10
votes
Meal kit delivery services like Blue Apron have an overall smaller carbon footprint than grocery shopping because of less food waste and a more streamlined supply chain
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- Meal Kits Have Smaller Carbon Footprint Than Grocery Shopping, Study Says
- Authors
- Jonathan Lambert
- Published
- Apr 22 2019
- Word count
- 1211 words
Interesting, but I actually think there's another conclusion to their study - we need to work on wasting less food.
Though I get what they're getting at, I still feel this headline is comparing apples and oranges. They are basically saying ordering a two person boxed meal is better than buying for six, cooking for two and then tossing the rest. (I made up the numbers, since they only had 5 "trials" and only mentioned the 12 pack burger example). Anyways, to which I say - no kidding!
And I'm not going to get into how I feel about plastic waste verses food waste, there's more than enough of that in the media right now.
As a person living on my lonesome, I find it hard to shop cheap and also not be wasteful, as far as perishables go, at least. I tend to end up eating the same meals for weeks on end. Sometimes I like to get outside of that box, though...
Yeah, when I lived alone a couple years back I really struggled with that. My freezer was tiny, so that wasn't much of an option too.
I found that too when I was living on my own, especially for things like a fresh loaf of bread. I ended up eating the same thing for all my meals days at a time. It definitely did get boring. I started buying more frozen veggies and freezing as much as I could, so I could rotate meals at least.
Yea, not sure why I haven't considered frozen vegetables, before... I tend to buy onions and tomatoes fresh and chop/dice em up (so as to work on my knife skills (which still suck)) and end up using them throughout the week for everything. Which, is fine, as I think those particular vegetables go well with many dishes. I'll also buy fresh cilantro, but I can never seem to use it all before the bunch goes bad. A little cilantro tends to go a long way... Lettuce is another vegetable I have trouble using before it goes bad. I'm realizing most of my vegetable purchases are for use in a sandwich context. I rarely eat vegetables as a side.
Haha, I have the most boring sandwiches because I just can't stock lettuce and fresh whatevers just for a slice here and there.
I've been trying to grow my own herbs to be able to have them without buying a tonne every time. I have cats though and currently can't protect them very well...
I have found a food saver to be really helpful in situations like this. You can buy in bulk and then repackage everything at home for single servings. Or you can cook in large batches and freeze the leftovers really easily into individual servings.
Brown rice freezes and reheats quite well.
Veggies can be frozen and generally speaking it won't mess up their texture all that much to do so.
Most meat can be frozen before cooking. I often prep meat with marinades for a few hours in the fridge after buying and then freeze it.
If you separate out your materials into smaller servings (enough for just a few meals), freeze most of it, and then cook after thawing you can make a variety of dishes from meats, veggies, and brown rice and avoid eating "the same meals" for weeks on end.
While canned isn't ideal for everything, I think it's fine for certain perishables like most vegetables and is another way to cook smaller meals and avoid eating the same stuff constantly.
Good tips! Thanks~
I definitely eat my fair share of canned fish and beans and soups.
I think a key aspect for me that the article fails to mention is that these meal packs were entirely designed around a 2 person home.
When I first moved to NYC I tried Blue Apron in order to see if I could continue to cook for myself, but the lifestyle that NYC enables is not one well fitted for cooking bachelor meals. I would find myself getting overrun with meal packs (3 meals to feed two people). Leftovers can only remain appetizing for so long, and by the time you’re wrapping up one pack, you have a backlog added by the next shipment. Inevitably I had to throw out food that had gone bad.
Perhaps I didn’t realize how easily I would have been eating out, but I have a small stomach to begin with, making leftovers necessary. It also expects multiple hands in the preparation, which for a single person can add up extra time for food preparation, and increasing my commitment to the plan.
The last straw for me was that I had conscientiously deferred a few weeks of food shipments, hoping to use a more ad-hoc model of the service, but they only let you cancel so many weeks in advance, and when I discovered I had a shipment I did not expect I knew I could not continue a service that was unsustainable.
Perhaps I’m in the minority of users, but I certainly wasted food for lack of planning my entire week around it. I’m sure it wasn’t good for the environment, and that’s partly why I stopped (it also wasn’t any cheaper than if I had just gotten groceries for each meal myself).
For a case like that I actually found subscribing to a CSA to be a lot more useful. Grocery shopping was a bit of a challenge for me just because so many things are packaged for a family of 4 and anything that's appropriate for a bachelor is always a sad, hyper-processed ramen meal. With a CSA you kind of have to develop some cooking skills to make it work, but just having a crate of produce each month made it way easier to be flexible about meal prep. Kits like Blue Apron force you into specific recipes which winds up being pretty constraining.
If you have surplus produce at the CSA I generally found people I could give things away to. I did have to get used to making lots of soups and stews though. They're just really easy to throw unfamiliar ingredients into without having to think too hard. Alternatively there is the "rice + stuff" option.
CSAs mostly are just produce though. So if you still usually have to get your own protein (lentils, meat, tofu etc.) unless you get one that provides eggs. But even then, how many eggs can you eat a week? You also need to stock spices and some dry goods yourself to supplement. But it winds up being much cheaper than a meal prep service once you do it.
Yeah definitely feel like there is a lot of food waste with Hello Fresh and the other New Zealand based one, My Food Bag.
Most of the left overs are just the rice or potato base that is used to pad out the meal. Unless you're able to mix that with something else for lunch it's not particularly useful.
I'm not concerned about pricing though. It keeps me on a fixed weekly price for dinner versus a variable one with takeaways. It means I am forced to have more variety of ingredients, especially more vegetables.
I'm not one who enjoys cooking or figuring out meals from arbitrary ingredients at hand. So these things help me to avoid thinking about something I just don't like doing.