The End for an Unwanted Tomato

Little Food is Left to Waste

Jul 04, 2025

Join me, a former engineer and patent attorney, in exploring how people intersect with Technology and Science.

Standing in a parking lot in Longview, Texas, what seemed to be the rear of the food bank looked uninviting to our group of teens and adults. Pallets of food stood ready in a covered patio area. A building bordered one side of the patio, a shipping container bordered one another. The place resembled some back woods operation, fitting the stereotype of deep East Texas, a region known for its poverty.

Our group of thirty out of towners had spent the week repairing homes around town. It was a remarkable way of building confidence in kids who are in their vulnerable years. We now appeared to volunteer at Longview Community Ministries. When told only four were needed here, the rest would be going to a warehouse, it looked so uninviting to these hardened volunteers, no takers came forward among the adults. Among the kids, Lauren and Jace snapped up the assignment. My friend Rick and I were drafted by the kids to be the supervising adults. As everyone else drove off, the four of us trudged up the gentle slope of the parking lot to the patio.

I really wanted to work where I could interact with the customers. I was looking to spend a few hours and come away patting my own back. I did my part in alleviating hunger. Then, I’d go home and forget that despite food stamps and other safety nets, people still fall through the mesh and need food. Not on a one-time basis but whenever the larder or refrigerator or whatever runs empty.

The food bank ran on volunteers, having only a handful of paid positions, those being part time. Meeting Daniel, the director, and many others, we passed stacks of baked goods, cookies, croissants, breads. We stopped at a pallet and tables piled with fresh produce, given by local stores. They started us sorting produce, which is why I think Lauren and Jace volunteered. Clear plastic boxes of tomatoes, vines still attached, filled a crate. Anna took us under her wing and patiently demonstrated how to peel the plastic cover away and pick through the tomatoes, discarding rotten ones in a small bucket.

Jace, Lauren, and Rick sorting fresh produce on the patio of the food bank, with Anna in the background.

“If in doubt, throw it out,” Anna said, which seemed at odds with a food bank’s aims. If people were hungry, shouldn’t we salvage whatever food we could?

It was a first clue of my naivety.

“What do you do with the food we throw away?” Lauren asked, dropping a rotten tomato into the bin.

“We’re lucky to have a farmer who uses it for compost,” Anna said.

“The farmer probably uses the compost in his fields to grow other food,” Lauren said, working things out in the manner of the ever-curious. It’s a characteristic I’m drawn to myself.

Our society has advanced technologically where much of the population need not work growing its own food, where it relies only on a few farmers and ranchers, freeing everyone else to engage in myriad occupations and entertainments such as develop artificial intelligence, trade stock futures, watch baseball games. We have abundance at relatively low cost, a feat rarely achieved in the history of civilizations. Waste certainly occurs—no system is perfect—but food banks such as this one ensure waste is kept to a minimum. The fresh tomato that is unwanted in the store can perhaps find another stomach to fill in the aftermarket of the food bank.

Lauren and Jace calibrated their sorting skills, asking if this tomato or that was worthy of saving or tossing. I told them next year when they went to college, they should go buy a melon and test its stem end for ripeness. “Keep buying melons,” I said, “because the first one you buy might be green and not ripe, and the next one might be overripe and mushy. Soon, you’ll develop a sense of what kind of melon to buy.”

Rick joined in, “You should’ve seen the first avocado I picked up from the bag. It exploded and now I have guacamole on my shirt.” I laughed. The kids love Rick who’s willing to do anything for them.

We finished with the tomatoes and moved on to the nectarines (high losses), peaches, (not so high losses), bags of white onions (one or two rotten ones lurking in the bottom), and bananas. The rule about hanging on to bananas even if mushy to make banana bread didn’t apply here, so we culled them. The bananas were drenched with condensation, having just been removed from the cooler at Sam’s and shipped to the food bank. That’s how closely coordinated this end of the food chain works.

“There’s no telling what we’re getting,” one of the long-term volunteers told us. “Every day, every week brings different produce.” I couldn’t think of another business that ran on such uncertainty.

