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?

We don't waste a lot of food, as my DH refuses to throw anything away and ignores best before dates (/food hygiene rules )

But I do not compost peelings etc and that's definitely remiss of me.

Bagged lettuce or spinach lasts ages if you put kitchen roll in the bag to soak up moisture.

Loving this top tip.

A lot of this is caused by spoilt kids tbh sounds like it

@Tippexy

People with ADHD throw away tons of old food as they simply forget they’ve bought it once it goes into the fridge. They can’t help it.

I have ADHD, it is very very rare for any food to be wasted in our home, I do the food shop, meal planning and cooking.

[quote HollyandIvyandAllThingsYule]@Gwenhwyfar I’m not actually arguing with you but if there were rotten eggs in the omelette you absolutely would have known it. They stink and the smell is unmistakeable. It’s likely it was something else in the preparation/storing/serving that made you ill.

Anyway all I’m saying is eggs can be used months after they’re laid.[/quote]
I and the other person who eat were suffering the next day. Another friend had an omelette and was suffering half an hour later. I don't know what else in an omelette would cause that.

Jollyjoon, your mum sounds great.

YANBU I think it’s awful. I think there are 2 issues here. One is that food waste includes food that is not usually eaten-bones, peelings, egg shells, banana skins etc. More worrying is reading about people forgetting what they’ve bought-sounds like they are not planning their menus in advance which tends to be very wasteful in terms of both food and money. What works for us is to plan a menu for a week as the basis for the shopping list. Contents of freezer and vegetable patch are checked in the process with the result that we only buy what we know we need. I know that picky children can be a problem but they can also learn! We found that it was helpful to let them each choose one favorite meal each week so they were involved in the planning process. In the end it was a win win situation. Saves waste, money and time in the kitchen

"sounds like they are not planning their menus in advance which tends to be very wasteful in terms of both food and money"

Not meal planning. How awful!
Most single people don't meal plan. I want someone to kill me if I start having food according to a rota.

Nobody's admitting that the problem is over consumption and not really waste. It's people buying too much, whether they eat it or not and plenty of people are also eating too much.

More worrying is reading about people forgetting what they’ve bought-sounds like they are not planning their menus in advance which tends to be very wasteful in terms of both food and money

We don't meal plan but rarely waste anything. If there's something that needs using quickly we just make a meal with it, it's not that hard.

As for best-before dates, I ignore them and use my judgement. Just ate a 2 1/2 week old yoghurt, as I often do, and I'm never ill. I don't eat things that are mouldy or smelly, but I know how long things will last and they rarely get to the mouldy stage.

We stayed with friends this summer and they made huge amazing food but I was shocked by how much they threw away. Leftovers from every meal that could easily have made another meal or, for meat. Sandwiches the next day that kind of thing.

Good waste in my household is mostly due to poor planning on my part. There is also the added factor that sometimes I am simply too busy to cook something that I planned to make and the ingredients spoil. I don’t think I am alone in this, unexpectedly ending up working late several nights in a row or finding myself so busy with something else that I simply can’t get to the making the meals I planned.

I have been doing better about this lately by simply buying very little in groceries and eating out more. That isn’t necessarily better for the environment though because I have much of that food delivered which means someone is making a trip to my home for each of those meals.

I don't throw out much - lived in developing countries so it pains me to throw out food. Any food waste goes in the council food bin.

I have a chest freezer (even though I live in a flat), which is so helpful to reduce waste. For those living alone, I've bought portion sized silicone containers - so I freeze portioned meals or sides in there. I do the same with celery, onions, carrots (that I've chopped in the food processor) etc and just pull out right sized amounts of various things to go into cooking. Makes food prep fast, when you are tired.

Bagged salad can be frozen and used like greens in cooking, honestly I can't tell the difference. Carcasses become stock, so live again to fight another day etc. Odds and ends (tomato paste, coconut milk etc) all go in the freezer.

This thread has reminded me of when our fridge freezer broke. I spent ages cooking all the raw meat/fish - where possible it then went in the other freezer. We ate a lot of random combinations in those first 2 days of using up everything from the fridge.

I was pleased with how little we did end up actually throwing out - although it was still painful to have to do it! It is just very against mine and DHs and way of living.

TheKeatingFive

There was a thread recently where a poster said eating leftovers was 'gross' along with the attendant 🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢 faces.

Plenty of thick and ignorant types around unfortunately

Agreed M&S and those ready meals is leftovers in a way . It’s reheating already cooked food. I buy a lot of reduced food because where I live there is always a constant supply and I tend to be adhoc with what I will cook this is because I was cooking for my siblings from the age of 13 and I don’t like wasting money which is what food waste is . It’s bad housekeeping. My partner is a bit more spoilt and will not feel like eating certain things on particular day or not eat the end of the bread. He was an only child and I think he was more indulged . Also I have watched his mother throw perfectly good food away. So it starts in Childhood how u educate about food waste . The freezer is a great help and I have a small kitchen but made sure my fridge has a decent half freezer half fridge. It’s a crime to waste food when you think of what goes into growing or feeding and all labour required for it to rot is just truly a waste of resources and then when you think some are deciding whether to eat or heat.Food Poverty. I always was aware that there is enough food out there for no one to go hungry because we have industrialised food production creating a mass over production this makes me angry when it’s slaughtered meat being thrown in the bin. That animal was reared industrially intensively miserably to then end up rotting in a bin. It’s just so wrong and we need to change this . I believe it is possible

A lot of this is caused by spoilt kids tbh

Yep

Do you think the main reason we end up with so much waste nowadays is we give children a choice? We never got a choice as young children, my mum just cooked what she decided and it was eat it or leave it.

