Why is Eating So Hard? A Guide to Refrigeration.

Shopping for food is hard, in a world where there is a lot of pressure to be a socially conscious shopper, but the means to do so are often just marketing schemes by the same companies that push plastic-wrapped eggs. 

I have noticed a trend in my household of acquiring fresh produce with good intentions only to chuck it out a week later because it has spoiled. The root of that cycle is I honestly didn’t know how to take care of my refrigerated garden. 

Thinking about the products in your fridge as if it is not a dead plant but a living ecosystem of plant cells. The national geographic reports that exact point.

“The vegetables in your fridge are still very much alive, even though they’ve been separated from their parent plants. They still take in oxygen, send out carbon dioxide, lose water, and metabolize nutrients (which is why they continue to ripen). ” 

https://www.nationalgeographic.com › science › phenomena › 2013/06/20

The most commonly wasted vegetable in my fridge is a head of iceberg lettuce. I will paint the scenario, you make tacos one night, and three days later, you go to make a delicious sandwich with crispy icy salad. Low and behold the lettuce you just bought form the while foods are dead as the fern on your desk at work. A lesser-known secret is that lettuce, living lettuce that is sold seasonally, is no different than any other head of lettuce other than how it is stored.

Of course, living lettuce is more expensive and has the illuded exclusivity of being a seasonal vegetable. I can advise that if you are looking to save money and help the environment, stop wasting food. Food waste makes up a majority of the carbon emissions in global landfills. Most of which is rotting inside of its plastic container as we speak, and there is a lot we can do individually yo refute that issue. 

Companies that supply produce to grocers are infamously known to have a financial relationship with the companies that provide pesticides and preservatives. What if there was also a financial incentive for these corners not to package items optimally, leading us to have to come back much more frequently than if they were stored properly. 

We can hold each other accountable for only so long before we start to branch off into more self-serving options.

By mistake, I noticed my living lettuce bought in august was still in my fridge months later. Once my partner and I realized what we had done, we kept doing it. I have had only three full heads of lettuce since the summer of 2018 started, and victoriously I ate every leaf. It felt like finishing a single chapstick or being the only one on the bus at rush hour, a rare and rewarding encounter only an elite few can experience. 

You are going to be able to spend less money this year, and there is never going to be a life hack or listicle that will teach you how. How to save money is to buy things that last. Marketing firms, organizations aimed at optimizing traffic to their banks, stores and websites sell the idea there is a secret to saving money, a secret only they have and will only share for a cost. The cost is buying their product because it’s better and cost less, or so they strategically imply.

It doesn’t cost less if you have to buy it over and over again because it either rots, breaks or runs out prematurely. A decline in the budget superstore as a whole has opened up the market for more intimate shipping experiences and reduced the stranglehold cheaply made exploitative products have on us.