Hi, I’m Rachael!
I’m a journalist and founded EatOrToss in 2016 to calm twin anxieties: not wanting to waste food and not wanting to get sick after making a questionable food decision.
Back then it was a farm share box with some alarming-looking produce that led me to launch the site. What were those spots on my apples? How bad was it to eat broccoli with little caterpillars in it? Or a potato with a brown cavern on the inside? I couldn’t find a reliable online source to help me understand what was OK to eat and what belonged in the compost, so I put my journalism skills to work. I interviewed scientists, scoured the web for authoritative info, read a bunch of books and started writing. EatOrToss was born.
Before dedicating myself to EatOrToss, I worked as a newspaper reporter at the Orlando Sentinel and then as a research manager for National Geographic. At NatGeo, my role was to make sure television shows were accurate, and today I continue to apply rigorous fact-checking standards to everything posted on EatOrToss.com. These days I also write about food for outside publications, including The Washington Post. More about my professional background here. Please email [email protected] if you’d like to talk about a writing project or other collaboration.
I also serve on the board of the D.C. Food Recovery Working Group, which helped me launch the RescueDish campaign, an effort to bridge foodie-ism and food waste reduction via work with restaurants. I routinely speak on food waste and use science to help home cooks make informed choices before throwing food away.
Want to collaborate? Please get in touch by emailing [email protected].