Fight Food Waste Through Mindfulness

Meditating isn’t just good for stress. Thinking deeply about your actions help you better understand yourself, your actions, and your environment. Included in this environment is the way you live: the way you work, sleep, relax, and even the way you eat. Incorporating mindfulness is a way to help reduce food waste in your everyday life.

What is mindfulness and why with our food?

Mindfulness means practicing moment-by-moment awareness of our inner selves (thoughts, feelings)
and our surroundings (body sensations, environment). While mindfulness is known to be a fix for stress,
it can help develop a sense of self-awareness. With this self-awareness, we’re able to detect problems and
get to the root of them. In this case, practicing mindfulness while we shop for food and eat may help point
out flaws in our grocery shopping and eating habits.

How can we get started?

Here are a few ways to get started on being a mindful eater:

Create a Shopping List

Don’t go shopping without intention! Keeping a list of the necessities helps you stay focused and organized. Remember: don’t shop hungry!

No Electronics at the Table

Keep distractions away while you chow down. When it comes to mindfulness, we are taking the time to put phones and laptops away to be with ourselves. Without our electronics in sight, we are at peace to focus on/enjoy our food.

Take in the Moment at Dinner Time

With mindfulness, we give ourselves time to clear our minds, be present at the table, and give gratitude to our lives. Through this, we are paying attention to our food from the way we eat it to the way it tastes. While eating, think about where our food comes from and how much we eat so we can take note of how we shop for our groceries.

Fighting food waste starts by looking at our own habits. By staying mindful of our groceries and food
intake, we’re looking for our own flaws and fixing them step by step. Combining mindfulness and
our focus of food waste will help our peace of mind and take a small bite out of the global issue.