to be shocked that 70% of food waste is from our homes? Do people not eat leftovers?

[MLMshouldbeillegal]

ahdb.org.uk/news/consumer-insight-positive-movements-in-uk-food-waste-reduction-reverse-as-covid-19-restrictions-are-removed

71% of food waste - 4.5 MILLION TONNES - annually is from our homes. Retailer and restaurants get stick in the press for throwing things away but really, they're not the problem, are they? Only 4% of food waste is produced by reailers.

It's us who are being wasteful. Throwing away 4.5 million tonnes of food each year is obscene. Do people not eat leftovers? Freeze what they're not using and keep it another day?

Avocados are one of the most unreliable foods going. They seem to go from rock hard to rotten in the blink of an eye.

The other food that I end up wasting a lot of is spinach.

Bagged salad leaves are a culprit too, but I just stopped buying those. Gem lettuces are much hardier.

"Toast it from frozen. Makes a big difference."

The bread curls and won't fit into the toaster properly.
Anyway, not my problem, I buy bread with lots of preservatives in and it lasts.

"you can buy half loaves. "

In some places. Not everywhere and not necessarily at one of the supermarkets close by. Same with individual veg. Lots of the smaller and medium-sized supermarkets don't let you buy 3 carrots and 3 potatoes, it's a big bag or nothing.

We have a local cafe that uses waste food. They also sell Waste not food boxes and frozen meat boxes. And there were queues out the door today to collect.
I take no notice of dates on fruit and vegetables.
Most of our waste is peelings/teabags etc. And a spoonful of a dish left.
My parents waste nothing but they are the children of food rationing.

"They’re not actually off when they float. It just means they’re not as fresh - there’s more air inside. They’re still perfectly fine to eat. Eggs can easily be eaten several months after the date as long as they’ve been stored well."

I'm not sure this is right and I wouldn't test it. If they don't sink, but sort of cling to the sides of the bowl, that's OK, it means not fresh, but still OK to eat, but if they float completely that means there's air inside and they've gone off. Having once had diarrhoea from a pub omelette, I won't be chancing it.

We would also have no food waste if we could feed it to our hens. But as not a vegetarian household you aren’t allowed.

@Jijithecat

Avocados are terrible for the environment. It requires up to 320 litres of water to grow a single avocado. Then there's the deforestation, the air transport etc. To read that people are throwing them away uneaten blows my mind.

There are ethical issues, I accept, but they are very good for your health, including for your skin. They are also very temperamental, often either gone off or not ripe enough so I can see how it's easy to miss the magic moment when they're ripe, but not too much.

@TheKeatingFive

Avocados are one of the most unreliable foods going. They seem to go from rock hard to rotten in the blink of an eye.

The other food that I end up wasting a lot of is spinach.

Bagged salad leaves are a culprit too, but I just stopped buying those. Gem lettuces are much hardier.

Cross-posted with you on the avocados there. I tend to buy frozen spinach, but I accept that's no good for salad.

I tend to buy frozen spinach

That's a good work around

I throw an awful lot away because:

Bastarding Sainsburys always deliver food 1 day from its use by date

I live alone and its nigh on impossible to buy small servings/portions

I only have a small fridge/freezer

I only have limited cupboard space

Even though I use 'stay fresh' discs, stuff still goes off.

I work 50 hours a week and cant shop for fresh food every day.

Its annoying. I do meal plan but cant seem to reduce the waste.

Fozen veg are great, obviously it doesn't work for salad, but for that but the longer lasting stuff and plan meals around it.
Little gem, tomatoes, half a cucumber, radishes, grated carrot, (from a fresh one), finely sliced onion.
They all last fairly well.

One of my meals next week is salad made from the above, with chicken livers and garlic bread using a part baked baguette.
I know liver isn't generally popular but a couple of chicken thighs would work too.

If I fancy something after then yoghurt, fruit, cheese or a couple of biscuits.

Apparently it is defined as food which could have been eaten.

So no, not peelings and bones or egg shells.

Can't see why you'd assume that re veg. Lots of vegetable peelings are edible and, in the case of potatoes, it's really common to eat them.

I do wonder if this is a fair story. Restaurants and cafes produce much less food waste onsite as they buy prepared food, such as peeled boiled eggs, peeled potatoes. But that waste is being produced somewhere. Just like the rest of chickens whose breasts go to supermarkets but there is not enough demand for wings, thighs etc.

We are lucky to have 2 freezers so I will freeze food like celery if I don't think it will get used up in time. But DP buys fresh bread on Thursday, freezes it immediately and then defrosts it to eat 'fresh' on Saturday and Sunday. Any that doesn't get eaten on the day goes in the cupboard and gets forgotten about most weeks and thrown out mid week when it's going blue.

A lot of food from the supermarket isn't that fresh to begin with, and sometimes it's not sensible to freeze and reheat something that's already been through that process - unless you don't mind food poisoning.

Leftovers fed to animals are classed as food waste in the report.

@NineCmNails

Leftovers fed to animals are classed as food waste in the report.

That is ridiculous. It is getting eaten, and it providing nutrition to a living thing. How is that waste?

Next you'll tell me they count the stiff we put on our compost heap..

Stuff!

It would be useful if this was taught in school - in my recent experience, "food tech" consists of going out to purchase ingredients you'll only need 50 grams of for a child to cook something he or she will batter around in their schoolbag for the rest of the day - sometimes two or three, if they forget. We need classes where kids are sat in front of an open, half-full refrigerator, and asked, "right, what can we make?" And food waste could be as demonised as smoking.

It's clear, from reading some of these posts, why this is such a huge problem.

If an egg is rotten you will know.

@KrispyKale

Next you'll tell me they count the stiff we put on our compost heap..

I think my neighbours would notice me putting a stiff on my compost heap

[quote Wingedharpy]@ZZTopGuitarSolo : Do your reusable mesh bags work well in prolonging food life?
Any links to which ones you use?
I'm very mindful that although we probably don't contribute much to the food waste problem, we very much contribute to paper waste in the Wingedharpy household.

Surely, though, everyone's circumstances are very different, and it's just about all of us doing what we can, within our personal limits, and being mindful of what we use?[/quote]
Of course - not knocking your methods at all. Just adding a suggestion. I don't know which mesh bags they are, they were just hanging by the till at Trader Joe's so I grabbed a couple to try them out. They're much better than the plastic bags for extending veg life.

That’s a crazy figure.
We very rarely waste anything.