Food waste

[Jim Crow]

This appeared in our local paper ........

""The average UK family chucks out the equivalent of around 24 meals a month, totalling an annual figure of 4.2 million tonnes of food and drink that were perfectly fit to consume before, through poor household management or excessive greed when pushing our trolleys round the supermarket, we chucked them in the bin.""

We don't chuck out a meal a YEAR. We only cook what we are going to eat and only buy what we are going to eat.

What is your household like? Do you waste food like there is tons to spare and it's all free?

[david63]

The cause for having to throw food out is the supermarket lack of quality. Sometimes it is a miracle if you can get it home before it goes mouldy!

[Mervyn and Trish]

We don't chuck out a meal a YEAR. We only cook what we are going to eat and only buy what we are going to eat. What is your household like? Do you waste food like there is tons to spare and it's all free?

We're a bit like you. Very little wastage. Trish is very good at that "Ready Steady Cook" thing of eyeing up a pile of ingredients and turning a lettuce leaf into a banquet. So any leftovers we have get very nicely recycled into another meal rather than the bin. We're also long enough in the tooth to make our own sensible decisions on when something is past its best, rather than relying on use-by dates which inevitably have a safety margin. So someone else out there is wasting our share as well as their own to make up the average.

[Onelife]

Since we've started having our shopping delivered I'm always chucking stuff out...especially salad produce. I chucked out a whole cucumber this morning.

Our biggest waste/expenditure is the amount my wife spends on bird food...the dam things eat better than what I do.

[Gill W]

We throw very little food away, just the occasional vegetable that is past it's best.

I plan our meals in advance, and only buy what we are going to use, so there's very little waste

[Manoverboard]

We have a well honed system that minimises waste, tis all about advance planning ... outer lettuce leaves, meat trimmings, vege peelings plus egg shells etc are the norm. Very little finds its way into our food caddy that is edible.

[Raybosailor]

We have never thrown much away but since we retired our waste is practically zero, even veg peelings and eggshells go in the compost heap.
I am coeliac (gluten allergy) so we always cook meals from fresh meat and veg so there is no sell by date to worry about. Its a coincidence but minutes before I picked the laptop up I had just finished making a pan of soup from some asparagus,celery,and carrots that were past their best but along with a few other ingredients it has made a delicious soup that will last three or four days.
As a kid I was brought up just after the war when a lot of things were hard to get hold of and most were rationed up to about 1953 so I think we appreciated that waste one day could mean going without another.
One thing that amazes me is why people have these large freezers full of food unless they live in a remote area, the shops are open about 358 days of the year. The freezer is one of the most expensive items to run in a household and all it is doing is keeping food frozen until it is needed. Leave it in the shop until you need it and let them pay for the refrigeration costs, there are very few people that live more than 20 minutes from a supermarket and some are open 24 hours a day.

[Capt Black]

I hate throwing food away. Mum brought me up to never waste food. Mum learnt about not wasting the food the hard way, she survived the Siege of Leningrad.

[Quizzical Bob]

[Not so ancient mariner]

One thing that amazes me is why people have these large freezers full of food unless they live in a remote area, the shops are open about 358 days of the year. The freezer is one of the most expensive items to run in a household and all it is doing is keeping food frozen until it is needed. Leave it in the shop until you need it and let them pay for the refrigeration costs, there are very few people that live more than 20 minutes from a supermarket and some are open 24 hours a day.

Most of the items in our freezer are either produce from the garden or bags of peas etc that for most of the year are uneconomical to buy any other way, or perfectly good items bought from the supermarket(s) at vastly reduced prices just because they were approaching their sell-by date.
These are frozen to keep them fresh until wanted.

[Raybosailor]

Not so ancient, my son purchased a A++ energy rated 300 lt. chest freezer last year and he thought he was saving loads of money by buying the supermarket multi buys, any three for a tenner and like you near to date offers. He laughed at me when I said he was wasting money so I took my energy meter round and plugged his chest freezer into it.
Now these review sites give average running costs for kitchen appliances and his freezer was rated as using £40.00 worth of electricity per year, don't believe it. We left his freezer plugged into the meter for a whole week and when we calculated the energy used it was £1.17 = £60.84 for a year.
Three packs of pork steaks from Tesco on offer at 3 for £10.00 saved him £0.65 and they last him 3 weeks which cost £3.51 to keep frozen, he was gutted at the results.
Frozen food whether it be meat,fruit or vegetables taste nothing like fresh, with the exception of peas maybe so I only buy fresh goods that can be kept in the fridge for three days.

[anniec]

But have you factored in the car running costs of frequent shopping?

[GillD46]

Not so ancient, my son purchased a A++ energy rated 300 lt. chest freezer last year and he thought he was saving loads of money by buying the supermarket multi buys, any three for a tenner and like you near to date offers. He laughed at me when I said he was wasting money so I took my energy meter round and plugged his chest freezer into it.
Now these review sites give average running costs for kitchen appliances and his freezer was rated as using £40.00 worth of electricity per year, don't believe it. We left his freezer plugged into the meter for a whole week and when we calculated the energy used it was £1.17 = £60.84 for a year.
Three packs of pork steaks from Tesco on offer at 3 for £10.00 saved him £0.65 and they last him 3 weeks which cost £3.51 to keep frozen, he was gutted at the results.
Frozen food whether it be meat,fruit or vegetables taste nothing like fresh, with the exception of peas maybe so I only buy fresh goods that can be kept in the fridge for three days.

