With the exception of exactly two three people, everyone posted some format of sugar for this week’s Project52 Assignment: Food. The vast majority of them by far were sugary confections: dozens of cupcakes, muffins, cookies and other baked sweets. Running far behind in second place came fruits: one bowl of oranges; one portrait of two pairs; a closeup of blueberries; a bowl of strawberries; a sliced orange. In third came starchy vegetables: a sliced potato with onions (raw); a sliced carrot (raw). The carrot is my go-to vegetable when I am craving sugar. It is nice and juicy and lightly sweet.
The three non-carb submissions were: a bottle of wine; the contents of a refrigerator (plenty sweets inside, but it was not a photo of sweets); and lastly, two eggs. The eggs were my absolute favorite. One brown, one speckled on a worn tabletop. Round. Warm.
Then, there was me. The title of my post was “Food for Microbes!” Technically speaking, it is incorrect. My food is infested with thousands of macroscopic creatures. Following is my post.
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“Getting food to our tables eats up 10 percent of the total U.S. energy budget, uses 50 percent of U.S. land, and swallows 80 percent of freshwater consumed in the United States. Yet, 40 percent of food in the United States today goes uneaten. That is more than 20 pounds of food per person every month. Not only does this mean that Americans are throwing out the equivalent of $165 billion each year, but also 25 percent of all freshwater and huge amounts of unnecessary chemicals, energy, and land. Moreover, almost all of that uneaten food ends up rotting in landfills where it accounts for almost 25 percent of U.S. methane emissions.”
—Natural Resources Defense Council
1)
I take in homeless food waste. In winter, not much happens to it. Freeze-thaw breaks down cell membranes.
2)
Spring comes. Today I mixed the food with old leaves and woodchips.
3)
This is last year’s finished compost.
4)
All that is left to waste is the bones. As we have learned from the dinosaurs, bones can last a very long time
