Waste Free Kitchen Tips with Dana Gunders

Katie Ferraro (0s):

Hi guys checking in about introducing your baby to allergenic foods. Have you done peanut yet? So it's super important to introduce peanut protein early and often to help prevent peanut allergy down the road. I was just working with this adorable baby named Florence and we did Peanut as her first allergenic food in week one of baby-led weaning. So her mom was saying how baby Florence's older brothers eat a lot of peanut butter, but thick globs of nut butter or intact nuts are choking hazards for your baby. So we use the Puff Works baby peanut butter puffs to safely introduce peanut protein to baby Florence at six months of age. And I love the Puff Works baby Peanut Butter Puffs because other brands out there have added sugar or tons of salt or weird additives but not the Puff Works baby Peanut Butter Puffs.

Katie Ferraro (42s):

They also make a Puff Works baby Almond Puff and that's for introducing a separate allergenic food category, which is Trina. So I recommend if you're just getting started with solid foods to get one case of Puff Works, baby peanut puff and one case of their almond puff as a safe, no stress, low mess way to introduce your baby to both Peanut and Trina. And you can check out puffworksbaby@puffworks.com. My affiliate discount code BABYLED works for a 15% discount @ puffworks.com. That code Is "BABLYLED" and don't put off doing peanut any longer. You got this.

Dana Gunders (1m 15s):

There are so many foods that can be frozen that people don't realize. Loaves of bread, if you slice them up, pasta sauce, milk can be frozen, cheese can be frozen. Sometimes it's best to shred it. Anything can be frozen. The question is, will the texture be the same?

Katie Ferraro (1m 31s):

Hey there, I'm Katie Ferraro, registered dietician, college nutrition professor and mom of seven specializing in baby-led weaning here on the baby-led weaning Made Easy podcast I help you strip out all of the noise and nonsense about feeding, leaving you with the confidence and knowledge you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby-led weaning. Do you guys ever go to the grocery store filled with like good intentions of, oh I'm gonna cook really fresh, wholesome meals every day this week and then you buy a bunch of produce and other fresh food only to find it rotting away in your fridge a little bit later? Well, My guest today wants to help make sure that this does not happen to you.

Katie Ferraro (2m 12s):

Her name is Dana Gunders and she is the executive director of ReFED, the only organization in the United States dedicated solely to reducing food waste. Dana is a mom of two. She did baby-led weaning with her two babies. She's gonna talk a little bit about that. She's also gonna BLW your mind with some stats about how much food is wasted in the us. She said something to the tune of like a third of all food goes to waste. I couldn't believe it. And while we both agreed that talking about sustainable food production is very important and and actually implementing sustainable food production practices is we've covered it a ton on the podcast, Dana makes a really good point that like all the sustainable practices in the world for food production fall short if we're then throwing away a third of all the produced food. So while we could sit around and lament food waste, what I really like about Dana and her work is that she provides actionable steps that we each can take to lower food waste in her own home kitchens.

Katie Ferraro (2m 58s):

So from things, things like treating your freezer as a temporary food storage machine to really learning how to understand what the dates on your foods mean, she took issue with my statement. I'm all, I've been a big like when in doubt throw it out. And she gave me like five reasons why I should not think like that. So I appreciate that she's got great ideas on how to incorporate borderline produce and delicious meals. Dana has some wonderful ideas I learned so much in this interview. She's also the author of the Waste Free Kitchen Handbook and she's sharing some great resources. So if you would like to start working towards reducing food waste in your own household, cuz I know you guys are taking a lot of time to make all these foods for your baby and food prep and you don't want them to go to waste, Dana has some great ideas. So it. No further ado. Here's Dana Gunders talking about some waste free kitchen Tips.

Dana Gunders (3m 45s):

That's great to be here Katie. Thank you.

Katie Ferraro (3m 47s):

I am so excited to learn about some waste free kitchen Tips. But before we get started, could you tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to specialize in such a unique area? Oh

Dana Gunders (3m 56s):

My goodness, about 10 years ago or more, Now I was working on a project with sustainable agriculture and I was put in charge of looking at at waste and I just started stumbling on these numbers of how much food was going to waste and I just felt like, wow, no matter how sustainably we grow our food, if we're not actually using it, it's a terrible use of our resources and just such a waste overall, especially when you consider all the people who still don't have enough food going to their tables. So I, that really lit my fire and I, I wound up publishing a report that that sparked a lot of dialogue and the issue and I've been working on it ever since.

