And since people don’t like to feel like they’re being restricted, the idea of adding something into their diet is likely to seem more appealing than taking something out. Why wouldn’t we adopt the practice of eating offal, especially when other cultures make it taste so good? International food is gaining more widespread acceptance in the U.S., which makes this a prime time for chefs and food influencers to make a push to make offal delicious again.Īccording to a 2019 study from Germany, choosing offal instead of more “conventional” meat just one or two times a week could “reduce livestock emissions by as much as 14 percent.” This sort of change doesn’t require people to give anything up to make a change-instead, it simply encourages them to try something new. As people in the United States and the rest of the non-offal-eating world gain greater access to parts of the planet where people do eat offal, we should start to question our own food habits. It’s easier than ever to connect with people on opposite sides of the world, and the relatively low prices of plane travel these days make international travel an option to more and more people across the world. The younger generations alive today are crossing cultural barriers like none before them. And in places like Spain and Panama, pig’s ears and trotters are considered a delicious appetizer, full of flavor and interesting textures. Many in east Asian countries eat tendon, which has a lovely soft, chewy texture when cooked in broth or marinated with flavorful fats. The French make pate, which is considered a luxury food item by many. Other cultures, though, continue to embrace offal and even treat it as a delicacy. Liver, for example, is an excellent source of iron, a mineral that many are deficient in. That’s a shame considering the nutritional content of many types of offal. But as Americans got wealthier and had more access to more “desirable” cuts of meat, offal fell out of fashion. A cookbook from this era entitled What Do We Eat Now? provides several offal recipes that are framed as neither exotic or undesirable: They were just normal cuts of meat. During WWII, when rationing was viewed as an important part of the war effort, organ meats were mainstream and considered enjoyable. Our disdain of organ meats is largely cultural, though. In fact, can you remember the last time you saw kidneys sold at your local chain supermarket? Wondering what happens to those organ meats? They often go to waste completely, since grocery stores know that there is limited demand for them. Instead, we’d rather opt for the chicken breast and legs instead of the liver. Particularly in the U.S., offal meats, organs including tripe, liver, and kidney, are unpopular cuts of meat. Instead, it happens before the food even reaches our homes. If we feel guilty about throwing out that shriveled cucumber in the back of our fridge, we should be concerned about pitching out that half-eaten package of ground turkey even more.īut some meat waste happens not because we forget to cook the pork that gets lost in the back of our fridge. That’s because when we waste meat, we’re not just wasting the flesh of the animal itself-we’re also wasting the huge number of resources that went into raising and housing that animal and preparing it for slaughter. Perhaps the most egregious of our food waste sins is the wasting of meat products. However, according to all metrics, the world is woefully behind schedule when it comes to meeting this goal. The often-cited Sustainable Development Goal Target 12.3 aims to reduce global food waste by 50 percent by 2030. Today's is from Gastronomy student Samantha Maxwell. Students in MET ML 626, Food Waste: Scope, Scale, & Signals for Sustainable Change, are contributing posts this month. By brotger March 23rd, 2021 in Academics, Courses, Students Reducing Meat Waste by Learning to Love Organs and Accepting Other Cultures
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |