Divers Reflection

What’s funny is that a few days before this assignment, I went through a similar situation the people in the film Divers went through. I did not go through trash diving for food, rather I noticed that Safeway had expired food on their shelves. The product was chickpeas snacks. Majority of the ones on the shelves were best by January 18 or April 1. My friend offered an interesting suggestion to ask the employee if I could get the product for free or if I could get some discount for it. So I went ahead and asked the manager. I didn’t mind that some of the products were only a few days past the best by date. I knew that the best by date was just an approximate date and that one-week after the date should be fine. Though I am not so sure if that
However I did waste a few items of food and it cost me around $15. On a regular basis, I don’t waste that much food since I live alone now but after I watched the film Divers, I wanted to investigate how much expired food I kept in my food closet. It was quite a lot. This assignment called for a change of behavior. I cleaned out my food storage and kept the snacks that expired instead of throwing them away. I try to take home the left over food I don’t finish at restaurants and consume them the next day for lunch. I made sure to pick foods that had closer expiration dates instead of taking the further dates like I normally do at grocery stores. I typically buy lots of food at grocery stores but I made a list this time and it was helpful. I also evaluated the foods I had at home before I went grocery shopping. If everyone could think about their actions before throwing food away, I feel like people would understand that it’s not difficult to decrease food waste. I actually called my mom and talked to her about food waste because she’s a pretty big food waster. She tries to save food by putting them in to go boxes for my dad and cousin to eat but unfortunately, my dad is a picky eater and wants new types of food every other day. She would try to finish them but after three days, she would throw away the left overs because she’s more concerned about food safety. I tried educating her about the fact that even though the safety dates says the food is bad by a certain date, it’s still consumable a week or more after the date. She’s stubborn so I’m not sure if she will change her practice. I understand that society has people like my mom who won’t change their actions but people who are aware and educated about food waste can start making a