Katie Ferraro (4m 32s):

As ReFED's executive director, what does your typical day-to-day entail? Like do you guys work primarily with business or individuals? And if you don't mind sharing, what's the mission of your agency?

Dana Gunders (4m 41s):

Yes, we are the only organization in the US that is entirely dedicated to reducing the amount of food that goes to waste across the country. And we work with so many different organizations in trying to do that. We work with food companies, with local governments, with federal policy makers, with investors, with foundations and with a lot of the groups on the ground there are so many smaller organizations that work on this in some way in their communities. So we try to act as kind of a national galvanizing organization providing data, sometimes giving out grants and also just bringing people together on the issue.

Katie Ferraro (5m 22s):

So I know when we were chatting before the interview Dana, you mentioned that you also did baby-led weaning with your two children who are five and seven. Now since our audience consists primarily of parents and caregivers and guardians who are watching out for babies six to 12 months, they're starting solid foods. Can you take us back to the time when you were doing baby-led weaning with your babies and any takeaway thoughts or messages or advice you can share about that experience?

Dana Gunders (5m 43s):

Sure. I mean it's kind of a blur to be honest. This year has become to be, but yes, I loved baby-led weaning. You know, my sister did the thing where you puree food and you put it in an ice cube tray and then then you kind of melt an ice cube. You know, you cool an ice cube down, you feed that to your baby. But I realized when I came across baby-led weaning and this idea of just sort of allowing them to hold their food And, that a, it was way easier than all that puree and defrost, pro freezing and defrost and it just really worked for us. So yeah, I remember doing it with carrots and squash and avocado and sweet potato and all the things especially you know, with our first kid I, I will admit that our second child, the first thing he put in his mouth was pizza.

Dana Gunders (6m 29s):

A pizza crust.

Katie Ferraro (6m 31s):

And he lived to tell about it, right? Like it's okay,

Dana Gunders (6m 34s):

Yeah it's survival at that point. But no we, we did wind up doing it both kids and it worked really

Katie Ferraro (6m 39s):

Well. That's really interesting because a lot of our audience kind of finds baby-led weaning oftentimes as a second time or subsequent parent like they did traditional spoon feeding, maybe like much like your sister as you explained and then they might have struggled with that or the child didn't like being spoonfed and they think, you know, second time around that first child is now possibly a picky eater toddler and they're like, listen, this is too much. I can't short order cook, I wanna look for an alternative. And that's when they find baby-led weaning. So a lot of times it's not the first time parents. That's really interesting that you fell into baby-led weaning with your first baby, which is great. Do you guys ha follow any special diets in your family? Like what sort of eaters are your kids? Is eating family meals important to you guys? Anything about your family food philosophy you can share?

Dana Gunders (7m 17s):

Yes, we absolutely practice family dinner. I mean not every night but you know, a handful of nights a week it's become a really beloved thing. You know sometimes when we've gone on vacations or gotten out of a rhythm for whatever reason and then we sit down and have our family dinner, my kids will, my kids will be like, I missed this, we haven't done this in so long. And so I know it's a time they really look forward to and we actually use it to talk about the day. So we do something we call Rosebud Thorn. When you tell us about your roses, the thing you really liked about your day and your thorn is something you didn't like and your bud is something you're looking forward to. So we, we do that. My kids are really good eaters. They are not picky.

Dana Gunders (7m 58s):

They love to try new things. I'm not sure exactly how we achieved that But. it is one of the things that's actually pretty easy about them. Not everything's easy about them but they're eating, they're relatively flexible and quite adventurous.

Katie Ferraro (8m 14s):

I love your rose thorns buds dinner conversation starter. We do high low buffalo, something good, something bad, something random about your day. And it is like so much fun we do after trips, when we started doing it, they started doing it about my meal, like what the food they like, what food they didn't like And, that something super random about the food I made them. But anyway, I love this idea of just sharing a family meals and that's one of the benefits of Baby Lynn Weaning of course is that baby can join the family at the table right from their first bite. So you are the author of the Waste Free Kitchen Handbook. I'd love to learn more about your experience writing this resource. Why did you decide to undertake this project and who is it ultimately for

Dana Gunders (8m 50s):

Sure. Well I have been working on the whole issue of food-based for over a decade and what became clear very early on is that the biggest source of food waste in our country is us 338 million of us in our households just, you know, doing our best but winding up, cleaning out the fridge and every so often and and scraping plates. So I realized that we really needed a toolkit for consumers because nobody wakes up wanting to waste food, right? You're just kind of stuck in your kitchen with a wrinkly tomato of not knowing exactly what to do with it or if you can eat it And that giving people really specific information to help them manage their food better would be an important tool in this bigger mission to help waste less food.

