new research debunks trad views on nutrition

[3KillerBs]

Any suggestions on breaking this cycle, anyone?

Human nature forbids it.

It doesn't matter what area of operations we're talking about, the worst employee creates the rules for everyone.

In a sewing factory with 20 employees we had one woman cause a dress code due to her lack of sense, discretion, and respect for others and another woman cause the attendance policy.

Give people the opportunity and someone will be misdating food on purpose in order to steal it for personal use and someone else will be selling it out the back door. What works at a small scale in a high-trust environment doesn't work on a large scale for the general public.

The area where more production than customer facing occurs. That area is mostly set up to be able to separate waste with little to no added labor.

Maybe separate production areas exist in very large stores that handle great volumes, but in our moderate-sized store it's intentionally set up so that things are made in front of the customers as an assurance that they can trust our practices since they can see what's going on.

There would always be an addition of labor to sort and separate different kinds of waste. Just peeling the stupid little plastic stickers of the oranges that I cut for garnish takes time that I could use for something else. Which is why I don't take them off anything that I peel (except, of course, at home where feeding the fruit peels to the chickens is a given).

Ask the meat dept what happens with the bone/fat/scrap/spoiled. Most likely* it gets picked up by a rendering plant for proteins to go to animal feed and fats to go to cosmetics. We can't go whaling anymore.

It all goes into the trash.

Grocery stores don't have real butchers cutting up large sections of carcasses anymore. The meat comes in vacuum-sealed in heavy plastic pre-trimmed from the factory. They do *some* cutting of these pieces into final portions, but there is very little waste from that cutting.

Close date items are discounted. End-date items are trashed. They can't even be frozen and given to the food pantry. I know because I often have breaks with a couple of the butchers and we've lamented the loss of unsalable but edible food together.

One such example is prisons.

Unpaid labor is one way to deal with the labor cost of separation and processings.

But unless it's for use only in the prison itself -- some prisons have farms, I think -- then you get into the ethics of involving prison labor in the consumer production streams and undercutting goods made by honest workers who have to be paid a competitive wage.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

It was good info. But at times they fall into the logical fallacy of attempting to discredit one view in order to make their own. Just like a feed maker telling me to feed high calcium food, it's red flag. So absent data, I have to verify opinions for myself until I think they are the right way to go for me. Personal red flags don't mean ignore or disagree..... just verify for myself.
Valuable points are made. But it's a simplistic overview of obviously detailed studies for the purpose of a podcast discussion. Understandably so. But I need more details. I don't believe hardly anyone anymore. So I will find where the info came from and enjoy reading more about it.

I've worked in a lot of industries, albeit for just a tiny fraction of the companies out there. In that limited experience, I find it exceedingly rare that "engineering" gets to talk or train "sales" (or "legal"). As a person in "legal" interested in how things work (its easier to defend a thing - or to know what case to settle aggressively - when you understand how the product works), I find that very frustrating.

YMMV.

Commend your "Trust, but verify" approach.

 

[Shadrach]

Really disliked the style of presenting by the podcast participants. I waded through it none the less. What I had forgotton was how the deviation levels to arrive at an RDA had been calculated.
From what I remember the average human can process around 35 grams of protein in a sitting. Again I learn't this stuff a long time ago, it takes around two hours to process. I have no idea how long it takes a chicken to process their food intake. Having a crop that trickle feeds the gizzard makes things more complicated.
What I can't help thinking is it doesn't matter much now which diet we choose for ourselves, or the chickens, there is so much crap in the system as a whole that a bit less of this or that isn't going to make much difference.
I didn't wake up with my "make positive waves" head on this morning.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Really disliked the style of presenting by the podcast participants. I waded through it none the less. What I had forgotton was how the deviation levels to arrive at an RDA had been calculated.
From what I remember the average human can process around 35 grams of protein in a sitting. Again I learn't this stuff a long time ago, it takes around two hours to process. I have no idea how long it takes a chicken to process their food intake. Having a crop that trickle feeds the gizzard makes things more complicated.
What I can't help thinking is it doesn't matter much now which diet we choose for ourselves, or the chickens, there is so much crap in the system as a whole that a bit less of this or that isn't going to make much difference.
I didn't wake up with my "make posivive waves" head on this morning.

I'd offer you a cup of coffee - but I fear it will be both cold and stale before it makes its way across the pond to you.

The early bit of statistics was one of the high points, I thought.

 

[Shadrach]

I'd offer you a cup of coffee - but I fear it will be both cold and stale before it makes its way across the pond to you.

The early bit of statistics was one of the high points, I thought.

The way the day is going it will take something a lot stronger to make the required attitude shift, but thanks anyway.

