New App Saves the Planet – and your Appetite

Sadly, my vegetable drawer is a graveyard for kale.  Seriously. I’ve bought bunches of the leafy superfood planning to turn it into a Top Chef masterpiece just to forget about it until it’s gone bad.

You know what they say: the road to kale is paved with good intentions.

Like most Americans, I do not willfully intend to waste the food that I buy; I simply lose track of the date that I bought that bunch of broccoli and by the time I remember, it’s gone bad.

Every month in America, 36 pounds of food per person is wasted.  The reason?  Most consumers forget about their purchases or are unsure how long their leftovers will last.  To reduce this staggering and needless amount of food waste, the USDA, Cornell University and the Food Marketing Institute have created an ingenious resource for scatter-brained food savers and left-over doubters: Foodkeeper, an app that tracks the lifespan of your food.

Foodkeeper has a variety of different functions all created to help consumers get the most out of their food.  Foodkeeper tracks the lifespan of your food, sends you reminders when your food is about to spoil, and explains how different food storage methods affect your food’s lifespan!

Foodkeeper is part of the USDA’s Food Waste Challenge, an initiative that asks consumers, food distributors, and farmers to reduce food waste by improving the processes through which food is grown, distributed, and stored.  As an app targeted for everyday food shoppers, Foodkeeper is a great resource for individuals to save both the environment and their wallets.

Getting the biggest bang for your brussel sprouts AND doing your part to save the earth? Can I get a kale yeah?!

Learn more about how the app here.

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