to ask you to think about the food that you waste.

[Fiendishlie]

I hope I am not being unreasonable posting it here, but MN have a link to the Love Food, Hate Waste site as one of this weeks campaigns and I believe we all have a duty to think about the issue and see if we can help reduce the amount of food that is wasted in this country, as well as saving ourselves some money into the bargain.

I work in Waste Management and I am constantly amazed by some peoples' attitues to the waste they produce and their right to continue to do so.
Love food, hate waste calculate that as a nation we throw away 7.2 million tonnes of food per year, most of which could have been eaten. If we stopped throwing away this food it would save the equivalent carbon as taking 1 in 5 cars off the road. Plus, we have paid for this food, only to discard it, uneaten.

We don't waste much barring what the kids refuse to eat at mealtimes I would love to get our food bills down though they are obscene....

Barely any waste here. Any veg waste goes in the green bin. If food smells okay and tastes okay it's eaten. If it's meat that may or may not be on the turn the dog has it.
My friend used to chuck stuff away on the best before date... Used to drive me NUTS.

Chile sorry but giving manky chicken to the dog does still count as food waste! Presumably it is bought with humans in mind and the dogs only get it when it's been hanging around for too long :o

We throw a lot of bread away because it's gone mouldy

Well, I don't buy meat (for the humans) very often and if the dog gets it I don't go back out and replace with fresh- so I don't see that it's waste really. I do wish he'd even taste it though... Gone in three seconds usually!

Have you thought about making some space in your freezer to allow you to store your bread in there, Annoying, and only taking enough out for a day at a time?

It's not the same though is it?

Our bread lives in the freezer. We put it straight in the toaster for toast, or make sandwiches with it still frozen for lunchboxes.

We don't have the most sophisticated palette tough!

I think it's better, it stays fresher for longer. I'm only interested in bread for sandwiches if it's really soft and I don't believe there is a difference between a loaf that has been frozen and one that hasn't.

We are crap. I had to throw away a full pack of eggs last week that were a month out of date. I often make double the recipe in hopes of reheating, then we go out next night and forget. If fruit enters our house i know we will have fruit flies a week later. We have to change... The number of new packs of meat we have had go off because we haven't fancied it or eaten with family etc is terrible. As i type i know there's a full pack of sausages down there beyond hope, bought for a full English we were too lazy to cook. :-( awful.

When I lived with my parents they sometimes ended up throwing entire packets of ham in the bin because it'd gone off, and my mum always gets the best date she can. Ready meals were common culprits too. My father has a tendency to shop with his stomach and buy things which he then can't be bothered to cook such as bratwurst. Ends up either cooking the whole pack on its last day and throwing what's not eaten in the bin, or just being chucked by my mother after she finds it stuffed at the back of the fridge.

My mum decided to shop in a different store for a change and found she drastically cut her shopping bill because she couldn't find the usual stuff. This in turn cut the waste significantly. She is no longer tempted by special offers except for things like coffee and if it has a short shelf life she asks herself if she realistically would have it cooked or eaten before that date. She also makes sure she eats before she shops as that makes a big difference.

In our house we can't afford to waste anything at all, so the freezer is full of 'bits' i.e. the 2 tortilla wraps left in the pack, tubs of mashed potato made because the potatoes were starting to grow, 1/4 pack of bacon, the end bits of loaves of bread etc.

I was brought up to finish what was on my plate, but then I started to get overweight and was encouraged to LEAVE some on my plate! Unfortunately it's hard-wired in my head now that you cannot have leftovers so if anything is nearing it's use by date I end up eating it whether I wanted it or not and that's not wise either.

The biggest culprits have to be restaurants, surely?

Boomerwang, i'd imagine it's like mobile phones being left to charge too long - for each individual household, it's a tiny amount, but add up 63 million households' worth, and domestic stuff actually does outweigh restaurant waste. But that's only a guess, no stats.

We're a lot better in the last five years because we've been so much less rich, and also in the last two years there's been a kerbside food caddy collection. I'd hope that the recession has improved the food waste figures too. It's a long time since I threw food out because it had gone off - the only 'in case' food we buy is tinned or frozen, and we freeze our bread. TBH what really helps is that we are so greedy

I still dont understand why it is illegal to feed chickens your scraps??? what on earth is the reasoning behind that?

I think it is because of the risk of passing unknown diseases on - a bit like BSE or F&M

I realised last night that my big down fall is having too much on my plate and not being able to eat it all. Sometimes the food can be rescued but sometimes really not. For instance dh cooked a stir fry last night. It was massive but although I thought I was hungry I was not and could only manage about a quarter of it. What a waste :(

Although it kind of defeats the purpose of wasting less, has anyone tried tried a green cone? We compost fruit and veg peelings, unless the guinea pigs can eat them, but the uneaten food would at least have somewhere to go then.

OYBBK would you not save it and have it for lunch today? I love left overs, they always seem to taste better than the original meal :)

Guilty, but less guilty than in the past. And feeling guilty.. another thing to feel guilty about. I think it comes down to planning and it all gets a bit hard sometimes. We are all a bit messed up with the busyness aspect, aren't we.

I'd like to waste less food - I tend to carefully put the spare bits of ingredients back in the fridge only to chuck them out a week (or more) later all mouldy. We don't do a big weekly shop which I think helps, but multipacks of fruit and veg annoy me. If you only want one of something you should be able to buy just one. I think there should be a big publicity campaign about the difference between best before and use by, and which foodstuffs you actually have to worry about. Also how to tell if an egg is off by putting it in water!

chipping ( :) )- sometimes, but not when I've been playing with it. It did not look appetising!

Badkitten - why couldn't you eat the rest of the stir fry the next day, for lunch or dinner? Or freeze it?

It's a waste to eat food for the sake of it. We usually eat left overs from dinner for lunch the next day. It all goes straight in lunch boxes at the end of the meal, including stir fries, curries, pasta, burgers, pretty much anything. If there's too much for us to eat over the next day or so it gets frozen. Very little is wasted in this household, unless, like another poster mentioned, potato peelings etc. are counted as waste. Unfortunately we live in a flat and don't have composting facilities. We do boil up the chicken carcasses for soup and the like though.

samandi - I do do that sometimes, but really it did look grim - I'd eaten all the best bits I think when my appetite is in doubt in future meals I'm going to have to be more disciplined in making sure I dont muck about with it and dont just eat my favourite bits.

I have 2 teenage girls and a nearly 13 year old boy. Food doesn't hang around for long enough to get wasted!!

I do think about food waste. I have a dog for that :0)