Have we misunderstood surplus food?

16 April 2026

What if the problem isn’t that we have too much food, but that we’ve forgotten how to use it? This essay explores how surplus was once a vital resource for survival, and what has changed today. The text was originally published on tenkmat.no.

What if we have misunderstood what surplus food really is?

Today, we talk about food waste as one of the major problems of our time. The numbers are well known: huge amounts of food are produced, but never eaten. We throw away in households, shops discard goods that are still edible, and in parts of the world, food is lost long before it reaches the market. Surplus appears as something we must reduce, control, preferably eliminate.

But this has not always been the case.

In a longer historical perspective, surplus was the very prerequisite for survival. Not a problem, but a strategy. In pre-modern societies, food was not just about meeting today’s needs, but about securing the future. To produce more than you needed here and now was not a waste; it was wisdom.

Surplus meant storing, drying, fermenting, and sharing. That meant dealing with uncertainty: poor crops, harsh winters, and unstable resources. It also meant social organization: who had control over the stock, who was given access, and how the resources were distributed. In other words, surplus was not just something you had. It was something you actively created, managed, and gave meaning.

If we look at Lofoten, this becomes particularly clear.

The large seasonal fisheries created periods of enormous abundance. The solution was not to reduce the catch, but to transform it. Stockfish is perhaps the clearest example: fresh fish was turned into a shelf-stable product that could last for years and be part of extensive trade networks.

Profit was thus not accidental; it was a result of technology, knowledge, and practice.

At the same time, it was not only the large resources that counted. Coastal communities exploited a wide range of available food: shells, seaweed and kelp, seabirds and small fish. What was defined as “surplus”, or as food at all, depended on knowledge and experience. This becomes particularly clear when we look at how certain resources have been used differently over time. Oysters, mussels, seaweed, and kelp species have, for long periods, been little exploited in Norway over the past 200-300 years, even though they probably constituted important sources of food in older times, especially during periods of scarcity. At the same time, there are examples of the opposite: fish such as monkfish, which today is considered a delicacy, were previously seen as “unfished” and thrown away. We can almost say that it goes both ways. What was once considered uninteresting can later become sought after. Mushrooms are another example of resources that have long been underused, despite availability. This shows that it is not necessarily the case that you eat what you have nearby. Cultural notions, knowledge, and tradition play a crucial role in what is actually perceived as food. What today may appear marginal or uninteresting was previously, or could have been, an integral part of the basis of life.

So what has happened? Today, profit is no longer primarily something we plan. It is something that occurs in the system. Food is produced in large volumes, but much of it falls outside before it is eaten, not because it cannot be used, but because it does not fit into economic, logistical or aesthetic criteria.

A fish can be fully edible, but be thrown away because the quota has been met or the price is too low. Vegetables can be perfect, but are sorted out because they don’t have the right look. Food exists physically, but is defined as useless.

Surplus has thus changed character. From being a planned resource, it has become a by-product of a system that produces more than it is able or wants to use. This raises an uncomfortable question: Is the problem really surplus? Or is the problem how we define what counts as food, or the way we produce and consume food?

History shows that surplus has never been a fixed quantity. It has always been linked to knowledge, practice, and social frameworks. What was once a valuable resource can now appear as waste. And vice versa: what we overlook today can, in principle, become tomorrow’s food.

In Lofoten, there are still traces of this duality. On the one hand, modern fisheries are extremely efficient, and almost all the fish are exploited. On the other hand, there are situations where resources are lost, not because they cannot be used, but because they do not fit into the system.

At the same time, there are also “invisible” forms of surplus around us: seaweed and kelp that are rarely used in the diet, species that are not in demand, and leftovers in households that are no longer taken care of. Not because they cannot be used, but because we lack the practices.

Perhaps this is precisely where the key lies.

Because if surplus was once something we had to learn to deal with, it also means that we can learn it again. Not by going back to the past, but by retrieving knowledge that has been lost or marginalized.

How do you dry and store food?

What can be eaten that we today overlook?

How can you use more of what you already have?

These are not just nostalgic questions. They are about preparedness, sustainability, and the understanding of what a food system actually is.

Because maybe it’s not the case that we have too much food. Perhaps we have forgotten what to do with it.

Written by Elin Tinuviel Torbergsen