Toni Desrosiers: Food Waste Isn't the Real Problem

Updated: Nov 27, 2024

A Note Before We Begin

This blog is a draft—an imperfect, evolving idea that’s still taking shape. Sharing it is scary because it’s not polished or complete, but it’s too important to keep locked in my head.

After 17 years of research, observations, and conversations with food, I’ve uncovered something that challenges everything we think we know about fresh food and waste. I don’t have all the answers yet, but I believe starting this conversation will spark ideas that can make a difference.

Big ideas don’t grow in isolation. They need discussion, curiosity, and human energy to take shape. So I’m sharing this now—raw and unrefined—to begin that dialogue.

Let’s Keep Food Alive.

—Toni Desrosiers
Founder of Abeego
Inventor of Beeswax Wrap

It’s common knowledge that fresh food is highly perishable. We hear it everywhere—and the stats back it up. Feeding America says, in the United States, a staggering 92 billion pounds of food are wasted every year—that’s 38% of the entire food supply. And it’s not just any food; fruits and vegetables take the hardest hit, making up a huge portion of what gets thrown away. Second Harvest indicates Canadians create over 50 million tonnes of food waste every year. Nearly—47%—comes from households, and fruits and vegetables make up close to half of the total waste.

I think I speak for all of us when I say: no one wants to waste food. We’re going to great lengths to save it, and the sheer number of hacks proves it! We’re drowning citrus in jars of water, rehydrating limp greens, stuffing paper towels into bags, even regrowing heads of lettuce on the counter.

Meanwhile, food waste experts say we can end food waste if we eat it faster, shop more frequently, and, when all else fails (and it will), just eat the cost and toss it into compost. At this point, fresh food management feels like an unpaid job.

And yet, we do it—because fresh food is “highly perishable.” But the prevalent belief that fresh food is highly perishable drives me crazy, and here’s why: this might be “common knowledge” to you, but it’s not to me. In my kitchen, I use Abeego, and my fresh food lasts. In my kitchen, it’s not highly perishable—so what is actually going on here?

How Airtight Plastic Made Us Accept Food Waste

Humans have made some big mistakes, right? The obvious ones are easily spotted. Others creep in quietly, and once you notice them, you can’t unsee them—like asbestos and lead. Then there are the mistakes so baked into daily life, so insidious, that we don’t even realize what they are costing us.

Seventeen years ago, I invented beeswax food wrap with one vision: Keep Food Alive. Along the way, I’ve become a bit of a food whisperer. After countless conversations with fresh food—from soil to the compost heap and every stage in between—I’ve uncovered a secret: food waste isn’t the real problem.

Now, don’t get me wrong—food is absolutely being wasted, and we face it daily. But I believe food waste is actually a symptom of a much bigger problem. It wasn’t some grand conspiracy to force us to spend more on food. It was a giant, human-sized mistake so deeply rooted it went unnoticed until someone obsessed over it day and night.

That someone was me.

Here’s what I believe: the trusty refrigerator and the oh-so-handy airtight plastic infiltrated our kitchens and accidentally trained us to accept shockingly short lifespans for fresh, living food. And it only took two generations.

Early Signs Breathable Beeswax Wrap Beat Plastic

I didn’t know this when I invented Abeego. I just knew, deep in my gut, that plastic was wrong for living food. So, I didn’t try to mimic it. Instead, I looked to nature. I thought about food storage through the lens of a lemon peel—protective, opaque, breathable. Nothing like plastic. That shift let me unknowingly innovate beyond the airtight flaw.

My first test was with rhubarb from my garden. Two stalks: one in plastic, one in Abeego. After 10 days, both looked a little dry. But the taste? The rhubarb in Abeego tasted like rhubarb. The one in plastic? Tasteless, with a metallic hint. I started questioning if I even knew what fresh food really was.

Test after test, Abeego was the clear winner. Food lasted longer. And if it spoiled, it didn’t rot in the slimy, smelly way plastic-sealed food did. Was fresh food truly “highly perishable”? Or was airtight plastic killing it?

As my obsession grew, people began turning their backs on single-use plastic. Some went so far as to pop fresh food into the fridge completely naked. But my tests showed naked food lost 30% of its moisture within days. In Abeego? Less than 2%.

Food Waste Is a Symptom—Not the Problem

Here’s what I discovered: the fridge is essentially a cold dehydrator, sucking moisture—the very life—out of living produce. It works by pulling out warm air and, with it, moisture. That’s why naked produce wilts so quickly. And it’s also how airtight plastic duped us (and themselves) into thinking it was good at keeping food fresh.

Plastic wrap was tested in the dehydrating environment of the fridge. Of course, they thought it worked—it sort of did. Protected from the harsh dry air of refrigeration, fresh food didn’t wilt or dry out as quickly. Plastic was keeping food longer, and the results became the measure of freshness. It was a false positive, but no one realized it.

They ran with it, training the world to “lock in freshness” with this fancy new marvel material: plastic! We bought it, especially as we embraced the new refrigerator. Enamored with how food behaves when protected from the elements of the fridge, no one noticed that airtight plastic eventually caused food to rot. And so, in time, food waste became the “problem.”

Fast forward nearly 100 years, and here we are, understanding fresh food through two massive mistakes: airtight plastic and the dehydrator we call a fridge. No wonder we think food waste is the problem instead of the symptom.

Changing the Narrative Around Fresh Food

But there’s a solution: Abeego, a food wrap that protects like plastic and breathes like a peel. I think of Abeego as a cozy, safe, dry, clean den for fresh food. It extends a food’s lifespan by protecting it from excess air, moisture, and light. And because it’s breathable—not airtight—gas and water vapor can escape, keeping bacteria from thriving and causing spoilage.

Problem solved, right? Not quite. While Abeego took the breathable path, the rest of the industry drove straight off the airtight, refrigerated cliff. Fresh food now spoils faster than ever. Until these big mistakes are addressed industry-wide, we’ll keep getting nearly-dead food and being blamed for wasting it.

Ending food waste might feel impossible, but I see Abeego as a seed. It helps us relearn what fresh, living food is—how it lives, how it dies—and creates more food whisperers like me. Together, we can change the “common knowledge” that fresh food is highly perishable. It’s really not.

I can only give you a taste of what I’ve learned in 17 years but here’s the nugget I hope you take away: fresh food is alive, food waste is a symptom of a problem, and it’s a problem we can solve.

Let’s Keep Food Alive, okay? Because, at the end of the day, it’s what keeps us alive.