to ask, who wastes all the food?

[amigababy]

So Tesco is removing the best before dates on its own fruit and vegetables.
Wrap, the food waste body, say that in Britain families throw away £700 of food a year ( I've read that a few times over recent years). So for me that would equate to 10 full weeks of shopping every year, discarded. More, if I assume at least 10% of every weeks shop is non food items.

I reckon I throw away maybe a £ a week of food - half a bag of salad, a half tin of beans that sat in the fridge too long, the last slice of ham. So at worst say £60 a year. Who's throwing away all the rest to get to these averages? I want to understand.

I can be a bit bad for wastage but it's not week by week stuff...it's long term things that I buy, put in the cupboard, and forget about until they are past their date. They are their on the off-chance I want them...or they were new things to try that turned out not to be that nice. I'm not scraping up the pennies for the weekly shop so I'd rather chuck something out if I don't like it or if it's getting a bit past it rather than eat it just to save the waste. Yogurt is another big wastage in our house. And apples. At least you can make banana bread with old bananas so they don't go to waste...

Dh annoys me because he never looks at dates. He's given the dcs lumpy milk for breakfast, then was disbelieving when they complained it tasted funny.
He gave the dcs milk dated the 20th May for breakfast this morning.🙄

Apples are never wasted here, dh makes a yummy apple cake and uses up what we've got and maybe buys a cooker from the shop.

Dh also wanted to bbq chicken drumsticks that were in date but had gone yellow and stank. Aldi chicken always goes off before the date.

Tesco are on the way to going bust. Their customer service is shitter than ever, their fruit and veg has shit shelf life and if you order it online you have to pay for longer dates! I have known perishables to go off the next day from not checking dates. They are money obsessed and crap and dont give a shit about customers

Aldi mince does too.

I have three dogs so very little goes to waste here. However I have failed as a mother. My DD roasted a chicken the other weekend but didn't get to eat it due to an unexpected pregnancy related trip to the hospital. She didn't realise you can freeze cooked meat! Where did I go wrong?
(fortunately she did freeze it the next day and brought it round for my dogs to eat).

DP would if I didn't take control. For example brought ready to eat avocados with yesterday's date on. He will want to throw them today but they aren't even bloody ripe yet

Community Fridges are a brilliant way of managing food waste. If you have in date sealed items that you know you won't use just donate it to a community fridge so that someone else can make use of it.
There's also the Olio app. You don't even need to leave your home, just advertise it for collection and someone will collect it.

Surely all the veg that's out of date can be composted and or put in the green bin for recycling? Does that count as waste I wonder?

We are lucky in that our neighbour has a smallholding (in France) ducks, chickens, and sheep etc. , we give our leftovers to him.

My husband

He keeps buying stuff that doesn't go together so I can't make much use of it and then just leaving it to rot.

@ppeatfruit

I finally got a composted! It's brilliant. Years if growing as much of my own fruit and veg as I can, but never had the space for a compost bin. Sorted out the water bit if garden and it's great! I don't count it as wasted anymore if anything compkstabke goes off.

We are lucky because all our veg are so fresh here and we've learnt to use it straight away (only since living here though) You'd be amazed how much better the stuff tastes when it's fresh and lightly cooked!

Not us either! Always freeze little leftovers in takeaway tubs, great for work lunches. The occasional overlooked potato, carrot, bit of cucumber/ salad goes in compost. Weekly Meal planning is very important to me and saves a lot of waste and stress.

my dh. He asks me to buy soup and bread for his lunches (naice soup and bread) then doesn't take it with him. I've stopped now.

@wreneka if your apples are getting a bit old or bashed peel and core them cut out any really nasty bits and stew them. Put them in the freezer and when you have a few make apple crumble or apple pie. Stewed apples freeze really well.

I am so looking forward to my new big freezer!
Hopefully we will have less waste.

B.B.

Rocinante1 because I took it out to cook it and saw the date was yesterday :-( I'm a bit more careful to check now before the delivery driver goes away!

Usually I use my common sense. I try not to buy too much, especially fresh, but I have to confess that we are the house where bananas and strawberries go to get mouldy. The number of times I've forgotten I had bought bananas and they were still in the bag weeks days later is embarrassing.

@SecretNutellaFix - if you notice a banana is past its best for just eating it's still fine, perfect in fact for cooking as it's sweeter - just freeze it. Either peel and cut into a few chunks and add to a ziploc bag in the freezer, or you can freeze the entire banana as-is. It'll look really brown and gross but it's still good. Then when you want to make a smoothie you have ready frozen super ripe and sweet banana to hand, just chuck in the blender. Or when you have a few, defrost and make banana bread/banana muffins/whatever. It'll seem a gross wet texture but mixes in as normal mashed banana.

Or banana ice cream... freeze for about 20 minutes... zub it and eat it!

We seem to generate very little food waste... sometime the little food caddy only gets full fortnightly, mainly coffee grounds and veg peelings, maybe chicken bones, after we've made stock from them (yes, I'm one of those MNers who can make a chicken last for 78 meals )

Soups save a lot of waste... squishy tomato, peppers into the freezer and then, when the bag has enough, heat it, zub it eat it, re-freeze it etc.

Odd bits of veg get frozen back for med veg mix or ratatouille, or more soup. Cooked meat for chilli, pie fillings, etc.

For some reason we eat best when we have dug a mad collection of things out of the freezer

My MIL is a frugal shopper and the fridge is always practically empty, as she only buys stuff for the next day or two, BUT when we go there for a meal I am always horrified that any leftovers go straight down the kitchen sink waste disposal thingy. I would make at least another meal from what she chucks out. I hate waste, and would say I throw out - maybe - 50p worth a week, if that, and feel guilty.