To ask you all nicely if you didnt watch Hughs war on waste, to please please watch on catch up if you can.

[fruitandbarley]

I knew we were a wasteful country, and I'm not without blame myself, although do try to not throw things away that can be used, but this really was an eye opener, when there's people struggling to eat and struggling with bills, completely aside from the madness of throwing away millions of tons of perfectly good produce because someone at the supermarket thinks it's not good looking enough (despite proof that when rules were relaxed in times of shortage sales remained the same and nobody noticed), ruining people's livelihoods, this programme/series might actually make people change what they're doing.

This is interesting

25p store

As far away from onions as you can get, dark, airy, unheated but not too dry.

So, in bags, hessian, cotton, paper etc, that are perforated, in a dark cupboard that doesn't get heated by appliances, central heating.

potatoes need to be stored somewhere cool and dark - an outbuilding is good if your house is warm. Put in a cardboard box and wrap in newspaper to protect from mice.

or buy a black-lined storage bag from Poundland and keep in the coolest room of your house.

if they do sprout, cut off the sprouting bits and eat the rest. But correctly stored they last for months.

eggs keep for ages. To test if it is off, crack each one separately into a bowl. You'll know. Presumably our single person eats an egg a week, the six pack won't go off.

serve only what gets eaten, refrigerate/freeze leftovers. One reheat is fine, which is why the KFC idea works. Ideally KFC should cook to order and people should not be so sodding impatient.

I already knew a horrendous amount of food is wasted in this country but I felt physically sick watching this programme. Awful. Everyone should watch it.

Test eggs in water rather than face the horror of smelling a bad'un

Get a glass of water, pop egg in. If it sinks it is fine, if it floats it is a witch is a bad'un.

My potatoes live in the cupboard next to the onions no wonder they don't bloody last!

Those pound shop bags, are they marketed especially as potato bags? Might get one and start keeping them on the stairs going down to the cellar.

The parsnips just broke my heart. The ones in the waste pile looked so good.

Many years ago Asda used to sell bulk sacks of potatoes in proper, double-lined potato sacks; I never had one go to waste. Its the plastic that does it (and warm homes). I now always transfer my spuds in to a potato bag which has a black second lining. And veg doesn't leave my house unless it's 'melted' - just finished a bag of carrots with a best before of 08/10, absolutely fine. If it gets beyond edible, I have a 'wormery', and it feeds the worms to make compost.

But, before I start to sound smug, my DH is a bugger for over-buying, not using what is in the fridge because he fancied something else. I am going to MAKE him watch it (though he hate HFW with a passion, so need to think of a bribe!)

Blanche because he chose to be a big part of that programme and he chose to bring one supermarket in paticular to everyone's attention.

I honestly don't believe that people should be paid alot of money to make these programmes and then walk away without feeling like they could at least try to help especially when they're a well known household name,it's not like he's Joe Bloggs from round the road who most people wouldn't know is it!

Oh! So despite all the good work he does do, despite him trying hard to raise various food issues with us, the government and the food supply chain you begrudge his doing so simply because he makes a portion of his living out of it?

OK. I honestly don't believe that you have a valid point. He does a lot more than most and your objection to him earning a living smacks of envy. Do you feel that way about anyone who make a living by being in the public eye? Actors, singers, politicians, newsreaders.....

Heartbreaking for those farmers. And Morrison's basically threatening them so they would stop filming. Unbelievable.

That pile of perfectly good parsnips was crazy. They wouldn't be my favourite veg, but they can be nice roasted. I am not sure why size and shape matters once they are peeled and chopped.

That is only parsnips. What about all the other fruit and veg that goes the same way? Apples, potatoes, cabbages etc etc. There was footage at the start of carrots being ploughed back into the ground. Presumably because they were waste too. All the people starving in this country alone, the people relying on food banks, and we are ploughing food back into the ground because it isn't pretty enough.

And the really weird bit is that, as one food analyst bloke said, when harvests are bad they sell the less pretty stuff anyway and we, the consumer who apparently leads this crap, didn't notice.

So the supermarkets absolutely know that they are talking bollocks when they say we consumers demand the pretty fruit and veg. They lie to us and they lie to the producers.

I have never been so glad that I live near farm shops, a real butcher and a proper greengrocer. I keep saying it, but being a rural mouse has some advantages

I'm afraid that it doesn't surprise me about Morrisons 'veiled threats' to farmers. I think that it happens with all the supermarkets as I remember a programme a while ago about something similar with suppliers to Tesco and subsequent a campaign which tried to show that Tesco were supporting 'their' farmers.

However, it is something which must be tackled and well done to HF-W for bringing the topic to our attention. We cannot continue the profligate waste because it is cannot be sustainable way for the world economy - and our species - to survive.

Interesting show.

I can't believe those parsnips all going to waste. Criminal.

