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.

I agree that we need a culture change about this. But I cannot bear Hugh. I just loathe him.

The stunt of throwing 10% of the shopping away was just arrogant, mean, and utterly self defeating because whatever might have happened, that food is definitely wasted now. One woman looked as if she might cry as she watched her shopping get trashed. I would bet big money that that women in particular knows how to use food up (judging by her emotional response) and had no need of that arrogant, superior "lesson". (There are other pieces of arrogant show-boating that he's done on TV that make me want to get him in a room and give him a verbal obliteration for arrogance and ignorance)

I agree with all the PPs who say that sell by and best before dates are a big problem. We ignore them - except I can't send dcs out of the house with out of date food - but we ignore them at home. (The only rotten food I have had recently was well within date actually, I was quite cross about it.)

Definitely the cosmetic vegetables stuff is blatant nonsense. But if you challenged the supermarkets about it - like with the gendered toys nonsense - I am sure you will be given a rationale that is about needing to please the consumer; that the shops are in tough competition with each other; that they just can't afford not to please people who will shop elsewhere if the parsnip is bent. What can we do to prove that this need not be the case?

Hi , for info there's a company in Ireland that passes 'waste' food from supermarkets to charities that feed the homeless and others. Their website mentions a pilot in the UK foodcloud.net/1-million-meals-donated-to-charities/

It's interesting to me as I have a holiday home in a location where waste management is vital. It's a small island, and waste needs to be either burnt or shipped at great expense elsewhere for disposal. There is no kerbside collection, you load your rubbish into the back of your car and take it yourself. Also, everything needs to be shipped in, so almost all fresh food is grown or raised locally. Disposing of an 'ugly' vegetable would just not be considered. Excess produce is shared, you're likely to come home to a pile of something on the kitchen table that someone dropped off while you were out (no one locks their doors). It's a totally different mindset, with people actively reducing the waste they generate and there is only so much produce, so everything gets eaten, shared, processed in to other products (jams, etc), and then any waste that exists is fed to the chooks and pigs or at worst, goes on the compost heap. Even old furniture gets renovated, rather than thrown out.

By contrast, this week is our annual hard rubbish collection. The massive piles of rubbish on the front lawns of every property is just disgusting. And the council get all huffy and patrol to make sure no one is taking anything from the piles. Instead of allowing people to go around and take any useful items, they get snarky and fine people for scavenging. They'd rather see it go to the landfill than be taken by someone else and put to good use.

The fact that some people accepted a free bag of randomly sized parsnips on camera proves nothing, and it's utterly fatuous of HFW to pretend that it's a 'clear message' to Morrisons in any way. He stated that himself, he was trying to get Morrisons to talk to him.

He talks about supermarkets as though they're being despicably venal in making stocking choices based on what sells: but what does he expect? That they stop squeezing the grower and stop encouraging so much waste.

He gave parnsips away for nothing (and they probably go thrown away): is that what he's saying Morrisons should do? Yes, exactly that, just as KFC are starting to give away their chicken. But not that alone, other measures too.

Or maybe the MD should stop being a pleb and just go and live in a River Cottage where his similarly unemployed mates can come over and help barbecue the elderflower-infused home-grown fucking courgettes every harvest? That's just you disliking the man more than seeing the message!

But I d agree with Magic that his show boating at the beginning was very uncomfortable to watch. I get that that was the point... but I felt sorry for at least one of the pps. But maybe part of that discomfort was knowing that he had a point, we do waste so much food.

He said that the fact that people on camera took the parsnips was a clear message - yes, of course her was trying to force Morrisons to come and give him an interview, but it was still fatuous to suggest that anything meaningful could be taken from the parnsip give-away. I notice they were packaged in plastic, too!

It's a radical point, but maybe if parsnips are so unprofitable, farmers shouldn't grow so many! It irks me how the laws of the market apparently apply to everyone else, but it's unfair to apply them to farming.

So Morrisons should buy all the wonky parsnips so the farmers can stay in business, and then give them away? (So they can be thrown away, in all likelihood!). Really?

