What is your favorite part of Christmas dinner? Is it the free-range turkey? The vegan pigs in blankets? Organic parsnips? One thing’s for sure, I bet it’s not Brussels sprouts.
Since our school days, when brussels sprouts boiled too much to the point of turning gray, leaving that familiar sulfurous smell, many of us have dreaded eating the cruciferous vegetable. Sprouts are the perfect Christmas green though, with something that teaches us all about festive healthy eating and food waste.
As a hardy brassica, the crop grew (and still does) well in our winter climate and is even said to become sweeter after a frost. Today it is one of the largest horticultural crops grown in the UK – you can see fields of it on the east coast, from Aberdeenshire to Kent and into the West Country.
British cabbages can be purchased from September to March and it is certainly a low-carbon way to get your five a day.
In fact, as an affordable and abundant seasonal crop, it should be a symbol of the type of vegetables that we should all eat more of.
Like all vegetables, they are low in calories, fat, and salt, and high in fiber. brotherussel sprouts contain vitamins C, A, and B6, as well as the important vitamin K, which promotes strong bones. The new varieties mean Brussels sprouts taste a little softer and sweeter, and the adventurous recipes even suggest put sprouts in salads and even smoothies.
Slowly, we are coming out of our breakout phobia. But there is one more element to highlight before crowning sprouts as the most ethical food of Christmas, and that is food waste.
At home this is addressed by storage (try store the sprouts in the fridge to make them last longer), reuse (Does it bubble and squeak on Boxing Day?) and recycling (compost or bin).
But perhaps the biggest victory in avoiding food waste is before the sprouts reach your home. For crops like Brussels sprouts, a large amount is produced (and wasted) if they do not meet the high standards of supermarkets, or if consumer demand changes.
In the past, these perfectly good vegetables were replanted or even sent to the landfill. But thanks to charities, they are now being redistributed to those in need.
FareShare, the UK’s largest food waste charity, intercepts edible foods that would otherwise go to waste because they are ‘rare’, close to expiration date or rejected by supermarkets, and redistribute them to organizations local charities. Since the coronavirus outbreak began, the amount of food redistributed to two million meals per week has doubled.
One such local charity is Edinburgh-based Empty Kitchens, Full Hearts, where roasted sprouts were recently included in meal kits that are sent to some of the 1,000 people the charity helps every day. .
The charity has grown from a permanent start at the start of the pandemic to providing more than a million meals, and the team has highlighted the demand not only for food, but also for fresh, healthy fruits and vegetables.
In recent years, FareShare has been able to save even more fresh fruits and vegetables thanks to a scheme, initially funded by the government, that paid farmers to package and distribute their surplus produce.
but the government could not renew the financing in this year’s budget and FareShare is now campaigning to help fill the shortfall, noting that 92 percent of beneficiaries say the food they receive helps them stay healthy. For 29 percent of their customers, it is the only time they eat fruits and vegetables.
At the root of this is a broken food system. Due to the oligopoly of a small number of supermarkets, farmers have no choice but to overproduce to meet strict specifications. Many municipalities have yet to introduce efficient food waste recycling systems. Families struggling to eat often find junk food cheaper than fresh fruits and vegetables. The work of untangling it all and shifting to a fairer and more sustainable food system has started with the National Food Strategy and some more sustainable retailers, but there is a long way to go.
In an ideal world, food would not go to waste and people would not go hungry. But while 8.4 million go hungry in the UK, FareShare provides a way to ensure that food is redirected to a good cause.
This year, instead of leaving Brussels sprouts aside on our Christmas plate, maybe we should just remember how lucky we are?
Comment below with your favorite sprout recipe.