Dana Gunders (9m 42s):

So that's what really led to writing the the waste free Kitchen Handbook, it's part strategy. So the first part is all strategies. The second part is recipes that are either, you know, ways to use things up or they use something that typically isn't used in them. Okay. Unique recipes. And then the third part, which is my favorite is actually a directory and it's, you can look up over 85 different foods and see, you know, can you eat it if that's, if it has black spots on it, can you eat the stem? What do you do? Can you freeze it? How do you freeze it? And, and just ways to manage that particular food item because it's nice to sort of generally think about wasting less food but really having the knowledge to deal with specific foods is what makes the difference.

Katie Ferraro (10m 26s):

And who's the target audience for the Waste-free Kitchen handbook?

Dana Gunders (10m 30s):

I think it's everyone, frankly anyone who cooks. I have heard from some people who are very skilled in the kitchen that they knew a lot of it And that there wasn't a lot of new information. So if you are somebody who is like really good about planning your meals and you're a great cook and you, you know, have a lot of food and kitchen knowledge, maybe it's not for you. But I, I really geared it towards like the average person who's just kind of trying to get dinner on the table and you know, eat well. Oh

Katie Ferraro (10m 55s):

That's our people. We got a lot of like hot vest mamas. Like I have very good intentions but also my children eat pizza crust too so you know.

Dana Gunders (11m 3s):

Totally. Yeah. So I would say, you know, I use it still to this day. I have one and it's meant to be a reference book and every time mushrooms, like for whatever reason I cannot store in my brain how you are supposed to store mushrooms. And so every time I get mushrooms I am looking up what does my book say about mushrooms?

Katie Ferraro (11m 20s):

Oh I feel like all those things are like cool dry dark places. I'm like where is that? Like my grandma had a basement in a lot of foods like that in there, but like I live in San Diego. What, what does that mean?

Dana Gunders (11m 31s):

I know I used to think there should be an appliance for like a root cellar, a root cellar like appliance drawer.

Katie Ferraro (11m 37s):

Yeah, that's a really good idea.

Dana Gunders (11m 39s):

Yeah, hopefully one of your listeners will

Katie Ferraro (11m 41s):

Do it. So the title Waste Free Kitchen, does that mean exactly like zero waste? And I know like to me personally but maybe some of our listeners too that might sound like a little overwhelming. Before we get into the strategies, could you just share some of the benefits of even cutting back a little bit on waste and why we should all be moving in that direction?

Dana Gunders (11m 57s):

Yeah, sure. And I'll start by saying it is a journey. It is not, this is not about perfection. We are not purists because anything you do to waste less food actually helps. So the problem is that about a third of the food in this country goes to waste, never gets eaten, it winds up being about 400 billion worth of food for the average household of four people, it's probably about somewhere between 1500, $2,000 worth of food that you're actually buying and not eating. It has huge implications from a resource perspective. So everything it takes to grow cool sore cook food goes into growing that food. In fact, if all of our uneaten food were grown in one place, it would be a farm about the size of New Mexico, it would use as much water as Texas and Ohio combined and then all that food would get put into trucks one semi-truck every 20 seconds and they would drive all around the country except instead of going to a place where they could be used, they would go straight to landfills where the food would brought and produced methane, a powerful greenhouse gas when it got there.

Dana Gunders (12m 60s):

So, it really is an enormous waste of resources as well. And we eat, you know, wasting less food is one of the easiest and most effective things you can do in your home to impact your climate footprint and your resource footprint as well as your pocketbook.

Katie Ferraro (13m 15s):

So our audience consists primarily of parents babies six to 12 months just making that transition to solid food. A lot of our listeners are really new to cooking. So I'm curious what Tips or strategies on moving towards waste reduction can we all easily implement in our homes?

Dana Gunders (13m 29s):

Sure. Well the number one easiest thing you can do is use your freezer. More freezers are like this magic pause button on our food. And so, and especially as a new parent and you know the, the craziness of that time of life, just the best laid plans don't always happen, right? And so I think leaning on leftovers in general is useful as a parent who just doesn't have a lot of time and has a lot going on, but oftentimes you get sick of those leftovers being able to pop them in the freezer just for a week, right? It your freezer can be short-term storage, it doesn't have to be long-term storage for three months where everything gets freezer burned. It actually is really useful as a short-term storage tool.

