These recipe excerpts are from Cathy Katin-Grazzini’s new book, Love the Foods That Love the Planet. Reprinted with permission from Health Communications, Inc. Photography by Giordano Katin-Grazzini.

Here’s a delicious way to salvage the tough, woody ends of asparagus spears. They make an exquisitely flavored velvety soup that whips up in minutes. We garnish it with chopped chives, a pinch of chili threads, and some homemade whole-grain croûtons. Asparagus Recoup Soup makes an elegant, delectable first course that smiles on the planet, is nourishing and comforting, and costs very little in time, effort, or ingredients. Using the ends of asparagus stems that normally get tossed in the garbage, Asparagus Recoup Soup is one creative and delicious way to reduce your stream of food waste, a major driver of individual greenhouse gas emissions. While more assertive in flavor, recouping the stems of cauliflower, broccoli, and hardy greens like kale or collards, or the cores of cabbage heads also make very nutritious, tasty, and thrifty blended soups. Cook and season them similarly.

The climate footprint of asparagus grown in U.S. fields is 0.40 kg CO2eq per kg, 14% of which is linked to fertilizer production, 32% related to N2O emissions by infield bacteria, 8% by off-field bacteria, 15% from energy used to drain wetlands for farming, 4% from the application of soil amendments, 3% from pesticide production, 7% from operating farm machinery, and 16% from irrigation’s energy requirements.

What a Waste!

The global food system emits about one-third of total annual GHG emissions. According to United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, one-third of all the food we produce is lost or wasted all across the food supply chain, from the time it is harvested or slaughtered to the landfill. To put this in perspective, in 2017 the amount of GHG emissions produced by food loss and waste amounted to the total combined emissions of the United States and EU that year. A 2023 study in Nature Food determined that total food loss and waste amounts to one half of the total GHG emissions from food systems. Meat and animal products account for 73.4% of global food loss and waste emissions, compared with 20.9% from cereal grains and legumes, 3.3% from roots and oil crops, and 2.4% from fruits and vegetables. Because animal products produce significantly higher emissions, the study recommended halving meat consumption and halving the generation of food loss and waste across the supply chain and at waste treatment to reduce total global food waste emissions by 43%.