Cauliflower power

One thing that I have written about repeatedly is food waste and again I’m going to talk about it because 1 in 5 kids in America, one of the richest countries in the world, is still hungry! Why is that? Simply because we waste so much food but it isn’t about what we throw away or the portion sizes we are buying, it starts all the way from the farm!

While watching the documentary Wasted on Netflix, one thing that I didn’t even think about is how much waste a farm has. For example, when you buy cauliflower, the head of it is grown in the center of the plant and harvested but what about the remaining surrounding parts of the plant? Yes, you guessed it, it is thrown away. So many nutrients are present in the leaves and the stalk but that is considered food waste. Unfortunate right?

By helping farmers harvest the entire plant and making use of that part, we could nip the food waste problem in the bud, so to speak, at the beginning of the supply chain process. Why isn’t this being done currently? Well, that would mean you have to pay farmers more, grocery stores will have to stock these items, restaurants must figure out how to serve these items, and customers must be educated about these benefits—time is money so these points are not worth tackling unless you are an entrepreneur who wants to solve the food waste crisis.

With growing trends to eat clean, cauliflower is now showing up as pizza crust but why not do more with the plant and possibly help feed hungry kids in the US at the same time.