THE KITCHEN ACTIVIST
THE KITCHEN ACTIVIST podcast will give you bite-size action steps in each episode you can implement NOW in your kitchen, the most effective place to grow well-being for people and our planet. The host is the award-winning author of EAT LESS WATER and Kitchen Activist Florencia Ramirez.
THE KITCHEN ACTIVIST
REDUCING THANKSGIVING FOOD WASTE: 5 STRATEGIES FOR AN ECO-FRIENDLY HOLIDAY FEAST
Ever wonder how much food we waste during Thanksgiving and its impact on our planet? With a staggering 305 million pounds of food wasted in the U.S. during this holiday alone, it's time to rethink our festive feasts. In this special episode of the Kitchen Activist Podcast, I, Florencia Ramirez, promise to equip you with practical tips and strategies to tackle this issue head-on. Whether hosting or attending, learn how to plan meals that align with your guests' preferences, helping you reduce waste and save money. By understanding what your guests enjoy, you can adjust quantities, especially of items like turkey, to ensure nothing goes to waste.
Join me as we explore five impactful steps to transform your Thanksgiving meal into a more sustainable and eco-friendly celebration. From utilizing a meal plan template to harnessing the power of community, discover how you can contribute to a waste-free holiday while strengthening bonds with family and friends. As we look forward to the podcast relaunch and exciting projects on the horizon, such as the Kitchen Activist book and Collective membership, let’s come together to celebrate a delicious and mindful Thanksgiving. Thank you for taking this journey with me towards a more sustainable future.
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Welcome to the Kitchen Activist Podcast. My name is Florencia Ramirez and I'm your host. That has been away for a little while as I hit the pause button on this podcast, but today because, as we're approaching the Thanksgiving holiday, I wanted to not let this moment pass, because we are at the apex of food waste. As you may have noticed, I haven't podcasted for a while, but I have been busy at work finishing the Kitchen Activist book, which will be out in spring of 2026. And I have been working on putting together a Kitchen Activist Collective membership, which I'll be talking about more in the next coming month or two. I will be restarting this podcast, beginning in December.
Speaker 1:Right now, this is a special episode because I want to talk about Thanksgiving waste and to give you some really simple ways to reduce, to dial back not just your food waste, but also the money that we're throwing away, which is in the billions when we look at the collective amount of food that's wasted. Let me just start with some statistics that are just mind-boggling, just to get us started with the why. Why should we care about food waste? These are the reasons. We, on Thanksgiving alone, throw away 305 million pounds of food in the United States, that is equivalent to 2933 million. So there's so much talk about the cost of groceries. We could dial back what we spend on groceries immediately by planning. I have a meal plan template that I hope you're going to download. It is a key component to dialing back your food waste, but also the money wasted. If you consider a 20-pound Thanksgiving turkey that's conventionally raised right now when I looked it up, it's about $50 for a 20-pound turkey. The average waste for one turkey is 40%. We're throwing away 40%. So a $50 turkey we're throwing away $20 right off the bat. Now if you are someone who's purchased a pasture-raised turkey from a small-scale farm, that price for a 20-pound turkey will be between the range of $80 to $100. So if you're throwing away 40% easily, you're throwing away about $40.
Speaker 1:I'm going to keep this nice and short and just dial in on five key action steps that you can take right now. This is why I wanted to post this now. We have a couple weeks before Thanksgiving so that you can start now to dial back your food waste. This is especially the case if you are hosting Thanksgiving, so you are the person who is coordinating. But even if you are not coordinating or hosting this year. You can still make some big impacts and dial back food waste by getting involved, asking whoever the host is for this Thanksgiving meal if you can help them to come up with the meal plan. My guess is that any host will be happy to accept help with organizing the event, especially if that means it'll save them money. So this is a place where you can especially help the host, and if you are the host, this is something to do right away.