Sorry Blanche but I live in a rural county (Gloucestershire) and NONE of the supermarkets where I am stock loose tomatoes, loose carrots or loose potatoes (except as already mentioned, jackets).

I keep my potatoes in the darkest, coolest place in my flat but they don't seem to last terribly long and once I've cut the sprouted bits off, unless they are very large spuds, there doesn't seem to be much left. I just think it's nonsense that if I know I am going to be out five nights this week so will either eat out or have some quick pasta with sauce, and therefore just want enough spuds for one meal, I can't readily get just 4 loose spuds.

Rosie Boycott started a petition a couple of weeks ago
www.change.org/p/stop-the-rot-end-supply-chain-food-waste

I hate food wastage, especially meat (I'm vegetarian). Between my chickens, dogs and horses we have very little food waste, our caddy usually contains just banana skins and tea bags!
But (and sorry if this was covered in the programme and I missed it), please can someone explain why Morrisons buying up the reject parsnips is going to make a difference to the farmers? Will Morrisons sell more parsnips just because they're a mix of perfect and imperfect? And do they sell all of them anyway, or do some get thrown out?
If Morrisons bought their normal quota of parsnips, whatever the shape, would the farmers just end up producing less, therefore not increasing profits anyway?

Same county, Still, I'm on the edge of FoD. All the edge of town ones in Glos, Chelt, Ledbury and Ross etc sell loose fruit and veg and, in Glos, those off Metz way do too.

Maybe the Metro's don't, but I moved out of town well before they were ever thought of

Cherry the supermarkets set really stringent gradings, some of the rest goes for soups etc and a bit more for animal feed. But what looked like the VAST majority was destroyed. If they didn't have to grow so many parsnips to get one saleable crop, they could diversify and grow other crops that would also be sold. As it is they have to overgrow to be sure of getting a saleable crop that does meets their quota/contract and, at best, covers costs.

Interesting how much it varies from area to area
All my local supermarkets sell fruit and veg loose, I also shop in markets, greengrocers or farm shops depending on where is nearest or cheapest
I ignore sell by dates and rely on smell taste and instinct - in fact at least half the food I buy is already on sell by date (reduced counter) and keeps for much longer
If in doubt it will get used quick enough I freeze it
I also freeze left overs even in very small quantities for example last nights dinner had some red wine sauce left over (bagged and frozen for a future casserole) a few extra veg also went in freezer and will make bubble n squeak or a corned beef hash

As a result of watching the program last night I have decided to make a soup out of the left over bits of salad and veg that I was about to throw away.
I just hope it tastes better than it looks.

Very interesting to watch.

Allworth do you have a bit of spare freezer space?

I have a couple of big freezer bags, one for root veg and one for toms, peppers, chillie etc. Any scrag end of veg goes in, cooked, raw, wrinkly, soft, whatever. Every now and then I drag a bag out, shuffle through the contents, including whatever is lurking in the drawers and fridge and make soup... or veggie curry... tomato sauce for pizza/pasta... or whatever else springs to mind

It is surprising how nice the soups taste and how much DH gets excited when he notices a bag is getting full.

Go ourblanche

the presenter made it very clear that he was dealing with Morrisons because they were the sole customer of the ONLY farmer prepared to speak to him. He made it clear that all the supermarkets were equally to blame.

as most people would have seen there was NOTHING wrong with the 'reject' parsnips except a slight difference in shape. Like, y'know, happens in nature. Someone has decided that we in the UK will all blow a fuse if confronted with produce that doesn't look identical. Hence the enormous waste and the tasteless pap we get sold because it is grown for appearance, not flavour. Next time you are in Greece (as an example) see what they buy; it doesn't look good but it TASTES. They also don't expect out of season produce and know that things run out.

Feeding people-grade food to animals also seems a waste. Nothing should be leaving your house except via your body apart from the aforementioned peelings, eggshells and teabags. Serve less, freeze and reheat leftovers, run a stock control system.

the old 'think of the starving children' doesn't mean eat like a glutton, it means take what you will use and no more. That includes from the supermarket.

hesterton it is not unlikely that the farmers had a restrictive contract, maybe they couldn't sell grade 1 produce to anyone else, they would have had to fulfil a specific quota to meet their contract and that money would not have been generous. They should have diversified, but maybe that contract and British weather meant they could not risk putting some land under a different crop.

And they did sell some of the other roots, sadly there is only so much soup or cattle fodder the country can take... and there are a lot of farmers growing a range of crops doing exactly the same thing. Diversification is not as it was, farmers become specialists, and then fall foul of buying monopolies. This has been happening for decades, hedges come out, larger fields mean more produce and less machinery, farming machinery no longer copes with small fields, a farmer can't back engineer his farm all that easily. It is really complex and not as easy as market forces, sadly.

Hopefully this time will be the time that we, the consumer get on board. Though given the previous threads and media response to the dairy farmers, maybe not!