Save Money and Reduce Food Waste with a Toddler

Before having kids I was very careful about producing too much food waste. This is a huge problem in our country and I’ve always been very aware of it. Now that I have a young son, it pains me every time he decides not to eat what I cooked for him. There was a huge increase in the amount of food that would either end up in the trash or go bad in the fridge. One week he loves bananas, so I buy a bunch for the next week only for him to decide he doesn’t want bananas anymore. I am allergic to bananas and can’t eat them so that end up going bad and get thrown away. This is not only damaging to the environment, it is a huge waste of money (especially if you are like me and buying mostly organic).

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The first thing to realize is that you’ll never stop it entirely. Young toddlers will refuse to eat, throw food on the floor, feed the dog, and chew food for 10 minutes and then decide to spit it out. I pulled my hair out for months about all this waste. Some things you can’t do anything about and just remind yourself that it will pass. However, there are ways that I have found to reduce the waste.

The easiest way to only buy what you know will be eaten, cooked or frozen before it goes bad. Don’t try and be ambitious with trying several new foods in the week. Instead, I would only try ONE new item each week. My other pitfall was to buy enough for recipes every day when I knew that there would be several days that I would be too tired or worn down to cook. Getting over this and adjusting grocery trips to reflect reality reduced how much food was going bad in the fridge.

Refusing to Eat.

Truth is, most of the time you can’t do anything about this. Toddlers will refuse to eat. Sometimes they refuse to eat the food that they couldn’t get enough of just yesterday! With my son, only one thing helped. At about 15 months I gave him a fork when he was refusing to eat the beef stew his Nana made for a family dinner. He immediately started to eat with the fork. That’s when I realized that sometimes they just want to copy you and if you give them the chance, they will amaze you with their ability.

Portion Control.

I only give small amounts that I think he’ll be able to finish. This doesn’t increase because he’s going through a growth spurt. When that happens I just replenish what he ate if he wants more. This portion control also led me to the muffin tin. Using a muffin tin you get perfect little portions of the toddler’s belly! Plus you can make large batches at once and freeze saving you time in the long run. Win-Win!

Use your Freezer.

Leaving food in the fridge too long leads to a lot of food waste. In addition to buying appropriate amounts, another tip is to use that freezer of yours! I cook large batches and freeze whatever won’t be eaten within a couple days in vacuum sealed packages. Then I can just take from the freezer as needed.

Food Throwing.

If this is a problem in your house like it was in mine you can read about how I addressed that behavior in my post How I Stopped my Toddler from Throwing Food. This reduced our food waste dramatically since I didn’t have to put as much food in front of him to satisfy his hunger. Once I addressed this behavior I could move on to different ways to reduce waste.