Documentary: Just Eat It

This post is about food waste. The two words sound ridiculous together. Food and waste. But still we waste a lot. A third of all food grown worldwide! That is a lot. And that’s why I am sharing a documentary about this subject today. It’s called: Just Eat It.

Absurd

Just Eat It. It sounds like a very well know fun song, but the cause of this documentary is not fun. When I hear how much food we waste as humans I am ashamed. People don’t have to be hungry, we just created an absurd system that causes them to be hungry (not just because of food waste, but also because of capitalism. Anyhow, more about that another time). Food is a basic need, it’s the base of life together with water. It’s absurd to waste it. We put so much effort and resources into producing food and then we just don’t use it.

The problem consists of two parts. 1. We waste too much food. But also 2, it’s distributed unfairly (which aligns with the distribution of money worldwide). I see charity commercials every single day and they frustrate me (even though I find charities amazing!). Why can’t we solve these problems?

‘Imagine walking out of a grocery store with four bags of groceries, dropping one in the parking lot, and just not bothering to pick it up. That’s essentially what we’re doing.’

Dana Gunders

Just Eat It

The distribution problem, that’s something else. But back to food waste. Just Eat It is a documentary about food waste. The documentary Just Eat It is a mix between the story of one specific family and facts about the food system and food waste in general. The family which is followed is going to live from rescued food for 6 months. At first they receive food from a friend who is going to move and would otherwise throw the food away, but later in the documentary they try many more things like dumpster diving.

The things they find are unbelievable. A whole container (!!) filled with hummus for example. The date has expired, but it’s still fine to eat. The documentary won a list of prices! The family which is followed also lives a zero waste lifestyle. They were known before from The Clean Bin Project, the first documentary they made.

The story line in between in the experience of the family is also very shocking. I learned that supermarkets have cosmetic standard for fruits and vegetables for example. They don’t buy any imperfect food from farmers. And you also see how many products are stripped before they even reach the supermarket. Celery for example, almost half of the entire thing is stripped before it goes to the supermarket. Or that consumers don’t buy the last product in the shelve because they think that there must be something wrong with it (even though that is not the case). We also discussed this subject in school a while back. People then told that they would throw away the first a last slice of the bread they buy. That’s insane!

Practical Tips

Personally, I have learned some good things from the documentary:

1. Don’t buy fruits and vegetables from the supermarket, but buy from organic farmers. They sell all their produce (but it doesn’t harm to ask).
2. When you buy something, buy the strangest looking vegetables. The taste is the same but most people don’t buy those.
3. Ask the farmer: are you going to throw away any food? Sometimes they have that produce on the side, out of sight. Buy that and pay for it properly.
4. Planning is important! Make lists for your groceries and stick to those lists.
5. And a tip from me: use TooGoodToGo! An app to buy food that’s about to expire.

There are more reasons why you shouldn’t buy things at the supermarket but directly from the farmer, but that is hard to do. Extremely hard. And I get it if you don’t always manage to do that. Maybe I’ll share more about that subject soon. The tips that I shared above are mostly about when you shop. Soon I’ll share more about how not to waste food at home. Stay tuned and watch Just Eat It!

Have you seen the documentary: Just Eat It?

Yours sincerely,
Romee