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?

This doesn't surprise me as I'm always amazed at how much other people throw away. We hardly throw anything away.

My teen was babysitting and was amazed/appalled to see the mum give a child a bowl of expensive fruit, strawberries, blueberries, melon etc then throw it all away five minutes later when she'd eaten about one mouthful! In my house that would have gone back in the fridge for later, or I would have insisted on her eating it.

I only have a tiny freezer. A loaf would take up 1/3 of the space. I keep the space for high value stuff like meat and pre cooked leftovers that I’m going to reheat for myself on a bad day.

Plus I don’t eat a whole loaf even in a week when I’m here on my own.

@LemonSwan

BigWoollyJumpers

How are you doing this noting? Which shops enables this option?

Waitrose - there is a little "note for shopper" box against every item.

@Wherearemyminions

My sister does this and it really shocked me the first time I saw it, she opens the fridge just before her grocery delivery is due , with a black bag in hand and literally just throws chicken breasts, fruit , veg, cheese, everything into it. Doesn't look at dates or consider moving to her large freezer, just chucks the lot. We're not perfect but we do try our best to use up, and where possible things go on the compost rather than in landfill

That is absolutely disgusting.

I can understand with bread. Sometimes in the summer it can go mouldy quick, and salad stuff also doesn’t last long. A lot of people bulk buy now - online shopping, and it’s not always easy to judge what will be eaten, and what won’t. If you’ve got teens, sometimes they’re at the table, other times they are out. Food left because you’ve bought to try it, or its a substitute in your online shop, and you don’t like it, so it’s binned. Lots of different circumstances at play. Has anyone thought how much is probably wasted by supermarkets/shops when the food is passed its sell by date?

When you plan your meal, you plan so that you use up the things that go off quickly first, so things with salads early in the week and things like carrots or cabbage at the end. Raspberries etc at the beginning, apples etc at the end.

@Waahingwashingwashing

I don’t like bread pudding.

I’m not NT and it’s a texture thing.

Plus. How much bread pudding would I have to eat and how often? I’d be eating it every day for breakfast and dinner

3 ND and one NT in this house, so texture is a thing. And spices. Two NDs likes crunch, the other doesn’t. Two have a sweet tooth... One vegetarian, one lactose intolerant but very carnivorous. It’s just thinking about what suits your particular circumstances, with the end point being reducing food waste. My bread pudding uses 250-300g of bread.

@JKDinomum

In my house that would have gone back in the fridge for later, or I would have insisted on her eating it

same! things like this are just so shocking. Nothing was wrong with that fruit ffs!

@ElephantOfRisk

When you plan your meal, you plan so that you use up the things that go off quickly first, so things with salads early in the week and things like carrots or cabbage at the end. Raspberries etc at the beginning, apples etc at the end.

Which is fine until Asda bring me stuff that I’d planned for the end of the week with a 2 day use by date.

[quote merryhouse]**@Theyellowflamingo* My food waste comes predominantly from children whose appetite is unpredictable*

Surely that's the very definition of leftovers?[/quote]
Are you really wanting people to eat food that’s been on someone’s plate though?

There is only me to eat bread pudding. If I made it and ate it texture aside I’d be eating it for 3/4 days and I’m on a diet.

We don't have food waste. We buy the exact amount we need, including vegetables which we buy loose. Eg on his shopping list today DH has 5 carrots. Which I'll use tomorrow and Wednesday.

DSes have predictable appetites and happily eat food from the freezer Ive batch cooked if they don't like the family meal I've planned (which I know cos I know their tastes).

@LemonSwan

but why dont you freeze the meat until you do fancy it?

on the freezing bread is depressing and tasteless. Yes it is if its in there too long. I rarely buy a large loaf, several brands do a half loaf. So I buy those. If we need to make sandwiches I buy rolls so I get what I need.
As I said, we are a two person household. I have a vague idea of what we will eat in any given week, I buy what I need. If I change my mind it goes in the freezer.

Bread is the one thing I tend to throw out the most. Today 4 slices went in the food bin because it was mouldy.

Asda came last night and brought this weeks bread and it has a use by date of 14th.

