Last summer, seeking to declutter my overstuffed refrigerator, I called upon Tamar Adler, a professionally trained chef and culinary acquaintance, for assistance. My kitchen had become a graveyard of culinary remnants, a collection of forgotten leftovers and forlorn ingredients. I jokingly framed the task as a low-budget, domestic version of Iron Chef.
Upon opening the fridge, Adler was met with a scene of culinary neglect: stale tortillas, bacon fat aged nine months, a half-head of romaine lettuce wilting and browning, sweet potatoes sprouting eyes, a softening zucchini, a wrinkled mango, and two carrots – one adorned with root hairs, the other pliable as a horseshoe. Embarrassed, I offered a mumbled apology, “Most of this probably should have been, uh, thrown away.”
But Adler’s perspective was different. Undaunted, she trimmed the browned edges from the lettuce and bravely tasted a leaf. She peeled the root hairs from the carrots. Combining these rescued items with frost-touched leek scraps and a thin spring onion, she simmered them in chicken broth, creating a surprisingly fragrant and flavorful lettuce soup. A handful of aging walnuts, limp herbs, leftover rice, juice from a shriveled lemon, and zucchini matchsticks were transformed into a vibrant salad. Even the bacon fat found new purpose, enriching tortillas simmered in chicken stock and the last bit of tomato paste, becoming unexpectedly delicious chilaquiles. Had this been a real Iron Chef competition, her chilaquiles would have undoubtedly been the winning dish.
From what I considered an “empty” fridge, Adler conjured enough food for dinner, lunch the next day, and another dinner. Left to my own devices, I would have likely dismissed the wrinkled, softening, and slightly imperfect ingredients, tossing them directly into the trash.
And this, precisely, is the core of the problem.
American food culture suffers from a pervasive lack of appreciation for the “good-enough.” The rhetoric of locavore chefs, the conventions of food writing, and even contemporary food television often lean into the hyperbolic, celebrating only the ideal. We crave the flawless peach, the freshly caught fish, the just-laid egg. Utilizing what is available and perfectly edible, rather than what is deemed “perfect,” is not seen as practical resourcefulness, but rather as a sign of culinary inadequacy. This relentless pursuit of food perfection, this Food Fetish, is a major driver of waste.
Yet, this very food fetish, this obsession with absolute freshness and aesthetic flawlessness, is responsible for an astonishing amount of food waste. Forty percent of the food produced in the United States ends up in landfills. Much of this discarded food is perfectly edible, even if it may not meet idealized visual standards. The waste begins in the fields, where farmers, acutely aware that buyers might reject shipments for failing to meet strict size or color criteria, initiate the culling process. Food that passes this initial hurdle then proceeds to processing and distribution centers, where further selection occurs. From there, it travels to supermarkets, whose marketing strategies heavily rely on presenting an image of abundance and visual perfection. This results in even more waste. Retailers are responsible for discarding approximately 10 percent of America’s food supply, primarily because it doesn’t look “good enough” for sale.
Of course, even food that makes it to store shelves and is purchased is not guaranteed to be consumed. As my own refrigerator demonstrated, consumers with unrealistic meal planning or simply larger appetites than stomachs often contribute significantly to waste. According to Dana Gunders, a scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) specializing in food and agriculture, American shoppers discard about 25 percent of edible food after bringing it home. Overall, we are throwing away 50 percent more food than we did four decades ago.
Retailers are responsible for discarding about 10 percent of America’s food, much of it because food doesn’t look good enough to sell, perpetuating the food fetish for perfect produce.
Food is currently the largest single component of solid waste in American landfills. And each instance of food waste represents a corresponding waste of the resources required to produce it. The water used to grow this discarded bounty, if conserved, could meet the annual household water needs of 500 million people – equivalent to the combined populations of the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The energy invested in growing this wasted food is estimated to be 70 times the energy released by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, according to Jonathan Bloom, author of American Wasteland and advisor on the 2012 NRDC issue paper, “Wasted: How America Is Losing Up to 40 Percent of Its Food from Farm to Fork to Landfill.”
This ingrained habit of discarding any food that deviates from visual perfection – a habit shared across the food supply chain from farmers to consumers – stems from both marketing pressures and deep-seated human instincts. For retailers, projecting an image of limitless abundance and flawlessness is essential to their business model; it drives sales. However, the illusion of an endless supply of affordable, perfect food makes it easy for consumers to casually discard anything that doesn’t align with their idealized vision. This, in turn, reinforces consumer expectations of consistently finding flawless produce regardless of season or availability, according to farmers and retailers. “The problem in America is that the perfect is the enemy of the good,” states Doug Rauch, former president of Trader Joe’s. “We’ve come to expect things to be perfect. But things in nature do not grow ‘perfect.’” This expectation is a direct consequence of our food fetish.