Dana Gunders (14m 10s):

So that's my number one advice to you. I think number two is to learn what the dates on food really means. So a lot of people think that those best buy used by enjoy, by sell, by dates are telling them to throw the food out. And, that is not the case at all. So those dates you see on food are typically not about safety. They are not federally regulated and they are really just indicators of how fresh the food is or when it's at its top quality. So the way a company might come to those dates is they might have a, a focus group of 10 people in a room and they'll serve them yogurt that's one day, three days, five days, 10 days old. And for each time they'll have you give, write it a number and, and when the group number falls below seven, that's the timeframe of the food.

Dana Gunders (14m 55s):

It's really about quality and the consumer experience. It is not about safety. And so, and yet many of us believe that there those dates are telling us to throw the food out. So if we can be more comfortable with our senses and eating food beyond those dates, as long as it looks fine, smells fine, tastes fine, we can actually save a lot of food in our homes.

Katie Ferraro (15m 19s):

Hey, we're gonna take a quick break but I'll be right back.

Katie Ferraro (16m 3s):

Dana, people ask me all the time as a baby-led weaning, dietician, Katie, what do you think about the saying food before one is just for fun and I'm always like, I have thoughts like good and bad. Like the saying that comes to mind for your realm of expertise is what I always find myself saying and now I'm questioning myself. When in doubt throw it out. What do you think about that statement?

Dana Gunders (16m 20s):

I understand why people follow that phrase, but I just think it's really unfortunate that we are so scared of our food and we don't need to be right.

Katie Ferraro (16m 32s):

We have the safest food supply in the world,

Dana Gunders (16m 35s):

We have the safest food supply in the world. And also I think there's a little bit of a misunderstanding here because when people hear about foodborne illness, that is pathogens that are on the food regardless of how old it is. So that's e coli, salmonella, listeria, those are either on your food or they're not. The industry works very hard to not have them on the food, but regardless of the date on your food, if those are on your food, they're gonna get you sick, right? The bacteria and enzymes that decay food are totally different and those do not give you foodborne illness. And our bodies are very well-equipped to recognize when those have kind of gotten food past, past its edible state.

Dana Gunders (17m 19s):

And that's why if food looks fine, smells fine, tastes fine, it typically is is okay to

Katie Ferraro (17m 24s):

Eat. I and I feel like I use part of that statement when in doubt throw it out about smell if I was already questioning it. By the way, I have seven kids so like I literally waste no food and I'm not bragging here, it's just like I hate going to the grocery store and they eat everything and I try to use everything, but if it smells off and I'm like oh I don't really know how old this is in that case just from a food safety standpoint, I would throw it out. Is that an okay application of that statement?

Dana Gunders (17m 49s):

Oh yeah. I mean if it smells bad, don't eat it.

Katie Ferraro (17m 52s):

So as for the strategies, number one, freeze more. Yes lean on leftovers, but if you get tired of them it's great to use your freezer as you said, it's like a magic pause button for your food. And I love that cuz we teach our, you know, our programs are always teaching about different ways to meal prep for baby-led weaning and freeze the foods. And a lot of parents are like, dude I never use my freezer this much. But I love it because then the food is magically there when I'm ready to feed the baby. I also love the tip to learn what the dates mean, that it's not necessarily about safety And that many times past the dates that you're seeing that food is perfectly safe to consume. Any other Tips for reducing foods in the home that you think are pretty easily actionable for probably the newer cooks out there?

Dana Gunders (18m 27s):

Yeah, well one is just to be careful when you're in the grocery store we're often very aspirational when we are shopping we are gonna cook well and we're gonna eat well and and then reality happens and certainly as a new parent reality you know can throw you in all sorts of different directions. Oh

Katie Ferraro (18m 43s):

Wait, new parents buying things they don't need No way.

Dana Gunders (18m 46s):

Exactly. So you know, I mean the very organized way to do this is to plan your meals and have a shopping list and that's been shown to save money and really reduce kind of unnecessary purchases and make it faster. Which if you are running around the grocery store with a baby in your cart fast is key. So actually having a shopping list can, can conserve a lot of purposes and one of those is to help you wasteless. If that doesn't work for you and the way you operate, I think at least a quick check into your grocery cart to just go, okay, when this week am I gonna use this food? Am I really gonna use this food this week or is it December 20th and I have four parties I'm going to and I'm not going to.

