The numbers are anywhere from 40 to 50 % of food in the USA is wasted, thrown away before it gets to the consumer or after the consumer buys it.
Not only do we waste food by letting it go bad, we are picky about the shape and size and blemishes of food.
Besides that? We don't even know what is edible. We limit ourselves to only part of the food we buy.
The entire radish is edible, from the root to the leaves to the flowers and even the green seed pods. Save the mature ones for sprouts in the winter when produce is expensive.
Pumpkins are versatile, too. Not only the flesh of the pumpkin is edible, but the seeds are good roasted and the leaves are edible and nutritious.
Broccoli stems and leaves are often thrown out, but they're good food, raw or cooked, just like broccoli.
Cauliflower is the same. Peel tough stems.
If you grow a garden, you have probably tossed a ton of dried bean pods. They make a good nutritious tea.
Mature Okra seeds can be dried and cooked just like beans.
Corn silk makes a great tea.
Winter squash like butternut, acorn and spaghetti squash, have seeds that are great when toasted like pumpkin seeds.
Scrub potatoes before peeling, toss the peels with olive oil and a little salt and bake them to a crisp. They taste kind of like potato chips but better.
If you make pies, don't throw out the leftover bits of pie crust. Roll it out, spread a little butter on it and sprinkle cinnamon and sugar. Bake at 350 until lightly browned, just a few minutes.
Put back bread scraps and crumbs to make bread pudding or use in stuffings and so on. They will keep in the freezer until you need them. As each bread sack is emptied, I put the crumbs in a container in the freezer and it's amazing how fast they add up.
There are more. People didn't used to have such an abundance of food that they could toss what they didn't want. We should be so wise.
