From the leaves to the roots

Roasted beets are delicious with sweet vinaigrette, walnuts, arugula and goat cheese.
To prepare such a salad, cut off the leaves and roast the beets in the oven until the skins are tender enough to peel off easily with your fingers.

But don’t be so quick to throw away the beet leaves you removed earlier — they’ll make a lovely salad.

According to a study by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, consumers worldwide waste 1.3 billion tons of food every year.

It’s time we start appreciating all the parts of foods  we’ve previously assumed to be nothing more than scraps.

One third of the global supply of food produced goes to waste, and this behavior is the third largest source of greenhouse gas emissions.

To bring down these statistics, start at the top with vegetable leaves.

Going back to beets, their greens can be treated like any dark leafy green such as kale or chard. Sauté them with turnip greens, another oft-discarded leaf, in olive oil with garlic or lemon juice.

Eating an orange or using fresh lemon or lime juice in a drink?

If you grate the peel for zest, which can be frozen, you’ll save yourself time and money in the future when you’re baking muffins and lemon zest unexpectedly shows up in the recipe.

Now move your way down and look at the bottoms of foods.

Though shiitake mushroom stems and the woody ends of asparagus are probably more at home in your compost bin than on your dinner plate, these ingredients can be slow-cooked to make a homemade vegetable stock.

If you can’t motivate yourself to get behind the fight against food waste because you’re among the “one person can’t change the world” believers, do it with the thought that you can save yourself money by utilizing foods to their full potentials.

Remember, some of the $750 billion lost every year from food waste is coming from your wallet.

­— acarnold@indiana.edu

Follow food columnist Amanda Arnold on Twitter @Amanda_Arnold14.