Dana Gunders (19m 31s):

So I think just a reality check for your grocery cart helps. The other tip is having some night where you just use everything up and oftentimes there's a dish that people like to do, like some people call it Stir Fridays, right? And they just take whatever's in their fridge and they stir fry it and that's their stir Friday night,

Katie Ferraro (19m 49s):

Oh mine just called leftover soup but I'm gonna start calling it Stir Fridays. I love this

Dana Gunders (19m 53s):

Wasteless Wednesday, it's also popular fridge night. But whatever it is, I think there are all sorts of recipes that lend themselves to using whatever app soup is one for Todd is another. Taco night is is also one. So you know, whatever works for your household. But having that night where it's just kind of dedicated, we're just gonna eat whatever's in the fridge really can help to use things up and of course it saves you from having to buy and cook for another meal. One other thing people can do is really learn how to store food properly. And that is, you know, for herbs for instance, putting them in a glass of water as if they were flowers can help them last a lot longer.

Katie Ferraro (20m 35s):

That's a great one cuz I feel like I do throw out soggy cilantro, soggy parsley again like great aspirations of cooking with lots of herbs and then I'm like what a waste of $5.

Dana Gunders (20m 43s):

Totally. I think knowing how to revive some foods is interesting and kind of a fun tip. So anything that wilts is really, it just has had some moisture or loss.

Katie Ferraro (20m 53s):

What are some examples of foods that you can rehydrate or revive?

Dana Gunders (20m 56s):

Wilted lettuce. Wilted carrots. You know, you get carrots, get a little bendy, you just drop them in a bowl of ice water for 10 minutes, And that will typically help crisp them back

Katie Ferraro (21m 8s):

Up. I feel like celery and radishes that also works great with, cause I'm like, I'm you bringing them back to life with ice water. It's amazing.

Dana Gunders (21m 15s):

Yeah, for anything that gets stale like crackers or chips, you can just toast them for about one minute and a toaster and it will actually re crisp them and take some of that stillness away. I also love finding uses for sort of the last bits of stuff in a bag. My husband is famous for dumping the end of the tortilla chip bag with all those like tinsy little crumbs in You

Katie Ferraro (21m 39s):

Mean the best part of the tortilla chip bag?

Dana Gunders (21m 41s):

Exactly. And he'll just, he'll literally take salsa and put it on those tortilla chip crumbs and eat it with a spoon. It's like his thing.

Katie Ferraro (21m 50s):

That's awesome. I love the end of the bag stuff. We actually use it a lot in baby-led weaning for some of the slippery foods you just say like, you know, if you have the end of a a Cheerios bag, just pound it up really, really small and fine. And then for the slippery foods that are hard for early eaters to pick up, you can roll it in those foods oftentimes, which are, you know, high iron foods, like a fortified cereal which gives the baby a little bit of traction but also a little bit more iron. And then of course you're using the very tail end of your food bag.

Dana Gunders (22m 16s):

I love that.

Katie Ferraro (22m 17s):

So Dana, can we go back to freezing because I think that's when like yeah great recommendation but like how do I really freeze my food efficiently so that I can actually use it again in the future? Yeah,

Dana Gunders (22m 27s):

Well there are so many foods that can be frozen that people don't realize and I think that's really important. So for instance, bread, like fresh bread or or loaves of bread, if you slice them up and you put them in the freezer, then you can just take one slice out at a time and pop it in your toaster directly from the freezer and it'll be really fresh. Another, you know, when I go on vacation I literally just open up my refrigerator and just stick everything in the freezer. So I've tested a lot of these things. Pasta sauce is one, it kills me that like I always have half a jar of pasta sauce and it turns out you can freeze both pasta and pasta sauce just by throwing them in the freezer and then you take 'em out when you're ready to have that meal again.

Dana Gunders (23m 11s):

Milk can be frozen, cheese can be frozen. Sometimes it's best to shred it and use it kind for shredded purposes when you defrost it cuz it, the texture might change a little bit. And eggs, actually eggs are actually good three to five weeks after they're sold by date. But should you miss that or get close to it, you can take them out of their shell scramble them not, but don't cook them and put them in the freezer that

Katie Ferraro (23m 38s):

Way. So scrambled egg batter basically pre-cooked.