Grabbing rotten tomatoes was unpleasant, but the lemons were the worst. Like the onions, the lemons at the top of the bag were good, but at the bottom lay soft, moldy lemons oozing juice. We held a contest as to who found the worst lemon with Jace pulling out a contender one-third covered, and Lauren salvaging a similarly engulfed lemon. I plucked a lemon half gone to rot. “I think you have the record, Mr. Mantooth,” Jace judged. “Yes, that’s a winner,” Lauren affirmed.

Lauren with a possible winner as to most rotten lemon.

No bestowing a lemon award because by this time people had lined up nearby and I had a growing sense this wasn’t the rear of the food bank. Nor was there an indoor shopping location. This covered patio was where the customers came. The morning heat was humid and uncomfortable, even in the shade.

We helped load the good produce into the shipping container, which was not only refrigerated, but lined with shelves and baskets. We placed the good produce in the baskets just like at a grocery store. I realized the need for the admonition, “If in doubt, throw it out.” Who wants to take home rotten food?

Stocking the refrigerated shipping container aka produce section of the store

I picked up a box of peaches and nectarines, only to feel juice run down a leg of my shorts, my only clean pair after a week of working outside throughout town.

Next, they asked us to help edit slips of paper listing hygiene items for the customers. We marked out toilet paper, tampons and diapers as none were available, but a shipment was expected any time. They saved even the paper of slips I erred on.

Editing the hygiene item slips to reflect current inventory

Lauren’s sister is an attorney so I said, “Lauren, tell your sister you’re redacting. This is what lawyers do all the time, hiding information to make it unavailable.” She liked the idea.

“We’re running late,” Daniel said. Over a dozen customers lined up.

While Jace and Rick worked in and around the shipping container, they showed Lauren and I into the building. There, as the food bank opened for business, we learned the ticketing system, how to order tickets on the board, how to fill the hygiene item order. Three razor blades, shampoo and bath gel being the same, toothpaste, toothbrushes, deodorant, bar of soap. Food banks frequently go beyond their mandate of simply providing food for people and give away necessities of modern life.

We met Peter and Helen, two volunteers who stocked carts with food. Peter showed me how to pull a box off the shelf onto the cart, the box stocked with instant potatoes, cans of vegetables, macaroni and cheese boxes and other prepared foods. We added frozen meat, a packaged salad, and a sweet treat such as a carton of cookies. Large families received extra meat, salad and maybe a refrigerated cake. Unlike at a grocery store where customers perused and made their own choices of what type of meat to buy, which salad they preferred, we selected between hamburger patties, chicken, pork cutlets, packaged salads of Southwestern, kale or Caesar. Everyone received a frozen casserole, today’s special house item on the menu of deliverables.

While business started slow, it soon picked up. “The first of month is our busiest,” Helen said. “It’s when the benefits roll over.” I didn’t understand the mechanism but I got that the food bank operated in cycles of demand, and hoped the supply could keep up. Everything they had was donated and they operated as best they could on a shoestring budget.

We’d fill a cart and push it out for delivery to a customer. Soon the carts came back to us slick with moisture. The misting system kicked on, not to mist the produce but the customers, drive away the uncomfortable heat. They loaded the goods into a regular shopping cart for the short trip to their vehicle.

One cart came back almost full. “She didn’t want most of it,” Lauren said. It was all making sense, the picking out rotten produce, presenting the produce in nice backets on shelves, the provisions of shopping carts, even a misting system. It all spoke respect.

I found their respect for customers admirable. Nobody wants to be in the situation of going to a food bank to pick up donated food, food rejected by others, food selected by strangers without knowing their likes and dislikes. Nobody wants to admit the need for help. Contrary to my initial impression, this wasn’t some third world operation, this was first world compassion. The food bank didn’t want to serve people outside, but they operated on a shoestring budget and they made it work. The Daniels, Anitas, Helens, and Peters have it figured out, how to provide food with some dignity.

Trials By Technology by Geoff Mantooth

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