And no, I am not keen on the man, although I had no issues with him as a cook - fine, you live in the River Cottage, you write books, you have shows - some of your recipes are quite nice. But there does seem to be a bit of a detachment from reality as it is experienced outside the confines of the River Cottage.

We do waste too much food, and I agree something needs to be done. I think HFW was taking on too many issues which are related in more complex ways than he allows, and he found it easier to shed a tear for the farmers and berate the supermarkets and the working class.

"We do waste too much food, and I agree something needs to be done. I think HFW was taking on too many issues which are related in more complex ways than he allows, and he found it easier to shed a tear for the farmers and berate the supermarkets and the working class."

Right. Like a lot of TV shows about food, I find the tone hectoring and patronising and unfairly directed towards certain groups.

Things to bear in mind:

• HFW earns a living from making TV and books about dicking about with food. This is a very unusual position to be in. Most of us make our livings doing other things, and have unpaid caring work to do, and the bit of time we devote to food is a tiny little scrap stolen from sleeping or relaxing, which we don't have enough time for as it is. I am not going to pretend that I am going to elevate gutting a fish to some massive chunk of my weekend when I would rather take my kids somewhere nice, or have lie in, or read a book

• if you buy your fish that someone else has already gutted, that person is earning a living.

• all this hectoring is always disproportionately directed towards women

• (as if they are stupid)

• and the working class

• the woman who wanted to throw away some out of date bacon and eggs: for all you know she might have spent last week doing 245,567 loads of washing while throwing up herself. Food poisoning is not funny. I'm casual about sell by dates but I have a cast iron gut, you have to let people make their own choices, and we have now been long trained to think of food as intrinsically dangerous. There are complex reasons for this to do with corporations taking steps to not be legally liable for things. But you can't blame individuals for internalising this message, especially when they are responsible for other people

• why do supermarkets get away with putting farmers out of business with low prices? why is it necessary to trash mounds of edible parsnips? Neo liberal capitalism. The logical conclusion of unbridled market forces. YOU CANNOT SOLVE THIS PROBLEM BY HECTORING INDIVIDUALS IN THEIR HOUSES THROWING OUT SINGLE BACON RASHERS

YOU CANNOT SOLVE THIS PROBLEM BY HECTORING INDIVIDUALS IN THEIR HOUSES THROWING OUT SINGLE BACON RASHERS

hear hear. Excellent post Magick

It's a radical point, but maybe if you read the previous explanations about why farmers grow too much of a crop, you'd learn something of use in reducing your ire!

As for hectoring individuals... HFW said, more than once, that if we consumers want to badger the big corporations the least we could do is look at our own wasteful habits.

I can only presume that the dislike of a bloke with a posh accent is of more immediate concern to some than the problem of waste. And I also assume that those shouting such are least likely to have watched the programme, which is why they are making much ado about points that said posh bloke also raised during his programme!

If you are going to traduce the message as well as the messenger at least do so on valid points. You just sound silly, otherwise.

YY, restrictive contracts and space etc - but the thing is, that's a farming issue and a market issue: it's not readily resolvable by throwing a working-class family's yoghurts in a big bin in front of their astonished faces, is it?

What the answers are, in fine detail, HFW doesn't know any more than I do - but you can't solve a problem with the market by shouting at the customer. Or can you: maybe if Trinny and Susannah came out of retirement and grabbed mumsnetters in the street and forced them to wear jumpers with squirrels on from M&S's latest travesty of an AW collection, we could all prevent the terrible waste of stock there? The fact is, if people won't buy stuff, they won't, and in no other industry but farming is that framed as the consumer's fault.

I have no problem with HFW being a posh bloke in a nice house. I like his recipes for duck and pork. But I do not think he understands the lives most people lead, as Magick so well described them, and nor do he think he is well placed to lecture supermarkets or consumers on their practice.

I did watch the programme. I especially liked it when he was driving around in a 20% occupied 4x4 getting cross about waste.