Dana Gunders (23m 41s):

Yeah, like raw scrambled eggs.

Katie Ferraro (23m 42s):

I never knew that. And since you've done the research research, can you tell us what you can't freeze? Like I know from firsthand experience yogurt does not freeze well.

Dana Gunders (23m 50s):

Yeah, yogurt does not freeze well. Beans, I've had mixed success with beans. I know some people

Katie Ferraro (23m 56s):

Like legumes, like dried peas and beans, pintos black beans or like green beans, snap beans, that sort of stuff.

Dana Gunders (24m 1s):

Oh like black beans and pinto, black beans, lentil, those sorts of beans. The, the texture seems to change a little bit. If you freeze them, anything can be frozen. The question is, will the texture be the same? So honestly I think with the, the texture thing, with freezing with some of the other things, a lot of this comes down to mindset, right? And if you kind of just have this mindset that you're gonna use everything you, you know, maybe overlook a texture, maybe you throw it in a blender and make something else out of it, right? Give it some new life. Maybe you, you find ways to use your mashed up cereal to you know, help with things not being slippery. I think when you have that mind, we all have such specific food habits that it's can be hard to give these general Tips.

Dana Gunders (24m 46s):

And I think if you just have the mindset that you're gonna use everything, you figure out what works best in your own situation.

Katie Ferraro (24m 55s):

Hey, we're gonna take a quick break, but I'll be right back.

Katie Ferraro (25m 52s):

I love that idea. This kind of changing our mindsets about using really all of the things that you do have in your home kitchen. Things like soups and casseroles, especially for baby's smoothies. You guys were always talking about ways to practice with that open cup with your baby, putting your borderline produce in the blender with some ice. Another one, I know my, I have a very frugal sister that has six kids as well and she saw me throw out a pineapple core the other day and she was like, next time you have a pineapple, you don't throw the core out, you put it in the smoothie. And I was like, oh my gosh, I never knew that you could even do that. And I started using that and now I'm not even throwing out the pineapple core, which is pretty cool.

Dana Gunders (26m 26s):

Yeah, totally. It turns out the greens on strawberries are actually edible, but they're a little bit tough. But you can throw those into a smoothie too and it just makes it so much easier to use strawberries in, in a smoothie. So yeah, I mean, and the other thing about I think specifically mindset around kids and food and not wasting it, it, it's challenging, right? I mean stuff's getting thrown on the floor. You wanna introduce certain flavors many times for all these healthy foods before they actually eat them. And you know, one thing we always did was sort of have a backup plan for the food that they didn't touch. And we still to this day do this. I mean we send the kids every day, we send 'em to school with their veggies and with their fruit and some days they come back in and a lot of days they don't.

Dana Gunders (27m 12s):

But we'll I'll literally take their carrot sticks that they didn't touch from lunch and I'll just chop 'em up and I'll use 'em in dinner. Or sometimes I'll take that half sandwich that they didn't eat and I'll eat it the next day for lunch. So just kind of thinking like, well is there a backup plan for this? Can we use it in our family somehow? Even if the child doesn't eat it can be a way to reduce waste

Katie Ferraro (27m 31s):

Around. And I feel like a lot of that's kind of trial and error. Like you're, you have a baby so your baby's always eating at home, then your maybe child will go to daycare or preschool and school age and you start to learn things like bananas for examples, my kids love bananas at home and I was like, why don't you guys eat these bananas that I send to school? Like the second you put a banana in a lunchbox, it becomes brown and soggy and they don't like it, well bring it home. Cause I'm definitely gonna turn that into banana bread for tomorrow. But also I'm gonna change my practice of not sending bananas as the fruit and lunch. I need to send something a little bit more durable to ensure that they actually will eat it.

Dana Gunders (27m 59s):

Totally. Yeah. And I think as your kids get older, engaging them in what's for lunch and what they're eating can really help them actually eat it. As long as you give them sort of the right choices that you're okay with. I think when they choose them they're more likely to,

Katie Ferraro (28m 14s):

And I feel like as long as you do that, the night before school was like the morning of school, I'm always like, oh my gosh, I didn't make lunches yet and there's no way I can handle you guys helping me. But I do agree with you that the more we incorporate our children into the food preparation practice, even starting from toddlerhood soon as they can stand up, if you get a kitchen tower or you can DIY one, pull 'em up next to your counter and allow them to participate in the food preparation, they're going to be more inclined to eat it. And that intern is helping to reduce kitchen waste.

