I don't know about others, but very little meat has ever been wasted in my house. The fresh meat needs to be used within a few days (although I've noticed that vacuum packed meats are often dated to keep under proper refrigeration temperatures for at least a couple of weeks). After the meat is cooked, it's still good for a few days, often a week. And if we can't eat it all that quickly, then I freeze it.

It's always the fresh produce that goes bad before it can be used up.

Since the article mentioned avocados frequently, it needs to be pointed out that one of the worst produce items for going bad is avocados - you wait and wait and wait for it to finally get ripe enough to use... then when it's finally ripe, you cut it open, only to find it rotten inside. I've had the same problem with things like nectarines and peaches though.

Berries - very, very short shelf life. Eat them within a day or two of when you bring them home from the store. Hopefully you managed to find a package that didn't have any mold spores in it, or the entire package will be ruined in the blink of an eye and need to be tossed.

Zucchini, cucumbers, lettuce, spinach, broccoli, asparagus, etc - looks great in the store, but only because the produce workers have culled the pieces and packages that have wilted, browned, yellowed, become mushy, or moldy. But the customer never sees that huge bin of rotten perishable produce in the back room. Ironically for the vegan/vegetarian and environmentalist mindsets alike, the rotten produce will either be dumped in a landfill, or delivered to a hog farm to feed the pigs. I prefer it to be fed to the pigs, so you can enjoy your ham, pork chops, sausage, and bacon.



Once you find some produce that seems to be as fresh as possible, if you don't eat it within a couple of days, then it gets mushy, moldy, and inedible. Into the trash that goes too, but you probably don't have the option of delivering your trash can full of rotten produce to a hog farm, so it is totally wasted. If you buy frozen or canned, that means more processing, travel, and packaging has been put into it before purchase. But the trade-off is that it keeps far longer.



If you're buying any produce out of season for your specific area, that will involve hundreds or thousands of miles of travel - Not only is "in season" a very few short few weeks of spring, summer, or early fall for most produce, there's plenty of produce items that won't even grow in many areas of the world due to the short growing season, or the overwinter freezing. Northern climates would have no fresh produce at all during the winter if it wasn't being brought in from hundreds or thousands of miles away. (And also why the current supply chain issues have affected the availability of fresh produce)


Back in my carby days, even as much bread as I ate, it was not unusual for bread to get moldy before we could use all of it. Any bruises on stored potatoes can lead to rotten potatoes in a relatively short time. Even other long storage root vegetables such as carrots and onions only keep for so long before they rot and need to be tossed.



The amount of processing, packaging and travel involved in producing fake meat substitutes is outrageous, especially considering the inferior nutrition they provide - definitely not a truly environmentally friendly option.



It's a logical fallacy that eating real meat is the primary problem when it comes to the environmental impact of food production. Stored properly, meat can keep as long (or even far longer) than produce items or bread.