We love John Oliver but hate food waste. So, we’re really happy that he gets that ugly food isn’t trash and food waste is lame.

On this past Sunday’s “Last Week Tonight,” Oliver explained to the world that most food waste isn’t actually waste, or trash, but totally viable meal options that just look a bit weird. Mashable picked what could be considered the best quote of the entire show:

“Our produce aisles have become a lot like Leonardo DiCaprio’s penis: exclusively accessible to the physically flawless. And it’s not right.”

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ColumnWant to change the world? Stop eating packaged food.

A block and a half from my apartment there is a Safeway. For the last few years it has been a dingy place with dark aisles and dusty shelves, the kind of grocery store where you might just see an unmentionable rodent scurry across the floor. Then it got a remodel.

Located in the heart of a neighborhood where bike commuting and raising chickens are of the norm, Safeway knew their demographic, and the remodel followed suite. A few weeks ago the new and improved version opened, complete with brick walls, high ceilings, an abundant organic produce section and even an outdoor patio with tables and chairs for sipping afternoon coffee. Take away the Safeway sign and replace the Starbucks something a little more hip – Blue Bottle for example – and it would look just like every other yuppie-centric food shopping center. Don’t pretend you don’t have an affinity for such things – we’re all slaves to marketing.

Having always avoided the store except for last minute shopping emergencies, I entered the remodeled edition with an open mind. Access to grocery stores is not something that should be taken for granted; the fact that I can buy whole grains, fruits and vegetables a block and a half away from where I live is a luxury, and I try my hardest not to take it for granted. After all, a full grocery cart from Safeway is leaps and bounds from a dinner at McDonald’s.

On first look I was impressed. Fresh looking carrots, apples and kale? Check. Bulk foods? Wow. Topping the charts on sustainable seafood ranking? Hat tip. But as I walked around the periphery and was offered a variety of samples – “Would you like to try some nonfat yogurt with fiber cereal?” – panic started to set in. That nonfat yogurt was strawberry flavored, with who knows how much sugar. And the fiber cereal? Just one of hundreds of packaged cereals in the breakfast aisle touting the benefits of vitamins and minerals and all that other stuff that is part of a complete breakfast.

A quick look down the aisles to see jars upon jars of peanut butter (only one brand made without sugar or high fructose corn syrup) and dozens of different chewy granola bars confirmed my fears: I was in packaged world hell. Yes, much of it was branded as “healthy” – I am sure we would all be better off if kids were eating 100% Fiber Bites instead of High Fructose Neon Colored Synthetic Gems – but is healthy food just a name? As it turns out, as Americans, we don’t have an understanding of what healthy is anymore. We think avocados are fattening and bran muffins and a non-fat vanilla latte are a good way to start the day. Time for a reality check?

To pretend that I normally shop at grocery stores that don’t sell packaged food would be ridiculous – we live in a world of convenience after all and no matter where we shop, packaged foods abound. But what happens in the large percentage of big box chain grocery stores is the quantity and messaging. There is an overabundance of food that isn’t really food; it’s food elements combined with a handful of synthetic nutrients that we’re told is good for us, and because we’re busy, overworked and need to eat, we buy it. Yet our addiction to pre-made products wrapped in plastic, boxed in cardboard and labeled with colorful messaging should certainly be put to question, because not only is our health at risk, so is the planet’s.

The more processed food we eat, the further we are distanced from the food’s source. Don’t ever show a child a farm and a cow, and they might think that meat just comes from the butcher. Artichoke hearts are delicious on wood fired pizza, but do you know how an artichoke plant grows? I didn’t until a couple of years ago. The more we eat out of boxes and determine our diets by nutritional guidelines, the more we pull ourselves away from nature, losing our connection with the earth that is providing us with the food in the first place.

Take a look at zero waste efforts. In the last several years we have seen everyone from No Impact Man to My Zero Waste set out to reduce their footprint on the planet by pursuing lifestyles that reduce their all around waste. At first sight, that may sound like it’s all trash related, but take a closer look and it’s clear how inextricably linked food and waste really are. You can’t talk about one without the other.