Instinct also plays a significant role in this food fetish. There is an evolutionary basis for our aversion to a hairy carrot or a slightly wilted lettuce leaf. “Generally speaking, slimy and odorous things are decaying,” explains Paul Rozin, a psychologist specializing in food choice at the University of Pennsylvania. Millions of years ago, our ancestors learned through experience to avoid food displaying signs of spoilage, which often indicated the presence of harmful microbes. This ingrained survival mechanism, while crucial for our ancestors, now contributes to unnecessary waste in a modern context where food safety standards are significantly higher.
“The problem in America is that the perfect is the enemy of the good,” says former Trader Joe’s president Doug Rauch, highlighting how our food fetish drives unrealistic expectations. “We’ve come to expect things to be perfect. But things in nature do not grow ‘perfect.’”
Increasingly, policymakers and marketers are confronting the challenge of reducing food waste within a contemporary food culture deeply rooted in abundance and this food fetish for perfection. Efforts are underway to broaden consumer perceptions of “edible,” challenging the standards shaped by years of marketing. In the European Union, which declared 2014 as the “year against food waste,” French supermarket chain Intermarché launched a campaign to reshape customer shopping habits. They introduced a new product line aptly named “inglorious fruits and vegetables,” featuring oddly shaped carrots and misshapen eggplants – perhaps not visually stunning, but perfectly suitable for juices and soups – sold at a 30 percent discount. This initiative directly confronts the food fetish by promoting the value of imperfect produce.
In the United States, retailers are focusing more on supply-side practices rather than directly challenging ingrained consumer food fetish habits. Doug Rauch, the former Trader Joe’s president, is pioneering a new venture. He is launching Daily Table in the Boston area, a low-cost supermarket concept whose inventory will consist of nutritious, flavorful food that might be slightly older or less visually perfect than items found in conventional grocery stores. On the West Coast, Grocery Outlet has built a $1.5 billion business with 220 stores based on a similar principle: purchasing surplus food from producers and manufacturers at reduced prices and offering this “rescued” inventory to budget-conscious customers at significant discounts. These models offer practical alternatives to the prevailing food fetish driven retail system.
Simultaneously, even large-scale food service operations are adopting innovative waste-management strategies. LeanPath, a waste-tracking system currently used in over 150 kitchens nationwide, reports that its clients can achieve waste reductions of up to 50 percent and food cost savings of up to 6 percent. These technological solutions help to quantify and address waste at the institutional level, indirectly combating the culture of food fetish by emphasizing efficiency and resourcefulness.
Paradoxically, some of the most vocal advocates for reducing food waste are individuals who could be seen as contributing to our culture’s food fetish in the first place: chefs and food writers. My friendship with Tamar Adler blossomed after she published her 2011 book, An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace. In it, she passionately and enticingly celebrates the culinary potential of kitchen scraps and pantry staples. (This is noteworthy given Adler’s training under Alice Waters at Chez Panisse, a restaurant renowned for its commitment to top-quality, garden-fresh, heirloom produce, seemingly the antithesis of salvaged ingredients). Last fall, veteran food writer Eugenia Bone released a comprehensive 400-recipe cookbook largely dedicated to the idea that creatively repurposing leftovers fosters a healthy “kitchen ecosystem.” And Gabrielle Hamilton, a James Beard Award-winning chef with an MFA in fiction writing, dedicates a chapter of her acclaimed cookbook Prune to “garbage” recipes: flavorful soups from Parmesan rinds, vinegars from wine remnants, and side dishes from braised zucchini tops and cauliflower cores. These culinary figures are actively working to dismantle the food fetish from within the food world.
What accomplished chefs understand – and what home cooks often overlook – is that despite our cultural food fetish for “perfect” food, the true perfection of a meal lies not in its appearance but in its preparation. With minimal effort and attention, ingredients destined for the trash can be elevated to starring or supporting roles in satisfying meals. For professional chefs, conservation is more than just an ethical stance; in a restaurant context, wasted food translates directly to financial losses, creating a rare alignment between sustainable practices and profit motivation. This economic imperative can be a powerful tool in combating the food fetish in professional kitchens.
For the record, the rice salad Adler and I prepared that evening was not entirely successful. The balance of acid and oil was slightly off, and lacking demanding customers or dinner guests, neither of us felt compelled to perfect it.
Ultimately, the meal’s perfection, or lack thereof, was irrelevant. What mattered was my willingness to eat it anyway. In this instance, “good enough” proved to be more than sufficient. It was a step away from the wasteful food fetish and towards a more sustainable and pragmatic approach to food.
TRACIE MCMILLAN’S EATING ADVICE
For practical guidance on minimizing food waste, I rely on the USDA’s Agricultural Library online, a resource for reliable, unbiased information on food storage and preservation. Jonathan Bloom’s blog, Wasted Food, is an insightful and engaging exploration of the food waste issue. (Bloom’s recent campaign to promote “ugly food” by collecting images of letter-shaped fruits and vegetables is particularly noteworthy in its creative approach to challenging the food fetish). For meal preparation inspiration focused on utilizing available ingredients, I frequently visit Eugenia Bone’s Kitchen Ecosystem blog, which centers on recipes designed to use every last bit of food on hand, a direct antidote to the food fetish that drives waste.