But you are concatenating 2 points still. 1. the corporations need to do something 2. the consumer also needs to do something. Linking them, as you have, making one dependent upon the other, is not what he was doing! I am not sure how you have so firmly linked them.

I agree he has taken on a problem with a very broad front, but it is his schtick to raise such issues, not to provide neat answers. It is a big problem that needs more people to be more educated on. Who else is doing it?

And I am not sure I can dismiss the farmer's problems as nothing to do with me, or every one else living in the UK. It affects all of us in so many ways. Dismissing it a Someone Elses Problem is, in itself, part of the problem.

And I really can't be arsed about his choice of transport... given he would have had at least 1 other person in the car with him, equipment etc. And it is a bloke on a telly programme, trying to highlight a 1st world issue, not some pristinely perfect evangelist pronouncing... but then again, that is another way to undermine his message, I suppose!

Hmm, well I can't really be arsed about a woman throwing away a bacon rasher either, then.

And yes, I do think he's linked them: I think he very visibly did so in the scene where he was both giving away parsnips and feting those who took them, and shouting through the door of Morrisons. That was a very clear yoking of the two issues.

I don't think it's fair to suggest that any issues one might have with the message, or the manner of its delivery, are attempts to 'undermine' the man - I think actually if you are going to go out and preach like this, your own behaviour is open to observation, at least.

I am fairly certain that I have not said that you, I, or anyone else, should dismiss farmers' problems as nothing to do with us - essentially, however, I think it is not really possible to take this on in a one hour show, which also attempts to deal with ignorance on recycling process, sales techniques in supermarkets, domestic use of produce, and farming. So I do see that HFW had an almost impossible remit here (assuming it was given him rather than chosen by him, and allowing that he might have liked to offer a more nuanced and detailed analysis).

I'm not actually sure this is a problem that can be addressed by anyone in terms of 'schtick' - isn't allowing the issue to be subservient to a presenter's 'schtick' a bit reductive, in the end?

Really enjoyed it. I made me want to eat parsnips though!

Nearly cried watching the parsnip farmers working so hard to make a loss and watching all their lovely produce left to rot. Awful.

Next time you are in the supermarket, ask them to put their cosmetic standards for veg on display so that they are HONEST about how they contribute to the mountains of perfectly edible food that is ploughed into the ground.

FFS there are people relying on food banks
and supermarkets worry about the size of a vegetable
more than its flavour

What makes me despair on this thread is that somehow a dislike of HWF negates the point

The supermarket "throwaway" was obviously a publicity stunt and am damn sure that the shoppers in question were reimbursed for what they purchased. Otherwise we would have had another addition to the Daily Fail sad face galley "Hugh Swiped my Shopping - Kids left Starving".

So we don't need to feel sorry for them.

Next time you go to the supermarket think about how "perfect" those carrots/parsnips/beans look.

Then think about what that cost.

Then think if you give a shit.

And with that thought ringing in my ears... I am off to the farm shop and the local 'artisan baker' for my weekend shopping

I've just watched it on catch up.

The bit about the chickens was the most shocking to me. I've been vegetarian for nearly a decade anyway and the thought of chickens being killed just to be thrown in the bin is just shocking to me. Especially when there are people going hungry too, it's doubly shocking.

I buy 90% of my fruit & veg through a veg box scheme and a lot of it is a bit wonky or unevenly sized. Never makes a difference when cooking. Parsnips are always chopped up or grated anyway, I don't know why anyone would need to buy perfectly evenly sized parsnips.

Indeed Gone.

I'm not veggie, but I do buy my meat from a colleague at work who owns a small holding and supplies meat boxes. I know the animals are well treated.

I love the taste of my Dads wonky homegrown veg (sadly I don't have green fingers).

As consumers we do have a choice.

Interestingly, Sainsbury's have just released this website: www.sainsburysfoodrescue.co.uk/

COSMETIC STANDARDS FOR VEG

start spamming the facebook pages
ask at the customer service desk every time you go to the shop
twitter
tell your friends

Of course, we will have to wait until tomorrow to sign up, shout out, etc. All sorts of sites are erroring out

the facebook group is up and running ....