It’s hard to believe that we wrapped up our second challenge this month. We worked with Forgotten Harvest, a nonprofit that is working to reduce food insecurity in the metro Detroit area by rescuing food surplus and distributing the surplus to agencies around Macomb, Oakland and Wayne counties. The team that I was on focused specifically on reducing waste throughout the food recovery process.

This challenge was definitely eye-opening for me, as I have never directly experienced food insecurity. But it was learning about food waste that made me reflect on my own patterns as a consumer. As a single person household, I always struggle to consume all the food that I purchase. Especially when it’s perishable. As I move away from this challenge, I find that I am more aware of what and how much I am purchasing during one shopping trip.

Although I don’t always throw away food based on the date, one important thing I learned during this challenge was that the dates printed on food items are not federally mandated, and do not refer to food safety. That means the date is simply a quality date that is selected by the manufacturer, and each manufacturer may have different guidelines. As a consumer, I’ve found that there are several websites that can help identify dates for food items that are safe to consume once they’ve passed the date stamped on the container. If you’re interested in learning more, check out http://stilltasty.com/ or http://www.eatbydate.com/.

If you’re interested in learning more about food waste, check out this video clip from “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver”:

Although I don’t set New Year’s resolutions, I know that I am going to focus more on reducing my own food waste during 2017, and I encourage you to think about ways you can reduce your own food waste in the upcoming year as well.