More Americans Eating More Fresh Food

For several years, the nutrition advice has been to eat more vegetables and fruits for a healthy diet. The USDA has moved from the old “food pyramid” to an eating guide based on the dinner plate and moved from making grains the foundation of a healthy diet to emphasizing vegetables and fruits. A story  reported by National Public Radio says that vegetables are beginning to take center stage in more American homes and restaurants. The USDA dietary guidelines are good for your health and a secondary effort to reduce food waste is good for the environment.

NPR Commentator Bonny Wolf reports in the same story that the new trend in vegetable-focused dining also includes efforts to reduce food waste by getting people to consider a “stem-to-leaf” dining approach that captures the parts of vegetables that many people would throw away, such as cabbage cores and broccoli stems and leaves, which have made appearances in a special salad designed by a group of concerned chefs, growers and producers who have formed the group known as wastED. The special salad, offered in some restaurants, features many of these “scraps.”

At the Connecticut Food Bank, we work hard to make fresh produce available to our member programs and the hungry people we serve together. With the help of food growers, food retailers and food industry partners, we are able to source large quantities of fresh and frozen food to help families provide nutritious, balanced meals. And our new distribution center in Wallingford provides the significantly increased capacity for us to receive, prepare, store and distribute more fresh and frozen food than ever before. More than 30% of the food distributed last year by the Connecticut Food Bank was fresh produce.

Read the full NPR story here.