I am not sure I have blogged about this but in August in addition to my MDS and Careplan duties at work I also became our new Dietary Manager. One of the things I have to do is complete a Dietary Managers class in the next year. I am taking an online class from the University of North Dakota. One of my first assignments was to read an article from a periodical and write a short report about it. I chose to read, " Truth In Trash" From the Sept 2007 issue of Today's Dietician, by Libby Mills.

To understand eating and food behaviors, Dieticians are picking up shovels and digging beneath the practice frontiers of dietetics using the Foodie-ologists. Foodie-ologists are a crossbreed between dietitians, archaeologists, anthropologist and sociologists.

She talks about the things Archaeologists have found in their digs showing us that in prehistoric digs and how they show a pattern of our first meals of meat, seeds and nuts. All of this leads us to todays trash and taking a closer look at the by-products that we are leaving behind.

Before man turned from hunting our diets showed more whole foods.

Our trash leaves insight into our daily life practices, food and culinary development. It recreates history, supports dietetic application and foretells the future.

Never before has society generated so much trash as we do now. It is a foodie-ologists dream. What people are throwing away can be very informative. Out of sight out of mind describes our consumed food/trash relationship.

The Garbage Project a University of Arizona nationwide study found that self reports of eaten food did not match the garbage generated.


Now there is a big damn surprise! How many of us have in our day gobbled a whole package of cookies and threw the trash away or even buried it in the bottom of our trash can so nobody else would see it?? I know I have back in the day.

She goes on to state that discrepancies occurred with recall, accuracy and selective reporting. That perceived good behaviors were over reported and bad behaviors were under reported.

I don't' know how many times I have gorged myself on ice cream, cookies, candy and then hid the evidence. It used to buy those little pint sized ice creams at the drug store hurry home and eat one or two before anyone else got here. Do you THINK I would fess up to that to some stranger doing a study... yeah right!! Besides the calories and carbs don't count if you get rid of the box do they??

Something else she wrote about that got my attention is a new clan of people called "Freegans" who get food from dumpster diving. They have online communities, blogs, and meet ups. They have been spotted raiding grocery store garbage and restaurant garbage bins. Outside of the 35th St Market in New York divers can find fresh food such as fruits, veggies etc.

Americans discard an average of 4.1 pounds of waste each week.

She also wrote about some of the new things we are doing to manage our wastes such as composting etc.

Waste management can reveal who we are, what we value. In a sense the truth of society is in our trash. What do you think they will find in a thousand years about our garbage today? How many of those little plastic cookie trays do you think they will find?? What will that tell our ancestors about how we ate?


She had a lot more to say and you can read this article here http://www.todaysdietitian.com/newarchives...t2007pg84.shtml

You would probably get a kick out of Motel of the Mysteries by David Macaulay. It's a visual spoof on Howard Carter's find of Tut-Ankh-Amen's Tomb.

After the ancient civilization of Usa was buried under an avalanche of junk mail....

Valerie,
Sorry to be so late answering this I didn't see it before. I am meeting myself both coming and going at work this week. I just checked online and our Library does have this book so I put in a request for it.

I will admit I am a freak and I love reading this kind of stuff... and mysteries. ..

EWWWW!

Ewwww is right! Although my Dad did pick up a hitchhiker one time years ago (70s)
who asked to be dropped off at the McDonalds in the next biggest town as he got his food out of the dumpster.... ICK!!! I am sure out there he got pretty hungry as at that time there were only about 5 towns in the whole area of about a 150 mile radius that were big enough to even have a Mickey Ds.

I have done volunteering for a local homeless shelter and we regularly hit stores for their discards---it was one way to make sure the people got veggies and fruits---many of the things you and I would pass up---are really just fine--a few spots maybe but definitely still edible--as well as damaged goods too

many years ago I worked for Hardee's at closing each night food left in the box was to be discarded---but I would take it and drop it off at a spot where some homeless men hung out at night---that was until someone reported me and I got in trouble with my boss---all that food left had to go in the trash---I got around it though---I would put it in a trash bag and place it out by the dumpster and informed the men where it was

This lady I work with used to get food that was to be tossed out by a restaurant where she worked for the homeless and she got fired for it. A shoe store was tossing out the previous years stock and found out this same woman and her friends dumpster dived to get the shoes for the homeless folks. The next night all the overstock/out of season shoes were slit so no one could get use out of them. People can be very wasteful and throw out things that people could get use out of. It would be great if stores would give this stuff to homeless and domestic violence shelters etc or a community food bank instead of tossing it out. That way someone would still benefit from it and the company could have a tax write-off instead of just discarding the item and getting nothing.