Speaker 1:Action step one it is to plan your meal thoughtfully. This means start writing down your Thanksgiving menu the turkey mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole cranberry sauce like all of the things that you normally serve or are served at your Thanksgiving feast. Now take that list and if you're technologically savvy, you can turn this into a survey that gets sent to all of your guests, so like a, to see who in fact likes those dishes. But for me, putting together a poll is too difficult, but I want to achieve this is just simply with a text, and in the text message listed all the things and asked if you could just put a tally and let me know if you like that particular entree or side dish. When I did it last year. I found out that nobody liked the green bean casserole, so that immediately was taken off the list. I also learned that only one person liked the cranberry sauce. I also learned that only one person liked the cranberry sauce. I just let that person decide whether or not they wanted cranberry sauce at our Thanksgiving meal. That is such a simple way to reduce food waste and dollars wasted at Thanksgiving. Just find out what people like and how many people like it. Once you figure out how many people like a particular dish, that information is so important for the person who's making that dish. So if it's the host who's making everything, or if it's a potluck style, then that information is given to whoever is making that dish. For example, sweet potato casserole. Seven people at your Thanksgiving feast like that dish. So let whoever is making that sweet potato casserole know that they only need to make enough for that particular amount. So instead of doubling the recipe, maybe really all they have to do is half a recipe right, or cut a recipe in half.
Speaker 1:The next action step is to re-evaluate your turkey size. You have the data collected from either your poll or just a really simple text message of who eats turkey. We know that each person eats about half a pound of turkey and I actually think that's on the higher side. I've even seen some articles online suggest you should have a pound of turkey per person. That right there is why we are throwing away 40% of it, because most people are not eating a pound of turkey, and this is especially the case for younger children. I know in my family none of the kids like turkey. Maybe one kid liked it, but nobody likes turkey.
Speaker 1:Evaluate that, find out and then adjust. I would start with half a pound and then go down from there. Probably most people would sit at a quarter pound of turkey. So that will give you a sense of how big should your turkey be. But remember, most turkeys are quite large. When I gave the statistic for 20 pounds, it's because most of the turkeys you find at the grocery store are large turkeys, are 20 pound turkeys, but it could be that you're not going to eat anywhere close to that and you also know from past experience that nobody is wanting to eat turkey leftovers. Four days after and even when you freeze it, it never comes out of the freezer and it's never seen from again until it hits the trash can months or years later. So reevaluate the size of that turkey, or even if you want a turkey at all.
Speaker 1:What I've done in the past is, if I know that we have a small party or a small subset of people who want turkey, we'll roast a chicken instead, and, quite frankly, it's much easier to roast chicken than it is to get turkey right. There's a reason why every year you hear chefs talking about ways to keep turkey from drying out. Because it does dry out, because it's such a big bird it's really difficult to cook it right. But that's not the case for chicken. So why not have a delicious smaller poultry dish on your table? That's just. It's juicier, it's moist and there won't be that same level of waste, if any waste at all. Maybe turkey shouldn't even be served, or chicken, if nobody is interested, stop serving the poultry.
Speaker 1:We make our own traditions right. Each family has their own tradition within these larger traditions, of these larger holiday traditions. One year, what we did? Because my kids were younger and nobody liked turkey actually, nobody in the family besides my husband and myself really liked any of the side dishes either. So we just had a completely different menu, which was pozole. Everybody liked pozole. They loved the idea of having a chicken pozole. So that's what we made. And for me, I love to have stuffing on my Thanksgiving table. I love stuffing because it reminds me of when I was a little girl and I helped my mom make stuffing. I just made a very small portion of stuffing from scratch, just for myself, and I just ate it that day and the next day and I was satisfied and there was no waste. So that's another way.
