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“Just Eat It” film reflection with the
T2T food rescue team

Twenty-five percent of all the food we buy goes to waste. Imagine having 4 bags of groceries, dropping one in the parking lot, and just leaving it there. Credit: Scene from Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story (Peg Leg Films)

A bell pepper seedling blooms on the screen as Simple Minds’ “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” begins to play. The camera follows one pepper as it forms on the plant, is picked, and is transported to a processing facility. It’s placed in a box with several other peppers, shipped to a grocery store, set on the produce shelf, and finally purchased by a lucky consumer.

After its months-long journey it is placed in that person’s refrigerator. We watch as the pepper turns yellow, then orange and red - then it loses its shape as it rots on the shelf, forgotten.

As we watch, every member of the Table to Table team groans or exclaims once it becomes clear no one is going to eat that beautiful pepper. For a team that spends all their working hours rescuing food from such a fate, it’s almost painful to watch.

In Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story, filmmakers Jen and Grant decide that for six months, they will only eat food that was headed for the waste stream. They source this food by asking grocery stores if they can look through items that have been culled from shelves, or by going straight to the dumpsters behind stores to see what’s available. T2T staff gathered to preview the film together before we showed it on the big screen at our drive-in movie night. Read more take aways from the T2T staff!

Start your “Just Eat It” film discussion

Plenty of questions came up for T2T staff members while we watched “Just Eat It.” Here’s a few to help you begin your own discussion on the impacts of food waste and what changes we can make ourselves.

Feel free to reply to this email with your thoughts and takeaways on the subject!

Littering is considered taboo. Why is wasting food generally acceptable?

Retailers often respond to consumer habits -- for example, when they cull produce that has a unique shape or a small blemish, believing that consumers won't buy "ugly" produce. What other habits and preferences do you recognize in yourself or consumers in general that determine how retailers operate? How can we make changes that will lead to less food waste?

Should organizations face consequences for unnecessary food waste? On the flip side, should organizations be paid an incentive for avoiding food waste? What effect do you think a policy like these would have?

The film points out that the last time the U.S. Government ran a large campaign against wasting food, it was during WWII. Food for thought: does our country have to be in crisis for society to think about resource utilization?

Were you surprised to learn that the majority of food waste takes place in homes? What takeaways did this movie provide in terms of changing your own habits?

Thank you to MidWestOne Bank, Platinum Sponsor of
our 25th Anniversary Year!

A huge thanks to Summer of the Arts and The City of Iowa City for teaming up with us on our drive-in movie night, to local band Pennies on the Rail for playing such fun pre-movie music, and to Aero Rental & Party Shoppe for providing a popcorn machine perfect for our drive-in!