For my event I chose to attend Santa Cruz County’s presentation on food waste. I found it incredibly insightful as it reinforced many of the points that I have thought of when thinking of the benefits of meal prepping. Meal prepping, and lowering food waste in general, has both financial and nutritional benefits. One can save loads of money by skipping out on excess food and ingredients one might not actually use. Likewise, with streamlined options one can tune into their health and what their body really needs. For instance, I am eating significantly less food, but much more nutrient rich food, so my protein intake is off significantly while my overall caloric intake is down significantly. My compost bin is only filled with leaves and branches from my backyard, not leftover food.
Another interesting fact that they touched on was that lowering food waste helps you become a better cook as you need to become more dynamic in your cooking skills to reclaim ingredients that might go to waste. One of the presenters was a chef from South America, and he talked about how one should always buy ingredients that have a “brother” or “sister” ingredient that go with it. For instance if one buys multiple heads of lettuce, one might also buy a bottle of ranch as it can serve as a way to go through the lettuce. Overall I found this presentation incredibly interesting, and I feel even more confident that meal prepping is the correct option when trying to mitigate food waste.
Sign up for their event on June 1st and learn how to “become a food waste warrior!”