Interesting. My dogs would have eaten just about any vegetable. All you had to do was drop it on the floor.

I wonder if the study counted stuff most people would naturally dispose of such as potato or carrot peels. Technically they’re edible and no one living in starvation would consider tossing them, but I don’t eat a lot of peels, the ends of celery or such.

My dog as well.

As for peels and cores, I toss them under my raspberry bush if they're not consumable. They break down eventually and because of the thorns, the raccoons and rats leave the piles well alone. Does amazing things to my fertilizer budget. My green bin gets some traffic, mostly spoilt meat, tough to break down vegetables bits or mixed stuff, but I have a neighbour who's green bin goes out full and reeking of spoiled food. No idea how they do it. Family of four adults (two elderly) and two elementary school kids...maybe 8-10 years old...

Mr. travelmad478 and I throw away almost nothing (luckily, both of us were this kind of person before we met/married!). Meat bones and eggshells are it, really. Very rarely, the produce we buy spoils before we can eat it--cheap Roma tomatoes, I'm looking at you!--but even then the spoiled stuff goes in the compost, which goes into the vegetable garden, so I'm counting that as utilized :D I freeze tons of things, including vegetable peelings/scraps for stock, chicken bones for stock, portioned-out tomato paste, ice cube trays of chopped cilantro, etc. I save and render chicken fat and bacon fat to use for cooking. We strictly save leftovers and do eat them...it pains me to throw anything away. We have in inventory, but rarely use, things like mayonnaise and ketchup, and they live in the fridge for literally years without spoiling--I am living proof that food preservatives work!

I'm only 55, but have the cooking habits of someone who came of age during the Great Depression, for some reason. This does not extend to all things (I like to get a new car every decade, for instance), but I do tend to keep items that still function for as long as possible, within reason.

Egg shells you can toss into the compost pile (or if you're inclined to break out the pestle and mortar or an old coffee grinder, you can blitz them until they're near powder and sprinkle in the garden or feed to chickens if you raise them). Meat bones (if you have the time and patience) you can make into bone meal and also add to your garden (bone meal helps with roots and fruiting... the P in NPK). The disadvantage is that you need to boil the bones for 4-6 hours and then when they dry out, break them down with something. Boiling them down will dissolve any soft tissue as well as any meat.... but smells pretty bad.

There's nothing wrong with not wasting where possible. It's just difficult in today's world where most things are designed with built-in obsolescence.... including the food.

My parents feed their egg shells to the birds, but if I did that (I live in a city), or put them in my compost pile, I'd be seeing a lot of rats. No thanks! Re: meat bones and making bone meal, I draw the line at that much labor/hassle to make something that you can buy for a few bucks. (Like the one time I decided to grow fava beans, and spent money for seeds plus many hours of labor of planting, harvesting, and shelling to end up with maybe two cups of actual beans!)

If they're dried out, and ground up, you won't see rats. I live in the city as well. Rats in my neighbourhood is mostly from people not disposing of garbage (mostly the neighbourhood restaurants) properly. I toss my shells into a container (where they dry out) and every once in a while, I take my frustrations out on them in the pestle and mortar (again, you can use a coffee grinder, just don't use it for coffee after the fact). I've also been planting mint strategically in my back yard (in some small plastic cups... if you plant mint bare, be prepared to do a lot of weeding) on top of making judicious use of my raspberry bush so the rats have been discouraged from feeding in my yard.

I don't cook, and I definitely always clean my plate at restaurants so I guess none - in all seriousness, when I lived alone, my refrigerator often only consisted of a single carton of eggs and nothing more. I hated cooking at the height of COVID lockdowns and am not good at it due to my OCD - cooking a chicken breast took over 3 hours with all of the cleaning I had to do in the kitchen throughout the process to "avoid salmonella." Going out to eat, ordering a single item, and not having any leftovers has been a much better and more fun system for me.
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Same here (51) but with more expensive/exotic ingredients these days :). The "some reason" is likely that it's the way our grandparents lived through the depression and our parents were raised and acted the same because of it. And I love that you save your chicken and bacon fat too. It's the one thing my wife believes in wasting - and it pains me to see that luxurious fat go into the garbage. It also reminded me of another great bacon fat story that involves my brother-in-law, which I'll save for another time!