But surely he keeps more than just the pork chops in his freezer so the cost is divided by all the items? Personally I keep frozen fruit for juicing, peas, ice cream, a small amount of bread and milk - loads of milk. I buy burgers etc for Tony in summer for the BBQ - my halloumi keeps for ages in the 'fridge.

We do waste some things, mainly salad items, that never seem to last long. But at the moment we are eating leaves from the greenhouse and tomatoes and cucumber any day too.

[oldbluefox]

If it's something we need and can use we often go for the BOGOF offers or in the 'getting close to sell by date' offers and then either use them straight away or put what we don't use in the freezer. Consequently we waste very little except perhaps, the jar of something which has not been used for a while and has gone past its use by date. Sometimes the white furry stuff on top saves us looking at the date.
Surveys reckon that up to 30% of food is wasted. That is scandalous although I often suspect that supermarkets, rather than reducing their prices just tip their food away in the skip. I can't believe any household would waste so much food. Or would they? You only have to sit in the buffet for a while to see people returning with mountains of food only to leave half of it. Why, when you can go back as many times as you like? Do they not know how much they feel like, or are capable of eating? We gave up on the chocoholics tea many years ago as we couldn't stand the greed of some people who took their treats, had one bite and then left the rest.I suppose I was brought up to eat everything put in front of me (another post war baby brought up on rations) so I suppose I will never change now.
Before we go away we do have some 'interesting' meals as we endeavour to clear the fridge and the vegetable tray of any perishables!! In this respect SWMBO is very creative!!!!

[Jan Rosser]

I'm with SWMBO Foxy on the "interesting meals" before going on holiday - I try to use up whatever is in the freezer too. I don't have a very big freezer cabinet - it's one of those built under concealed ones in the kitchen and truthfully I don't keep a lot in there. I pick blackberries late summer and freeze them and my friends give me rhubarb which freezes well too. Last year I was given a lot of tomatoes which I made into soup and I froze individual portions - so tasty. As it is only two weeks to my next trip I am not buying anything new for the freezer but using up its contents. I think the biggest waste with me is lettuce and cucumber - they don't seem to last well at all

[Onelife]

We had another home delivery yesterday and I was none to pleased. My wife couldn't have looked in the fridge before ordering as we already had a large cauliflower and broccoli. She also ordered tomatoes even though we still had lettuces and tomatoes unopened...I tell you it really gets my goat especially so when my wife says I don't order the right things when I do the ordering.

Anyway to make things worse I've just prepared the vegetables using the vegetables we had delivered yesterday and not the ones she ordered last week...Oh sh*t...Squeak! Squeak!

[Silver_Shiney]

One thing that amazes me is why people have these large freezers full of food unless they live in a remote area, the shops are open about 358 days of the year. The freezer is one of the most expensive items to run in a household and all it is doing is keeping food frozen until it is needed. Leave it in the shop until you need it and let them pay for the refrigeration costs, there are very few people that live more than 20 minutes from a supermarket and some are open 24 hours a day.

I understand what you are saying, Ray, but not all of us have the time to go to the shops every day. We find that sliced bread goes off very quickly, so it's handy to keep the loaf in the freezer and just remove the number of slices required. We also buy meat in bulk and cook it into ready-meals to be frozen.

Perhaps when we retire, we'll look on a daily trip to the shops as an outing.

[Raybosailor]

But surely he keeps more than just the pork chops in his freezer so the cost is divided by all the items? Personally I keep frozen fruit for juicing, peas, ice cream, a small amount of bread and milk - loads of milk. I buy burgers etc for Tony in summer for the BBQ - my halloumi keeps for ages in the 'fridge.

We do waste some things, mainly salad items, that never seem to last long. But at the moment we are eating leaves from the greenhouse and tomatoes and cucumber any day too.

Sorry Gill46 perhaps my example wasn't quite clear enough, yes he did have several other products in the freezer but even then he would have to have at least six like for like 3 for a tenner bargains in the freezer before he was saving anything, that is 18 packs of meat.

Like I said some people live in remote areas or live very busy lives so regular shops are out of the question, but most are capable of at least two shops out of a seven day week and that is all we do.

My daughter says she doesn't have time to go shopping most weeks so they eat at the local pub quite a bit, the supermarket is on the way to the pub and is open 24 hours, the pub stops taking orders at 21:30 comical isn't it?.

[Jim Crow]

Thank you for all of your comments. However the one I like best and where I come from is .....

"" I was brought up to eat everything put in front of me (another post war baby brought up on rations) so I suppose I will never change now.""

I give an illustrated talk as the guest speaker on 'Food Rationing during WWII' to groups such WI's etc. Many of the audience remember rationing and I hear some lovely stories and comments on their views of the waste now!!!!

Any reader who can remember food rationing, how often do you look at the range and quantity of the food available in the supermarket and think to yourself 'not like this when i was young'? ............