Speaker 1:Another action step is to shop smarter. So once you've collected the data, once you've decided how much turkey you should buy or whether or not to serve turkey at your Thanksgiving table, it is to create a shopping list Before you head to the store. You want to shop your pantry and your refrigerator first, and also your garden and your neighbor's gardens, before you head to the grocery store. It's not enough just to have a shopping list. You need to make sure that the shopping list is generated in your kitchen when you're looking through the shelves to make sure you're not duplicating any purchases. This is the same thing for your weekly shopping list. Shop your kitchen first. So, on the meal plan template that I have in the show notes or in the comments, you can link to a free template with a shopping guide. You will generate your meal plan, then hop over to your food shopping list and on the very top it reminds us to shop your kitchen first and your farmer's market and then the grocery store. Easy, that is such an easy way to reduce waste of food and money is to shop your kitchen first while you're generating a shopping list. And it's key to have a shopping list period because whenever you walk into a store or the farmer's market without the list, you will overspend Absolutely. So you want to make sure you dial down based on the dishes you're going to make, based on the number of people who will be eating that dish. So you have so much good data to work with so that you can really nail down how much food to purchase and not a dollar more.
Speaker 1:Action step four cook fewer dishes and from scratch Again. Going back to action step one, which you can hear over and over again, is so key. So action step one, with that data and the poll that you've taken, will tell you which dishes you should really cook. Is this a year that green bean casserole goes to the wayside? Is this a year that green bean casserole goes to the wayside, or maybe people who are gathering at your Thanksgiving table are really not that interested in stuffing, so you can eliminate that from your Thanksgiving menu. So if you're cooking fewer dishes, then there's no reason why this year you can't cook more of them from scratch, because when we cook from scratch, we control the quality of ingredients and we reduce unnecessary waste. We eliminate preservatives and so much and we use a lot less packaging. We use fewer, so much and we use a lot less packaging. We use fewer, higher quality ingredients and we support agricultural methods that are good for the planet, such as organic, dry farmed, biodynamic, and this reduces food waste and ensures that your meal is healthier and more sustainable.
Speaker 1:If others are, if this is a potluck, the same thing you can ask. You can't force the other home cooks who are bringing dishes to your table to do anything, but you can give suggestions. You can offer a recipe with each of the dishes. There's ways that we can approach it, just to invite others to cook from scratch, because we all know it tastes better when food is cooked from scratch. Our bodies do not need food additives, we do not need preservatives, we do not need the chemicals. We want this feast to be as a nourishing for the spirit as we come together as a family and friends, but also for our bodies too. It as we come together as a family and friends, but also for our bodies too. So let's feed our guests and ourselves the best food out there.
Speaker 1:Step five have a leftover plan. You likely will have leftovers, so be prepared by having a plan on how you're going to store and repurpose these. When you have the meal plan template, if you already know you're going to have leftovers, you can plan in advance of what those meals are going to be for the coming week, based on the leftovers. Also, ask your guests to bring containers with them so that you don't have to use Ziploc bags and waste plastic to send people with leftovers. They can have their containers ready to go so that they can serve what they want to eat, not just serve them and send them with food that they may not even but they are too polite to say anything. Before you put all the food away, ask everybody to have their containers out and to go around and just serve themselves what they want to take home that they'll eat in the next couple days, so the leftovers can be enjoyed by everybody who came to your table and nothing gets either composted or thrown away. So, in conclusion, those are those five steps.
Speaker 1:I'm going to go over them just one more time In summary. Action step one to plan your meal thoughtfully this is the poll, or the survey to your guest. The second is to reevaluate your turkey size. Action step three is to shop smarter. Make sure you're building that shopping list while you're in your kitchen, so you're shopping the ingredients inside of your kitchen first, so you don't duplicate purchases. Action step four cook fewer dishes and cook from scratch, so you can control those ingredients. And the last is have a leftover plan and remind your guests to bring containers with them to your Thanksgiving feast.
Speaker 1:I hope these five action steps help you to reimagine your Thanksgiving meal, to be more sustainable and waste-free and to save money. This is a low-hanging fruit. We can absolutely reduce the waste that we're producing collectively in the United States. So check the show notes for a link to take you to a meal plan template, and I wish you and yours the most beautiful and delicious Thanksgiving this year, remembering that we have so much more in common than we don't. And thank you so much for listening and spending this time with me, there is power in the collective. Be well.