From the President’s Desk: When eating bacon is good for you
Anyone who knows me knows I do not shy away from a hearty meal. Anyone who really knows me also knows this is an understatement – food can’t hide from me, and I go to great lengths to track down new foods and flavors. That’s because, for me, eating is much more than something we do to survive.
Food is a mechanism for interconnectedness. Meals, since the dawn of human history, have brought people together to share, talk, and deepen relationships.
Food is a method of expression. When you eat something that someone prepared (even if you prepared it), you learn something about that person through taste.
Food is also a gift, especially given its variety and availability in our modern world. All food takes hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars to prepare – I realize that sounds strange since your ramen heats up in two minutes in the microwave, but let’s go into it a little further. Somewhere, someone had to purchase the land on which to plant the seeds, which grew into the food’s raw inputs, which was harvested, stored, sold, shipped, and stored again. Your meal had to pass through hundreds of hands and travel thousands of combined miles! For hundreds of years, agricultural specialists — from farmers to geneticists — have refined crops and livestock into the varieties we know today.
Chemists have played with different ingredients, including metals mined from inside the earth. Technologists have devised new ways of keeping food fresh or packaging it more efficiently. Advertisers had to come up with the product’s branding, and if it's food you bought in a grocery store, it had to be hand-stocked by a person putting it on the shelf.
Another gift food gives us is the act of cooking, which is an act of pure love. For generations, in my family, eating out was not something we could afford. Instead, cooking, passing down recipes, and sharing meals became central to our family’s fabric. Some of my best memories are of cooking with my grandmother, learning family traditions from my aunts and great-aunts, discovering my grandfather’s secret recipes, trying new foods with my cousins, exploring new cuisines with friends, and, above all, experimenting in the kitchen with my mom! And of course when food is prepared for you, eating it also is an act of love.
Because food carries so much meaning, I make it my mission to ensure that what is in our fridge does not go to waste. We all have a responsibility to honor the time, energy, and care that brought it to our table.
Too easily, a refrigerator can become a galaxy of half-empty ketchup bottles and bruised lemons, so I built a system that allows me to live out my calling. It's the same one used by growers, manufacturers, grocers, restaurants, and the others in the long chain of food production. It’s called "first in, first out,” meaning the stuff that was put in the refrigerator first (the oldest) is the first to be eaten. This is a very simple policy, but it's colored by the intense travel schedule my wife and I have. We average being at home for only one and a half weeks each month and have to continually plan what's in our refrigerator based on when we will be around to eat it.
This noble endeavor comes with its own sacrifices as I race against expiration dates. Breakfast may have to be leftover honey garlic mandarin chicken. A mid-morning snack might involve grilling up some slightly past-its-prime zucchini, seasoning with olive oil, salt, and pepper. If someone hasn't eaten their leftovers from five days ago, it's my responsibility to make it my lunch, regardless of whether I like what they ordered. Dinner may be a bowl of chicken salad, pasta salad, and regular salad all mixed together. I may not have been planning on adding bacon to my chicken tikka masala, but if today is its last day, on it goes!
Now you're probably wondering why I've written this whole piece just to tell you about the expired stuff on the back shelf of my refrigerator, or the multi-pronged assault on my digestive system. So, let's get down to the real meat: examining the value of this philosophy and asking ourselves where else this could be applied.
“First in, first out” doesn't just avoid food waste. It forces me to be creative with how I assemble ingredients into meals. Cooking is an art, and it requires that I practice daily, using a different part of my brain than I ordinarily do.
This requires intense planning in two parts. First, as with all plans, I develop a detailed outline (just in my mind; I’m not that crazy!) that accounts for everything we need to use. Then, I pivot when the plan inevitably falls apart. If I open a jar and find mold, I have to go back to the drawing board while still meeting the plan’s main objective: using everything else before it goes bad.
One fun advantage of this policy is that it challenges me to think differently about food. A plain squash might not be the most exciting thing to pull from your lunchbox, but grill it and add a little tomato sauce, and it becomes a fresh, zesty afternoon snack.
This system allows me to see that the real question is: How can we use policy to simplify decisions and processes while still accomplishing multiple objectives?
Consider where a policy might make your own life or work a little simpler. As the first-in, first-out fridge example shows, a policy does not eliminate choice. If there’s leftover lasagna, it can be tonight’s dinner or tomorrow’s lunch. But it’s gotta go, and there’s no wiggle room on that point. The system is intentionally built to allow freedom without creating gray areas.
Now, I’m not saying you should make a refrigerator policy work for you, but the principle can. A clear policy can take some of the effort out of achieving an objective, leaving you with more time and energy for what truly matters. Next time your fridge light casts its glow upon you, think about how even a simple idea might change the way you live your life.