The best thing about being a vegan household is being freed from the tyranny of milk. It’s heavy, it goes off, it needs using up. I love not having it in and I love not making rice pudding and crème caramel, just because I don’t want to waste it.

I find the opposite. One of the reasons I stopped using plant based milk was because so much got wasted. It's easy to tell when cow's milk has gone off and so I could easily ignore the dates. I can't remember the last time we had (cow) milk that went off - if we realise we have overbought (eg, we have a pint left before going away), we just stick it in the freezer. I have no idea how to tell if plant milk is off (any tips welcome!) so stuck rigidly to the opening instructions and threw it out quite often if it wasn't used within three days or whatever the pack says.

Bread in the freezer is a space issue for me too.

A loaf is £1. Or thereabouts. I can fill that space with higher value food that I can make more meals out of (eg meat) or with ready made left overs that give me a reheat tea when I’m having a bad day.

For interest, if I’ve done the maths right it’s 1.2kg per person per week.

I don’t think we are quite as much as that but I don’t think we’re far off and I though we were quite good. We have a small food bin that gets collected and I’m guessing how much it holds.

Most of our waste is stuff that I served up and wasn’t eaten, with the odd half punnet of fruit that went mouldy. I feel ok about it.
I’m not going to enforce a ‘clear your plate’ policy and fuck up my children’s relationship to food.

Amazed that bread, milk and potatoes are among stuff being thrown away. They can be used for all kinds of stuff, milk slightly soured is great for scones for example.

I'm known to hack green bits off of bread if it's only at the sides

Potatoes last ages, make Jacket spuds out if the older ones as the flavour is amazing.

Sending one kilo of food waste to landfill produces the same amount of carbon emissions as sending 25,000 500ml plastic bottles to landfill.
There really should be more focus on reducing food waste in this country. Start by setting your fridge to the correct temperature it should be below 5 degrees Celsius.

Which is fine until Asda bring me stuff that I’d planned for the end of the week with a 2 day use by date.

yep, that's a bummer but you can mostly get round it by maybe having the Lettice with lunch and then doing shredded carrot salad with the pizza originally planned for earlier. Or cooking the chicken breasts and then shredding them up for the curry or stir fry a few days later.

It doesn't always work out but I'd rather waste something like a bag of salad than meat.

We don't have a very big freezer so I try to stick to keeping raw meat, veggies and chips and fruit and bread in it rather than random meals that tend to get forgotten.

As I say, we aren't perfect but any food waste goes in the bin for recycling but it doesn't tend to be too much.

I find it’s cheaper to do one big shop for the whole week than make lots of smaller purchases even taking into account that food will sometimes not get eaten as plans change. Obviously I freeze anything that I can but I tolerate some waste in exchange for the convenience and overall cost efficiencies of shopping this way.

It’s the callous thinking that it’s my money so I will chuck it out. Very first world mentality.

’I’m not going to enforce a ‘clear your plate’ policy and fuck up my children’s relationship to food’

I agree. We have used serving dishes for years so you choose how much you eat. Even a lazy Susan for small amounts at infant meals.
It worked for us, my adult children don’t waste food either.

See I don’t keep bread in my freezer because I need what you describe as random meals for when I’m having a bad day.

We are all different I suppose.

I have problems with bread as food waste that’s my worst thing Bread and sometimes the stuff the girls like and then they go back to uni and I don’t like it so it gets wasted.

It’s us who are being wasteful.

Not in this household. I am extremely careful and aim to use every bit of food we buy. I use all leftovers and never throw anything away (I tell a lie - I did have to throw away a tiny bit of lettuce left in a bag a while back as I’d forgotten about it hidden away at the back of the drawer.)

As pp said I’ve never thrown away milk. If it’s on the turn I make pancakes or a cake from it. However I generally buy to our needs so more often than not we run out and make do without for a day or two. I make stock from the proverbial MN chicken. There’s really nothing depressing about a slice of bread from a frozen loaf - it still toasts beautifully, and if you get the right bread it tastes perfectly fine having been thawed out too. However we make our own bread now so we just bake when we need some and there’s generally no need to freeze.

I make great meals with leftovers. We are a big family of foodies and very good cooks and it’s perfectly possible to make great food from leftovers and to freeze it well so that it still tastes nice.