In the documentary film The Clean Bin Project, which follows a Canadian couple as they commit to living waste-free for a year, one of the first scenes is a trip to the grocery store and an attempt at buying cheese at the deli counter that’s simply cut off the block and not pre-packaged. Buying food that isn’t packaged, even if you’re on a steady diet of whole foods, is difficult. When even bananas come wrapped in plastic, you know there’s a serious problem at hand.

Talk all you want about being an environmentalist, but if you haven’t taken a serious look at what is in your pantry, you could just as well be running over endangered turtles with a Hummer. An addiction to packaged foods doesn’t just contribute to waste, it contributes to an entire infrastructure that doesn’t support local farmers, encourages us to overeat and leads to obesity and is destroying our environment by continuing a process that is fueled by monoculture, deforestation and a multitude of other things you learn about in Environmental Studies 101. If living more in balance with nature is the path we want to take towards a more sustainable world, we have to start with food.

Question what you eat, where it came from and commit to simplifying, because real food isn’t complicated. Just because the sea salt, fennel and olive oil crackers came from Trader Joe’s and not from Safeway doesn’t mean you should be buying them. They’re still packaged, probably full of preservatives, and do you even know how easy it is to make crackers yourself?

If we have time to devote to watching trashy reality television, we have time to devote to eating well. No excuses.

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s weekly column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground, discovering what’s new and different in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to the culinary avant garde.

Image: nanny snowflake, pawpaw67

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You peruse the stands, ogle over fresh berries, contemplate which goat cheese to buy, and smile contentedly as you walk away from the flurry of farmers and produce, full basket in hand. But is that local, organic, shopping induced feeling of happiness all a sham?

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that two large grocery store chains in the Northwest were faking their own farmers’ markets to draw in customers. Back in June, Safeway started posting “Farmers’ Market” signs above produce displays in front of their stores, only to receive a backlash from the local farming community which ultimately resulted in the store changing the signs to say “Outdoor Market.”

Over Labor Day Weekend, Albertsons did a similar thing, featuring their own “Farmers’ Market” signs next to their produce sections at over 200 stores. Has the term “farmers’ market” become the new greenwashing?

Although local farmers groups support chain stores selling local goods, farmers’ market are about more than just regional produce. True farmers’ markets provide the opportunity to buy freshly harvested goods directly from the hands that grew it – a far cry from regional apples that spent days in a truck and are sampled by a grocery store employee who has a hard time telling the difference between a Braeburn and a Fuji.

And it’s not just the Northwest. People are faking their farmers’ markets all over the country. In Los Angeles, NBC did an undercover investigation on local vendors and found that some of them were selling produce that the farmers hadn’t even grown themselves, in one vendor’s case, from Mexico.

It’s all a reminder that we can never take anything in the food industry for granted; talk to your farmer and know exactly where your food comes from.

Image: Natalie Maynor

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Money doesn’t grow on trees, but the excess fruit from a neighbor’s yard can make your diet richer and it won’t cost a dime. Shouldn’t we share the wealth?

That’s the thinking of Neighborhood Fruit, created by San Francisco urban farmers to reduce the tragic waste of fruit, which is forbidden in their vision of sustainability. Their website lets subscribers find and share fruit locally both in backyards and on public lands.

Since planting the seed in June, they’ve attracted between 3,000 and 5,000 visitors a month and located a total of 10,000 trees nationwide and growing.

Much of the fruit the nation consumes is grown in water-intensive orchards far from our homes and shipped at the high cost of fuel. Instead, co-founder Kaytea Petro sees a future where the bulk of seasonal backyard fruit is utilized and shared between neighbors for snacking, baking, putting up organic preserves, even setting up a lemonade stand – any good uses you might have for the bounty.

“I first thought of the idea when I lived on Bernal Hill and my neighbor had an apple tree with a lot of excess fruit that she would never share,” says Petro, who decided to refine the fruit network notion for her graduate thesis at the Presidio School of Management, where she received an MBA in sustainable business.

“We’re a nationwide tool that helps people connect locally,” says Petro. “The typical user is someone with a plum tree who knows what a pain it is when the fruit comes in because it all comes in at once. Those seeking the fruit are into making pies and jams or to show their city kids where food comes from.”

