Save Money and Nature Through Proper Food Storage

Food is a basic human need. It is also considered as one of the most fundamental rights of each and every person. In fact, the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), adamantly supports every people’s right to sustenance, and fosters specific principles such as “fundamental right to be free from hunger” and “right to an adequate standard of living, including adequate food”.

Sadly, there is a moral issue on food that is quite polarized: while some citizens of the world have to suffer from scarce, and at times unavailable food source, the more privileged ones get to have too much to a point of unnecessary wastage.

If you are one of these individuals, who, either unwittingly or consciously contributes to pointless over consumption of food, here are two sets of facts which might give you some kind of a wake-up call.

Save Nature

This may sound a bit preposterous but according to research, one’s amount of food consumption is directly proportional to his or her ecological footprint. In layman’s term, the more you eat, the more you screw up the environment.

Meat production, which is one of the biggest stakeholders in the food industry, has been found out to contribute at least 20% of the total greenhouse gases which is due to cow’s immense emission of toxic methane. As we all know, greenhouse gases are the ones responsible for global warming. On a bigger scale, combining livestock rearing and crops production for the purpose of supplying food to farm animals, results to 1/5 of the greenhouse gases in the air. This goes to show, then, that healthy eating or even vegetarianism is indeed a moral choice.

For a more humanized dose of statistics, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine’s Department of Epidemiology and Population Health’s Dr. Phil Edwards says that a billion lean people is capable of reducing carbon dioxide to up to 1,000 million tonnes. Such declaration says enough about the contribution of over food production, consumption, and wastages to global warming.

Save Money

A few years back, The Times published an article that stated how Americans tend to waste 27% of available food on a daily basis. If that will be computed in terms of dollars, it will definitely be an astounding figure.
One way to address these preventable wastage is a rather easy yet efficient practice which every household can conveniently adopt: proper food storage.

Air-tight food containers can considerably lengthen the shelf life of fresh or even half-consumed processed food. Doing this minor lifestyle change, as opposed to making the beeline to the nearest trash bin every time there is leftover on the serving plate, is a legitimate way to contribute to the alleviation of a world-wide food problem, and yes, save ample amount of money.

Proper Food Storage Tips

• Invest on reliable food containers. Reliable means air-tight, moisture-resistant, pest-resistant.
• Properly label stored food in terms of date of initial consumption so as to know which ones should be consumed first.
• Be it inside the fridge or the cupboard, make sure that your food containers are properly organized so as to ensure that none will be lost amid the stack.

Joel Chang Joel Chang is a marketing manager at JAF Gifts, a gifts and centerpieces company. He also runs a scraps to crafts hobby-turned-business in his spare time.

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