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.

@DragonsAndCakes any left over portions here are put in a container and either put in the fridge so on pot luck night you get to choose which leftover meal you want zapped, we all end up having something different. Or shoved in the freezer.
Bizarre that you think reheated stir fry would be disgusting

Yes Mere but there have been many, many years of plenty (too much) too much choice etc. the supermarkets are at fault I think, everything is too cheap , there is no proper value put on food. Our parents are doing what society wants them to, Eating and drinking too much rubbish , throwing it away, it's not like the wartime any more is it?

Poor Jamie Oliver and Hugh FW are bashing their heads against brick wall

The majority of food in the supermarkets is crap IMO.

The supermarkets might be too cheap for you but there are lots of people in this country who can't afford to waste food.

SluttyButty I think calling my opinion ‘bizarre’ is a bit rude. Stir fry is meant to be made freshly, not like a stew or something similar.

Podge the problem is the quality of most of the food is cheap and the price and it is wasted. Even if some people can't afford to do it. As I said ,it's a mental attitude now. Encouraged by the media and the supermarkets of course.

Even here in France people are buying shxx. The poor used to spend more of their income on their food and value it more.

It's probably me. We are terrible for it, buy stuff then plans change and it goes off before we can use it.

I give as much as I can to the chooks/horse/cats and freeze some - but inevitably waste some.

I think we probably throw away on average £10 a week, sometimes more. That's about 10% of what we spend on food.

Funnily enough we never waste the wine

Dragons and cakes FWIW I agree with you, the only way a stir fry could or should be reheated is by re-frying it I think, especially if it'd been frozen Otherwise it'll just be soggy in my opinion. So I'd refry it next day but other than that I wouldn't be keen either. Anything else like stew, curry, lasagne, chilli etc is the food of the gods when reheated next day. But not stir fry

I ignore B.B. dates and look at the product instead. My dad is a bit too extreme for me though... refreezes things multiple times and cuts / scrapes the mouldy stuff off food and eats the rest etc etc. He clearly has a stomach of iron. He’s never given me food poisoning so far though. He’s also a doctor fwiw, is ridiculously healthy for his age and dislikes nearly all fruit and veg, especially hates salad veg. Maybe he knows something I don’t !

I don't like stir fry reheated, I just eat it cold - it's like a cooked salad and is quite tasty

I've never tried that Darth but I suspect I may have slime issues

My MIL! She simply buys too much and talks happily about hating waste while chucking copious amounts of food in the bin. Bonkers.

We're another household that can have fluctuating evening plans. I only plan for about 3 meals at a time, with frozen food (fish, chips & veg) or baked beans on toast as a back up if we need more.

When I was in my first job I had very, very little money. I reckoned that if I scraped the mould off bread, toasted it, covered it in Marmite and I could still taste the mould, then I probably needed to throw the bread out. Otherwise, I kept eating it.

But ppeatfruit I'm wondering which parental generation this is that is buying and throwing away. As I said, my parents are wartime/rationing, I was brought up not to throw anything away. And I'm not sure there's room for a DP generation and a MN generation below me - I'm not that ancient!

As I said, my parents are wartime/rationing, I was brought up not to throw anything away.

People raised under rationing or by wartime parents seem to go one of two ways: either very frugal and 'waste not want not' or profligate - the latter often have a 'I don't want to live like that ever again' attitude where they don't want to deny themselves as they have such bad associations with it. It's like how people who have grown up poor are often obsessed with buying designer clothes etc. for their children whereas those who have always been comfortably middle class are happy to buy second hand - there's not that stigma/fear of not having enough for people who have always been comfortable.

I must admit I'm overly cautious with a best before date. I'm 19 and still learning how long everything lasts and I am getting better. So for me it's just food knowledge well lack of it!

I used to get paid as part of my role to go through a fridge and chuck out anything that had a Best Before 2 days AFTER I was doing this chore...so if something had a BB before Wed 3rd, I had to lob it before Mon 1st.

It wasn’t even a use-by!!!

I soon resigned (despite wanting to keep the produce for myself)

She had massive issues regarding germs & dirt and had counselling for many years.

My parents (89 and 92) are terrible. They throw things away if they reach their date and don't even bother smelling or tasting to see if they are ok. If something has been in the freezer for more than a few weeks that also gets thrown. Such a waste.

I am the opposite. I absolutely hate waste. I don't take much notice of dates - never even look at dates on fruit, veg, cheese etc. I eat food out of date all the time. I have eaten yoghurts a month or so out of date. I cut mould of cheese and eat it. I eat potatoes with massive sprouts on them. I have never had food poisoning.

I literally throw nothing away. Veg peelings and any veg on its last legs becomes soup. Fruit past its best becomes crumble or a pie or a smoothie. Stale bread (which I rarely have) becomes breadcrumbs which go in the freezer or bread pudding, bread and butter pudding.

When I buy bread I split it up into about 4 lots and freeze. I have never had a problem with defrosted bread tasting funny as some people say.

Any leftovers from a meal either get given to my dogs, the birds or put in a small container and either put in the fridge for next day's lunch or put in the freezer.

I meal plan but if something needs using up I will change the meal plan to enable me to use that item.

Me and DH are vegetarian so I think nothing of freezing things more than once. We use oat milk and that, supposedly, has to be used within 3 days of opening. We would never use it in that time so just ignore that advice. Not unknown for a carton to last 2 weeks!

Someone was asking for advice on a facebook group I belong to. They wanted to know if unopened hummus 1 day out of date would be ok and whether salmon with had been in the freezer for 4 months would be ok. The amount of people who said no was unbelievable. I said the salmon would be fine and to smell the hummus but that should be fine too. I also said how I have always ignored dates and have never had food poisoning. One poster told me she worked in care and doctors had told her that if you regularly eat food out of date you may become ill when you get older because of it!!

ppeat the poor can't spend a greater percentage of their income on food anymore as, for a lot of us, it's spent on housing instead! I don't mind if my food isn't top quality as long as I can put it on the table and try to give my children a bit of variety as well. Putting food prices up will hurt the most vulnerable in society, not those who aren't bothered about waste.

Everybody should be bothered about waste, both food and plastic! I complained in Waitrose about their double packaging; avocados which already have a skin (oddly they do sell some loose) in a shaped container and put in another plastic covering fgs it's sinful.

Mere dm is 90 this year ! A lot of people are living longer and they get more than a bit muddled with their management of shopping , keeping in the fridge etc.

cloudtree why should life get even harder for those on a tight budget, because other people are wasteful? I might waste the odd half a cucumber or couple of tomatoes but I have to budget my shopping carefully and any price hikes would hurt my family a lot

I think you misunderstood me Podge Food prices are predicted to rise with brexit etc and I simply meant that if they do rise, those people who are wasteful might think more carefully.

ppeatfruit the DPs people are complaining about are compos mentis and don't sound like they're wasting food because they're getting a bit muddled. I suspect the other poster had it, the one that said the post-war generation who were brought up by parents used to war-time shortages and rationing went one of two ways, either kept the frugal habits of their childhood (which I know I have, and most of my friends of this age), or joyfully embraced the abundance and didn't worry about wasting it.

Yes you could be right, but we all our now aware of the terrible waste by supermarkets, there has been huge publicity. What annoys me is that the supermarkets do pay lip service about waste nowadays , they do give to food banks , but they should be FORCED to give to them. Or just to their shoppers. the poor ones.