The mechanics of connecting are simple. I register my lemons and oranges and when the fruit arrives, I put out the word on the site. “Come and get it!” I decide if I want to pick it myself or have interested takers come over with their bushels to help pick what they want.

It seems to be attracting those who don’t want to go through the red tape of becoming a registered producer who sells at the farmers’ market, the only way to sell fruit legally.

“It can be a lot of paperwork,” observes Petro, who adds that 25% of her users are people with fruit trees. And for obvious reasons, those with trees in L.A., Miami and Austin see more of a year-round yield than those in Boston and Seattle.

In addition to making connections, Petro and co-founder, Oriana Sarac, manage a monthly newsletter, The Grapevine, featuring the voices of gardeners, bee keepers and other experts in the field, as well as a blog for sharing timely articles, recipes and success stories.

They call their neighbor fruit sharing network Fruitfillment. Anyone who believes in this vision for making use of our abundance knows the ripe concept is fulfilling a mission, indeed.

Images: DieselDemon, Seph Swain, Neighborhood Fruit

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I understand: organic is expensive. And although I’m a big proponent of organic foods, I admit I don’t buy everything organic myself. But some foods are bigger pesticide sponges than others, and if you’re easing your way into organics, it’s good to know which ones they are.

Here’s my personal list of must-be-organics:

1. Salad greens (lettuce, spinach, kale, etc). The leaves are sprayed directly. Enough said.

2. Strawberries. Because they grow close to the ground, they’re more likely to attract pests and be sprayed more often. Plus, conventionally-grown strawberries are terrible for the workers’ health.

3. Peaches. Conventionally, peaches are heavily sprayed and their delicate skin absorbs the sprays more than fruits that are peeled.

4. Meat. I don’t eat meat, but if I did, I’d get the good stuff. It’s more than just your health at stake, but the environment at large.

5. Milk. Picture this: dairy cows fed with pesticide-laden grains, kept in crowded, filthy conditions and then pumped with antibiotics and Bovine Growth Hormone. Ewww. (The same goes for butter, cream, cottage cheese, etc.)

6. Potatoes. Because they grow in the ground, they absorb everything from the soil, including the chemical fertilizers and fungicides used to grow them conventionally.

7. Peanuts and peanut butter. Peanuts are well known as a “soil cleaner” among organic gardeners. This means they’re great for absorbing toxins in the soil, and can be used for preparing a plot of conventional land for next year’s organic crop. Peanuts used for this purpose must then be destroyed. Conventional peanuts, laden with toxins, are not healthy. This would explain why I used to get headaches every time I ate peanuts as a kid.

8. Tomatoes. Again, they’re thin-skinned.

9. Grapes, raisins and wine. Conventional grapes are heavily sprayed many times throughout their growing season.

10. Corn and Soy products. Conventional corn and soy is nearly always genetically modified these days. It’s best to avoid these products; the easiest way to do this is to eat fresh, whole foods and steer clear of the middle aisles of the grocery store.

11. Anything imported (produce or dry goods). Because agricultural chemicals that are banned in the USA are often still sold in other countries. You’ll have to do your homework on these products, as some are okay.

12. Bell peppers. Again with the delicate skins.

Read more about organics at The Daily Green.

Image: phigonggoi

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According to Environmental Working Group (EWG) research,  you could easily be consuming an average of 10 pesticides a day and not even know it. But that’s only if you are eating the 12 most contaminated fruits and vegetables around.

These 12 conventionally grown fruits and  vegetables, or the “dirty dozen” as EWG calls them are: peaches, apples, bell peppers, celery, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, kale, lettuce, imported grapes, carrots and pears.

EWG, by the way, is not recommending that you stop eating these fruits and vegetables. Instead, they recommend that you simply buy organic.

Why not download a copy of EWG’s convenient and easy to read A Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides to take with you when grocery shopping? Not only does it list which fruits and vegetables to buy organic, but also lists the “Clean 15” conventionally-grown fruits and vegetables that have the lowest pesticide levels. Definitely a guide worth having.

They also stress that rinsing the fruit and vegetables might reduce but not eliminate any pesticides that are present.

Image: thegreenparty

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