Dana Gunders (28m 39s):

Totally. I think my, I have really practiced having my kids be part of the cooking process. They love it. It's annoying as how, I

Katie Ferraro (28m 49s):

Was so glad you said that Dana. Cause I was like, I'm gonna say it's annoying and people, it's annoying and it is tedious, but the end of the day the the goal is not to make them eat the food, right? They're ultimately the ones who decide whether or not they eat and how much And that we can improve their relationships with food and increase the variety of foods alike. And except when we do take those extra couple minutes and the mess, et cetera, to involve them.

Dana Gunders (29m 10s):

Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

Katie Ferraro (29m 12s):

So Dana, where can our audience go to learn more about your work and hopefully grab the waste free Kitchen Handbook as well?

Dana Gunders (29m 18s):

Sure. Well, you know, the best site out there for people just wanting Tips and tricks on how to reduce waste in their homes is called Save the Food. So save the food.com has tons of Tips and tricks and it even has a good portion of the directory from my book posted there for free on that site. So you can look up different products and how to store them and how to freeze them and all of that right there, there on that site. If you wanna geek out on food waste a little bit more, you can come to our site at ReFed dot org, that's reFED.org And that will give you sort of more of the whole food system information on all the reasons that food's going waste, how much, why, what are some solutions that we're seeing and you know, sort of the more wonky approach to the issue.

Katie Ferraro (30m 6s):

So Dana, this episode's gonna be airing in January. Lots of families trying to adopt healthier, perhaps more sustainable practices. Any sort of challenge or resource you could share to kind of get us inspired to put some of these suggestions into practice?

Dana Gunders (30m 19s):

Yeah, this is gonna sound like a brand promotion and it's really not, but Hellmann's has actually gotten really into trying to help people reduce waste and they created an app that's called the Fridge Night app and it ha, it really helps you. It has a four week program to help you waste less food in your home and especially find new recipes for ways that you can use things up. So that's one that I really recommend. Again, not as a brand promotion, but just because I think they've done a really nice job at the app and they've actually done studies and it has shown that people have reduced their waste significantly for the weeks that they're using it.

Katie Ferraro (30m 54s):

Well this has been wonderful, Dana, thank you so much for your time and all of your Tips. I really appreciate this.

Dana Gunders (30m 59s):

Absolutely, great to speak with you and I hope your listeners got at least one little tidbit of a tip outta

Katie Ferraro (31m 7s):

Well. There's like so many of them, I'm making a list here, but I'm also gonna link everything up in the show notes for this episode, which you guys can find at BLW podcast.com. Thank you again, Dana.

Dana Gunders (31m 15s):

Of course. Take care.

Katie Ferraro (31m 17s):

Well, I hope you guys enjoyed that interview with Dana. She had five amazing Tips for us on how to reduce our kitchen waste. I'm gonna summarize it real quick just in case you missed any of them or you're like, oh, I forgot about that one. Number one was use the freezer more. It's like the magic pause button on your food. Number two is to learn what the dates mean, right? That it's not always about safety. A lot of times it's about quality and a lot of us are throwing foods out because of dates on the packaging that really don't mean anything. Tip number three was to be really careful in the grocery store. We go in there, aspirational, check your grocery cart, check yourself. Am I really gonna use all this stuff? Number four was having some night a week where you just use everything up. I loved her idea for Stir Fridays and Wasteless Wednesdays or Fridge Night.

Katie Ferraro (31m 57s):

And then number five, learning how to store food properly. She was talking about like putting your herbs in a glass of water and storing things in airtight containers. Oh, actually she gave us six. I see. Now rehydrate bring some of that stuff back to light, right? You can revive or rehydrate things like wilted lettuce or carrots, celery and radishes. Or she talked about how you can toast things like stale crackers or breads or chips and kind of bring them back to life. So if you would like to check out more of the resources that she was talking about, especially her waste free Kitchen Handbook, I'm gonna link that up on the show notes page for this episode, which you can find @ blwpodcast.com/298. We're almost at 300 you guys. Thanks so much for listening and thank you again to our partners at AirWave Media.

Katie Ferraro (32m 38s):

If you guys like podcasts that feature things like food and science and using your brain, check out AirWave Media and also check us out. The podcast is online at BLW podcast.com. Thanks a lot for listening, guys. I'll see you next time.