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#RecipeForDisaster Asks People to Turn Food Waste Into Meals

The Lempert Report: The rise of Instagramming dishes has encouraged people to buy more groceries than they need. The Lempert Report: The rise of Instagramming dishes has encouraged people to buy more groceries than they need.

Phil Lempert

July 20, 2018

1 Min Read
instagram food
The rise of Instagramming dishes has encouraged people to buy more groceries than they need.Thinkstock

The World Food Programme (WFP) has created a new social media campaign that wants us to turn food waste from a recipe into a meal. It's called #RecipeForDisaster.

The campaign asks you to make a meal out of ingredients that are near expiration date or about ready to spoil, then share photos or videos of the completed dish with the hashtag.

The Spoon points to an article in The Guardian that argued that millennials’ obsession with Instagramming their food has heightened our expectations about what food should look like, prompting us to buy more than we need and reject perfectly edible food just because it doesn’t look as nice as it used to.  

They go on to write that “by promoting photos of dishes made with less-than-perfect-looking ingredients, the #RecipeForDisaster campaign hopes that they can fight this trend.” 

#RecipeforDisaster is off to a great start: The hashtag currently features in 6,300 posts on Instagram and many more on Twitter, including posts from celebrity chefs such as Jose Andres. 

But, as all things social media, it’s a huge animal that needs constant feeding to stay alive. Check it out and join in at #RecipeforDisaster.

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