Gwenhwyfar

“Not meal planning. How awful!
Most single people don't meal plan. I want someone to kill me if I start having food according to a rota.”

Most single people I know do. They don’t usually have money to waste or time to shop more often than absolutely necessary. Not actually understanding why being organized is such a terrible thing. When I’m thinking through my schedule for the day I find it very helpful to know how much time I will need to allocate for cooking and that I don’t have to fit in a supermarket run.

We have a couple of plates of leftovers every day. When it was just two of us they got reheated and eaten but now we have kids they are fussy toddlers with unpredictable appetites. Our council have a food waste collection but we don't use it. The better stuff goes to the chickens and the rest goes on the compost.

Wasting food wastes money. If that isn't enough reason not to, then it's hard to not presume a case of affluenza?

Honestly we do fill around three of our little food caddies a week, it's maybe a carrier bag full in total. It is things like egg shells, veg and fruit peelings, teabags, coffee grounds, all the food the baby throws on the floor and can't be salvaged, uneaten or half eaten toast from the kids breakfast etc... having young kids has definitely led to more food waste in our house, mainly because it gets played with and not always eaten...

@Lockheart

Are they measuring that in terms of total food waste, or is food waste put out for compost etc excluded? Because I chuck a lot of tea bags etc but only after they've been used! We have a food waste caddy in addition to green and black bins and into that goes everything - teabags, peelings, crusts, ends, bones, fat etc.

But yes, food waste is a real problem. We're quite inefficient when it comes to using our resources. People buy too much and then can't or don't eat it.

The local vicar here went for a walk shortly after the initial covid lockdown and mass panic buying started. He photographed so many bags of perfectly good fruit and veg which had been left out for the rubbish collection. It was sickening really, all that food going to waste. We're incredibly greedy.

This is excellent vicar-ing

@JoanWilderbeast

Wasting food wastes money. If that isn't enough reason not to, then it's hard to not presume a case of affluenza?

Food in the Uk is very cheap compared to wages and compared to other countries. Obviously there are people who can't afford it, but for the average person some food in the bin is not going to bankrupt them. If you think about it, many people go to the pub, which is much, much more expensive and also consuming things we don't need.

I work opposite an Aldi so have started shopping daily ( we are guilty of Saturday takeaway and Sunday lunch at the pub dd1 works at as she gets a free lunch end of her shift and we get a good discount)
We now waste so much less good as quick message to DH and dd1 and dd2 with what they want for dinner - ds eats anything. So only buy what we need.
Weekend shop for cupboard staples and fridge stuff but only stuff that gets wasted is berry fruit that goes off before it's eaten and cat food as the fussy buggers keep changing their minds about whiskers / Felix or whatever else is flavour of the week! They do love left over macaroni cheese and jacket potatoes!

I am a food waste nerd to the point that I cried this week because our two-year-old has had covid and promptly stopped eating anything at all - to the extent I can't keep up with eating the trying to tempt him leftovers.

The thing I have found that works for us (particularly, my very lazy about food husband) is a bread machine. It takes 5 minutes to make a loaf of very good flavourful bread. I do a lot of herb breads, chocolate bread instead of cake, olive bread... all in the smallest possible loaves or just make pizza dough. It does freeze and makes fresh bread a meal in itself, so we don't have to throw it away. If we have guests for lunch now I just do a loaf of really posh bread and buy nice cheese and things to go with it.

It's countertop space, but for £60 from Lakeland it has saved us a tonne of money and made us feel we are eating much better too.

Thinking about it, the airfryer is another MVP. We have three children under 3 - the airfryer means we can cook a couple of jacket potatoes for the grown-ups without me wanting to fill the whole oven to justify the heat. Small is beautiful.

@MLMshouldbeillegal

All the quibbling about whether food fed to animals counts or whether composted food counts - does it really matter??

We as a nation are wasting food. Lots of attention has been heaped on food waste from retailers and they have addressed that for PR reasons and to increase their profits. Restaurants don't want food waste either - it's straight off their profit margin.

But these people routinely chucking stuff out? I get the issue with online orders but there are ways round this. Don't order the salad bags and the soft fruit which does go off quickly! Order apples and pears and bananas and whole carrots and lettuces which last longer. If you want to buy soft fruit and salad, go at the weekend or when you're not working and select it yourself. It seems ridiculous to moan that on every online order you get (for example) raspberries which are a day to their use by date - and keep ordering the raspberres!

Also agree there is a huge issue around cooking and knowing how to use leftovers. One of my kids' favourites is home made samosas made with filo pastry - they're not really samosas as they are baked not fried but they are brilliant for using up odd bits of veg, or small quantities of meat which wouldn't be enough for a meal on their own.

Raspberries were got in store by dd specifically for pavlova she took as a gift

I can’t go to the supermarket at the weekend when I’m not working as I’m disabled. And sometimes I just fancy strawberries or blueberries or something other than apples.