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?

JollyJoon

What a fantastically resourceful mum and of course she is stretching the housekeeping budget further and making it fun !

My only food waste is apple cores, banana skin, orange peel, egg shells, stalks and stems maybe. That’s about it.

I keep bread I the fridge or freezer.

Anything veg that needs eating goes in a stew or curry and in tubs in the freezer and taken to work for lunch.

Doe's the figures include things like eggshells and chicken bones?

@cushioncovers

I try not to, my problem I have is I do an online grocery shop intending for it to last the week. I then get delivered fresh food that frequently only has 2 days date on it when I know from being in the store that produce at the back of the shelf has 4 or 5 days date on it. I'm then left with a load of fresh food that either needs using up in 48 hours or throwing away. I've complained so many times and got refunded every time but still nothing changes so I end up throwing out salad, coleslaw etc every week. Financially it's not costing me anything but environmentally it is.

This is our main problem too. Very frustrating doing a week’s food shop to find you have to eat everything in 2 days. We have a very small freezer and nowhere to put a second one. Most of my freezer space is frozen vegetables and frozen expressed milk so very little space for leftovers.

@cushioncovers
I try not to, my problem I have is I do an online grocery shop intending for it to last the week. I then get delivered fresh food that frequently only has 2 days date on it when I know from being in the store that produce at the back of the shelf has 4 or 5 days date on it. I'm then left with a load of fresh food that either needs using up in 48 hours or throwing away. I've complained so many times and got refunded every time but still nothing changes so I end up throwing out salad, coleslaw etc every week. Financially it's not costing me anything but environmentally it is.

You really really don't need to throw anything out that has 2 days on it. Use your eyes and your nose and eat it if it's ok. So wasteful to throw good food out.

I don’t meal plan but we work very much on a “needs eating” basis. Rather than thinking what do we fancy to eat tonight, we look in the fridge, see what’s about to go off and work out a meal that uses those ingredients.

My mother finds this depressing, and I suppose it is, but she’s happy to throw food away and I’m not.

I also ignore use by dates. Eyes and nose do a far better job. People complaining about their online shop having short use by dates - so does mine but we still eat it and we’re all fine.

@cushioncovers another tip, the way fruit and veg are packaged makes them sweat and go off quicker, if you take them out the bag and transfer them to something more suitable, I have a fruit and veg rack for most and use cardboard egg cartons for things like mushrooms and tomatoes, keep onions separate to potatoes and I keep potatoes in a drawer. They keep ages. Also, eggs do the float test put them in water if they float to the top they are no good. The thing is with best before dates it's to cover the supermarkets back so you can't return it if off after the date. Doesn't mean it's off. Oh and if spuds start to sprout just knock them off can still use them ;)

I don’t play fast and loose with coleslaw and such like. Other things like veg I just look at and use.

@Gwenhwyfar oh I’m not saying it wasn’t the omelette, just that it’s more likely it was contaminated or had been improperly stored after being cracked - if it was rotten or had gone off in the shell it would have been an unmistakable smell.

Anyway the most important thing is that I hope you never have to go through that again! Food poisoning is not fun.

I’d guess I waste more than some people, but a lot less than some. Obviously the inedible parts like shells and peels and cores. Like other smaller households I’ll sometimes find I don’t get through something before it goes bad.. bagged salads and fresh herbs are a common culprit. The end of a tub of hummus or coleslaw (I’ll eat it a couple of days after the date, but then chuck it). Very rarely table scraps (I’ll cook the amount I need, or extra deliberately for another meal). Almost never meat, I’ll order the best value pack and freeze in portions. Potatoes are another one.. we mostly eat rice or pasta, and I’ll confess I’ll find half a bag in the back of the cupboard more stalk than spud on the odd occasion.
Our council does weekly food collection, but I rarely see many out on bin day, so I’m guessing many aren’t bothering to recycle?

We try and minimise it.

Meal planning (as in "What shall we have this week?" not "Monday is Bolognese, Tuesday is curry....") is essential as we hvae one veggie and a variety of schedules to balance, plus likes and dislikes.

Freezing leftovers (I'm cooking mince tonight, so the rest will go into tubs) and then planning meals around the freezer contents every few weeks is also key.

We're in soup season now, so plenty of chances to use up spare veg.

