One of the things that I am most guilty of is wasting food.

I tend to shop for groceries when I am really hungry, which makes for a deadly duo. And two weeks later half of my groceries end up going bad before I can eat them or they sit in my pantry or refrigerator for far too long that I enviably throw it away because I realize that I will never actually eat it.

In a perfect world I would be shop smarter, I would meal prep and utilize every last grocery. In the world that I live in, I try to make myself feel better by giving whatever scraps are left on my plate to my dog instead of tossing it in the garbage.

It gives my character a little boost to know that at least the food is being eaten by someone.

When I think about it, we as Americans truly take advantage of the resources that we have available to us. Even during this pandemic as shelves are cleared constantly- we are able to find food and have more than enough food to get by. Yet, we continue to waste food because of our greed.

Not everyone is as fortunate.

In the United States, food waste is estimated between 30-40 percent of the food supply, according to the USDA. This estimation is based on estimates from the USDA’s Economic Research Service of 31 percent food loss at the retail and consumer levels, corresponded to approximately 133 billion pounds and $161 billion worth of food in 2010.

Now compare that to 40 million people who based on numbers from 2017, struggled with hunger in the U.S.

The USDA defines “food insecurity” as the lack of access, at times, to enough food for all household members. In 2017, an estimated 15 million households were food insecure.

I may not be an expert by any means and I may not even have a solution, but I would like to share one easy way to stop wasting food.

I stumbled across this website on the Internet and I think it is a really great and easy way for people to use all of their groceries without wasting things that they may not find useful anymore. It’s also a great tool for people that are on a budget, but still wanting to make a delicious home-cooked meal.

The website is called SuperCook. With a simple Google search, you can pull the website up.

On the left hand side of the website is a side bar that allows you to enter the various ingredients that you have on hand. You can enter a few things that you would like to use, or you can even enter all the groceries that you have on hand.

There are different categories for each from dairy and vegetables to spices, sauces and meats. Once you enter all of the ingredients that you have, hundreds of recipes will appear that are compatible with what ingredients you have on hand.

Utilizing this tool will allow you optimize the groceries that you have on hand and hopefully act as one simple step towards reducing your food waste.