Have you ever asked your grandmother about the recipes of her childhood? Meat was rarely on the table. But when she did, a hearty Beuschel was not uncommon. It smelled of roasted liver, baked kidneys and sometimes specialties such as veal heart in cream. The fact is that what turns many people's stomachs today was once commonplace. Cutting up the pig, boiling the blood and preserving the meat were the order of the day. Nothing was thrown away. Actually quite ecologically sound, if you think about it.
"Nose to tail" is experiencing a renaissance
British chef Fergus Henderson had the same idea. In 1999, he revived an almost forgotten culinary art with his cookbook "Nose to Tail Eating: A Kind of British Cooking". The idea behind it is simple: nothing should go to waste. If all parts of the animal are eaten, the appreciation for the living creature also increases. It took 13 years for Henderson's work to be translated into German and become a cookbook with cult status.
A look at the statistics shows that it is high time to rethink our meat consumption and take "nose to tail" seriously. According to the 2018 Meat Atlas published by the Heinrich Böll Foundation, only 40 to 55% of slaughtered animals in Germany are used. These are mainly prime cuts, from fillet to muscle meat. Almost everyone can afford this today. Due to industrial animal husbandry, prices for the most expensive cuts have fallen - and with them the appreciation of the animal's life.
Hahn im Glück - Holistic utilization in the "Back to the source" brand project
Food waste is practiced on a grand scale in the food industry. For every laying hen housed, one male chick is usually shredded or gassed on the day of hatching. Not with "Zurück zum Ursprung"! Since December 2015, not a single chick has been killed by the "Hahn im Glück" project; instead, they are reared in a species-appropriate manner according to the high "Prüf Nach!" standard. The holistic concept not only guarantees rearing according to strict animal welfare criteria, but also holistic utilization. The roosters are 100% slaughtered in Austria and marketed as "Zurück zum Ursprung" organic products in the form of fillet strips and chicken sausages. In this way, the "Hahn im Glück" initiative saves the lives of around 200,000 male chicks every year and ensures that their meat is used ethically.
Meat is the number 1 food, but not every
It is therefore not surprising that meat consumption is higher than ever before - at least in western industrialized countries. According to WWF, Austria has the highest meat consumption per capita in the EU. At over 100 kilograms of meat per capita per year, this is more than double the global average. This is very worrying when you consider that today only just under half of an animal's parts are good enough for our palates.
It is obvious that this does not exactly promote climate protection either. After all, if you want to eat a lot of fillets, you also need a lot of methane-producing cows, chickens and pigs - not to mention the climate-damaging production of animal feed, most of which takes place abroad, where very low environmental and social standards apply. According to calculations by Greenpeace, the equivalent of 13.3 kilograms ofCO2 are released per kilo of beef. By comparison, the same amount of mixed bread produces 0.75 kilograms ofCO2. All the more reason to use food holistically.
Waste Cooking - Cooking what others throw away
Around 157,000 tons of edible food ends up in residual waste in Austria every year. In Europe, the figure is over 90 million tons. The Austrian initiative "Waste Cooking" aims to combat this food waste - and collects food that is still edible. And it's worth it: the website offers numerous tips and tricks on the subject, as well as recipes for rarely used or old food.
Leaves and roots also taste good
The concept is not only popular with meat lovers - but also with vegetable lovers. The guiding principle here is "from leaf to root". The Swiss Esther Kern recently drew attention to this. Together with Sylvan Müller and Pascal Haag, she wrote the book "Leaf to Root" in 2017 to accompany her initiative of the same name. It contains 70 vegetarian recipes for the holistic processing of fruit and vegetables. For example, melon rinds can be turned into a delicious chutney, broccoli leaves into crispy potato chips and radish greens into a tasty salad.
Trends such as food upcycling from the Anglo-American world, which use creative recipe ideas such as banana peel fries to combat waste, are in the same vein. And that makes sense. According to the Federal Ministry for Sustainability and Tourism, an Austrian household produces around 19 kilograms of avoidable and partially usable food waste every year. This includes packaged food that would still be edible, but also leftover plates. By the way, for all those who grimace before biting into a banana peel: Fruit and vegetable wrappers contain valuable nutrients, including vitamins and antioxidants. It is important to make sure they are organic. Otherwise, this is where the largest amount of pesticides can be found.
Leaf to Root - sustainability on the menu
Carrot greens, radish leaves and melon rinds: since 2014, the Swiss initiative "Leaf to Root" has been inspiring people to use vegetable parts that usually end up in the bin. The website of the same name presents recipes and workshops as well as best-practice examples of sustainable food use. The platform also provides an overview of farmers who harvest unusual vegetable parts - and restaurants that process them.
Other countries grill it before
Last but not least, it should be noted: Our current eating habits, including fine sirloin steak and immaculate vegetables, are not a law of nature. Travelers in particular notice this. In Argentina, for example, the whole animal is put on the grill for the traditional asado. Including the small intestine "chinchulines" and sweetbreads "mollejas". Elsewhere, certain parts are considered a specialty, such as the grilled chicken feet "jizhua" in China or the traditional Italian offal stew "financiera" with cockscombs.
In Austria, Viennese cuisine in particular has a lot to offer with delicacies such as Grammelschmalz, Kuddelflecksuppe and the like - even if today this is mostly only known to the grandparents' generation. Nevertheless, people are interested in it: this is shown not least by the success of the 2016 ORF cooking show "Ochs im Glas" (Ox in a Jar), in which a whole cow was stuffed into 600 jars within two weeks - from head to toe.
Will the holistic use of food become popular again among the masses? Instead of waiting until we are forced to do so by increasing hunger and the growing world population, let us be inspired by the exciting initiatives and consciously enjoy the whole food.