 

[EddieSalita]

I've worked in a lot of industries, albeit for just a tiny fraction of the companies out there. In that limited experience, I find it exceedingly rare that "engineering" gets to talk or train "sales" (or "legal"). As a person in "legal" interested in how things work (its easier to defend a thing - or to know what case to settle aggressively - when you understand how the product works), I find that very frustrating.

YMMV.

Commend your "Trust, but verify" approach.

Dunning Kruger effect has become an epidemic because of Dilbert principle (Peter principle) saturation.
All the while the appeal to authority is trying to set fire to everything.

It's exhausting. But I think that's the point.



I'm a carpenter. When you use the word engineer I get a ptsd episode.

 

[Molpet]

Think of the outer leaves of 500 cabbages

Prime example of waste... I use outer leaves and veggies peals for broth and soup. This is how they were still teaching at the college I retired from.

 

[3KillerBs]

Here's an example from my work today. I had 30 minutes to pick about a dozen cold rotisserie chickens. Bones, skin, meat cooked too hard to use, the elastic bands that are used to truss the chickens, and several pairs of gloves because my large worktable is about 5 feet from the nearest trash can and there isn't one between that table and the customer counter (being close to the counter and having good sight lines is why that's my worktable).

At home I'd take out the elastics and papers and wouldn't have the gloves in the first place so that I could simmer up some stock and feed the remnants to my chickens, but that's not something a grocery store can do.

At home I wouldn't have a dozen rotisserie chickens in the first place.

 

[SourRoses]

To take my job in the deli as an example,

The first thing I will do tomorrow morning when I get in is check dates on the lunchmeat and cheese. I will pull out the ones that marked for that day and set them aside in a particular place on the counter -- still in all their wrappings, both the manufacturer's plastic wrap and our cling wrap, and with their adhesive paper tags.

on the counter from as early as 6 am all the way up to 9pm.

Just to butt in a bit... as someone else who's also worked various jobs in food service and management. I think those practices rest solely on the shoulders of management.
It should be the managers who are removing expired items as they do inventory, and it should be done at end of shift, the evening before it's set to expire. That way it's out of your way, so you can prep for actually serving customers when your shift starts (always too close to opening).
Lazy managers constantly foist tasks off onto personnel, but good managers step in and keep things organized and running smoothly so workers don't have to scramble through prep. It wouldn't be too hard for them to grab up the expiring foods and put them in a crate in the walk-in. Lesser discards during the shift would just have to be tossed as normal. Wrappers are for the receiving end to remove.
The produce sections of supermarkets are also horrible with wastefulness. So, never mind how economical it is to ignore, there should be a law requiring recycling of salvageable foods. Enforced by qualification for the tax breaks they're already getting. Items under a certain weight, rotting, or contaminated would still be discarded. What's left would add up to a lot of food in every town.

 

[3KillerBs]

It wouldn't be too hard for them to grab up the expiring foods and put them in a crate in the walk-in.

Actually it is superior for the people manning their respective positions to check their own dates because it's more efficient for the person who will be making the new items to check their production sheets as they go along and write out their task lists rather than to have one person pull the dates, recording the discards on the paperwork, and then the other person have to come back with the same paperwork and figure out the day's production.

I combine the daily check of the lunchmeats and cheeses with the cleaning and the recordkeeping. I pull everything out of a section, check the dates and the wrappings -- replacing soaked-through wrappers and damaged tags as I go along -- note any close-dated items in the section's day planner, pull the paper drawer liners, clean the drawers, and replace all salable items in good order in one smooth, efficient operation that takes about an hour.

Perhaps in times past there were sufficient crew members for managers to do such things. In today's environment managers are not only required to perform management duties but also have production tasks -- manning the various positions in my deli regularly.

*Should* they have to do this? Maybe not -- though there is an argument to be made that it's good for everyone to have department managers actively involved in the daily work so that they don't make unreasonable demands on subordinates because they don't have hands-on, daily familiarity with the jobs. Regardless, in the current situation with nearly every retail operation in the USA desperately undermanned, they have to.

Additionally, in my department a full check of product dates on the floor (things not part of a specific position's tasks), a job that I did daily for several weeks when we were without an assistant manager -- takes as much as three hours even if you're only doing the refrigerated cases and not the shelf items. Not to mention that the managers mainly work day shifts because of their administrative duties which require them to interface with the corporate offices, the warehouses, and the vendors.

Finally, the walk-in is the absolute last place where any out-of-date product should be. There can be no possibility of crossing the unsalable items with the stream of goods to the customers. It would be an instant failure from the health inspector. Even a shopping cart of expired food in the corner waiting to be shrunk out and trashed can cost points.