Given I work in food, "Use by" is something to pay attention to (it's based on food safety), "Best Before" is very much a guideline

@itsallfuntilsomeonelosesaneye yes, that’s what we do too. Planning isn’t hard and fast, if flexes quite a lot. Yesterday I made pumpkin soup because we had a few bits of pumpkin/squash left over from the ingredients of a big celebration meal I made on Saturday. I roasted them up, blitzed up with stock and refrigerated. Tomorrow I’ll cook up some carrots to add to it and that will be our lunch for a couple of days.

We had leftover lamb and couscous from Saturday’s meal. So today I sautéed half a red onion and a courgette with some herbs and chilli flakes, added the lamb into that to warm it through, microwaved the couscous (which had lots of lovely meat juices added to it), mixed it all together and that was lunch. The other half of the onion will be used tomorrow.

Today I also made cranberry sauce with cranberries left over from making gin liqueur last week. Into that I added the juice of one orange that had been zested for mincemeat we made last week - I stored the orange in a freezer bag in the fridge to avoid it drying out. There were still a few cranberries left so I will dry those. The other orange I had saved will go into a cake which I’ll make later.

I disregard best before dates all together. I’m also very relaxed about use by dates because I understand the food safety rules behind them and I know how to evaluate and minimise risk. I use leftover rice all the time, it doesn’t worry me because I know how to do so safely. Same with using eggs, cheese, yoghurt, meat etc. I’m more careful with some things like chicken, fish, seafood, etc. But if chicken looks, feels and smells fine then I’m going to use it. We didn’t have use by dates at all until relatively recently.

(A caveat to the above: my children are grown up now and it’s just me and DH. And we’re both at home every day just now. So of course it’s going to be a lot easier for us to plan, process and produce with a view to using every bit of food - we can afford to prioritise that, both in terms of money and time.

When I was a young single parent with two children and also had a job outside of home, I cut a lot of corners and kept things as simple as I could. I still cooked from scratch and used leftovers where I could but I also used plenty of convenience foods, and I catered to my children’s quite different food preferences much more than I ideally would have liked because it was a better way of spending my money without waste.)

then planning meals around the freezer contents every few weeks is also key.
This is essential! The same thing for fridge leftovers. I have three kids at home for lunch too so our leftovers are often used then. We tend to eat all the same thing for dinners but lunch is more likely to be pot luck. Today DS17 ate leftover lasagne, I had a freezer meal and the other two had fresh pasta with leftover sauce that needed to be used up. You need to keep on top of the contents of your fridge and freezer if you don't want to waste food.

True. I have a policy of regularly using the things I’ve stashed there - at least once a week, in fact usually 2 or sometimes even 3 times in some capacity. Nothing I’ve cooked gets left there forever; it’s used within a month or so. Veg is used up regularly, and meat is used up over 3-4 months or so.

Not read whole thread.

Digging into the definition used, "food waste" includes indeible parts such as bones and banana skins. As well as parts that are edible but not used for culinary reasons such as vegetable peelings.

wrap.org.uk/sites/default/files/2020-10/Food-surplus-and-waste-measurement-and-reporting-UK-guidelines.pdf

But I have to admit that at home we have far too much food being bought and left to go off. Switching to more frequent smaller shops seems to have helped us improve though.

I throw hardly any food away, but the LA (Cornwall) really needs to get its act together and start offering food waste collection. Can't it be made into gas to provide to households?

At one time (not so long ago - 40 years or so) food leftovers from schools/ hospitals etc were collected and went to local farmers for pigswill. It doesn't happen now, alas.

Oh.. and Tesco let you put notes on individual items on an online shop.. I’ll usually use it for eg small - medium onions, but you write something about dates if you wanted.

@SchadenfreudePersonified

I throw hardly any food away, but the LA (Cornwall) really needs to get its act together and start offering food waste collection. Can't it be made into gas to provide to households?

At one time (not so long ago - 40 years or so) food leftovers from schools/ hospitals etc were collected and went to local farmers for pigswill. It doesn't happen now, alas.

Pigswill was made illegal because it can spread diseases. The 2001 foot and mouth outbreak was probably caused by imported kitchen waste fed to pigs.

Maybe it could be safely reintroduced with proper sterilisation methods. But can we trust recyclers not to cut corners?

Ah, thanks Safariboot

I hadn't realised that. I thought it was just idleness.

But you are probably right that the recyclers would cut costs right, left and centre.