maybe down the line, it would be great to replicate this model in other cities.

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about the project

this is part three of a six-part series. waste not wednesday is a community engagement project created by ayse muratoglu, a 2015-2016 emerging leader for food security for the land o’lakes global food challenge program. the yearlong program takes 10 college sophomores who will work with land o’lakes experts to explore issues of food security, and find ways to feed the world. to learn more about the global food challenge, join the conversation at http://foodchallenge.landolakesinc.com/

where did the washington compost begin?

for three years i interned with the 2022年世界杯亚洲预选赛结果 of universities, an interest group of d.c. area schools including gw, georgetown, udc, howard and american. i was doing sustainability research for them and in my second year attended a meeting held by zero waste coordinators—these are people who manage waste on campus. they had an event where we actually visited a composting facility out in prince george’s county, maryland, where gw sends its waste from the pelham commons on the mount vernon campus. the universities had a lot of concerns that students didn’t know how to compost correctly— they would mix the garbage together, and find things like silverware. they thought that students didn’t really have an interest in sustainability, and i thought that was not true. if you started on a small scale, i think you could definitely show that university students were not only interested in composting but would actually gain a lot from sustainable initiatives, not only the waste reduction aspect of it. reusing organic matter has great impacts for the climate and for our food chains as well. it got me thinking, and i realized that this is a great opportunity to teach about the food chain, its waste, and how we could tighten it to get much more out of it than we thought we could. i worked with another student to develop a pilot composting program for the hensley residence hall on the gw mount vernon campus.

how did the first round go?

the first few weeks were a little bumpy because we had to make sure that quality was well controlled. we did weekly audits, so had to put on rubber gloves and dig through the compost to ensure that there was no extraneous waste and anything that wasn’t compostable. as we went on through the semester, we saw it grow from a good amount of waste to a full 30-gallon toter. students really took the message to heart and learned a lot about composting.

do you plan to move your initiative from the mount vernon campus to foggy bottom?

with the sodexo contract terminating and the new dining hall coming in, there’s a real opportunity for composting to be involved with the new vendor. a lot of universities already do it, so it wouldn’t be a stretch of the imagination that there would be an opening to try and educate students on how to compost. our best way to contribute is showing that there is student interest, and that education really does have tangible impacts.

to some, this idea of food waste is still very new, and people may not realize the impact that it has on our environment and economy.  how did you engage students?

(in a study) 72% of gw students affirmed that climate change is a real issue to them and that they want their university to be more active. we can always do more when it comes to sustainability and climate change. when you tell people that emissions from decaying food releases methane that can be 13-30 times more potent than greenhouse gas emissions, it gets their attention. one of the best features of the washington compost is that it gets you to separate your waste streams. when you pull food out of your garbage, it doesn’t all just go to the same place, and you have to consciously make an effort to see how much food you actually paid for that will go uneaten. up to a quarter to one third of all food that american families purchase will go to waste. food grows on trees, obviously, but it doesn’t always end up in your stomach. and a lot of times, it ends up in our atmosphere, when it could have helped serve underserved people in our area. there’s a huge hunger problem in our city, as well as in the united states in general, and getting people to look at just one part of our food system will cause them to think more critically.

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about the project

this is part two of a six-part series. waste not wednesday is a community engagement project created by ayse muratoglu, a 2015-2016 emerging leader for food security for the land o’lakes global food challenge program. the yearlong program takes 10 college sophomores who will work with land o’lakes experts to explore issues of food security, and find ways to feed the world. to learn more about the global food challenge, join the conversation at http://foodchallenge.landolakesinc.com/

by 2050 there will be 9.6 billion mouths to feed. providing food to nourish this ever-growing population presents a daunting challenge — to address this critical issue, we will have to produce more food in the next 50 years than we have in the past 10,000. experts say that we will have to produce 69% more calories to feed this many people.

there are solutions to this global food challenge. one is around food production. much emphasis is placed onto the production of food as a solution to the challenge, but we face a number of environmental and economic constraints on global food production. currently, the limited price and availability of fertile land and energy have proved to be problematic for food security strategy. and it may take more than a few decades to transition to a system that embraces more sustainable, efficient farming practices.

maybe the solution isn’t food production. perhaps we can do more around food conservation. some experts argue we produce enough food as it is, we just don’t distribute it equitably and we waste a lot of it. most americans do not realize we have a food waste problem. it is estimated that we waste 25% to 40% of the food produced globally. instead of putting resources into growing our food, why don’t we try to see how we can more efficiently consume it?

this blog is part one of my six-part series called waste not wednesday, which will provide an overview of how food waste is a critical issue in food sustainability. i will examine how people and organizations are developing solutions to food waste through community and corporate initiatives.

i’ll cover how a university strives to reduce its “foodprints” through composting programs, as frank fritz did with the washington compost at gw.

i’ll introduce innovative entrepreneurs like elizabeth bennett of fruitcycle, and philip wong and ann yang of misfit juicery, who whip up delicious snacks and beverages using re-routed ugly produce that was once bound for the landfills.

lastly, i’ll profile dc central kitchen, a food-recycling nonprofit revolutionizing the soup kitchen by cooking nutritious meals with surplus foods. and i’ll even try my hand at cooking a meal in my dorm kitchen using “ugly produce.”

i hope to inspire my readers to realize how much can be done to address food waste in your own kitchen, dorm, campus and community.

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about the project

waste not wednesday is a community engagement project created by ayse muratoglu, a 2015-2016 emerging leader for food security for the land o’lakes global food challenge program. the yearlong program takes 10 college sophomores who will work with land o’lakes experts to explore issues of food security, and find ways to feed the world. to learn more about the global food challenge, join the conversation at http://foodchallenge.landolakesinc.com/