How much food do you waste,if none how do you manage that?

[SundayFunday555]

Intrigued as to what is deemed as a good amount and how people get to zero.

Again I wasn't aware that olives go off , do tbey ?

It’s mainly jars of sauces and things that don’t get used up… I don’t believe too much in the dates but if it says use within 6 weeks a year ago they go.
Actual food- sometimes bread or wraps, occasionally fruit.

We try hard to not waste food - both brought up by parents who were children in WW2 and rationing who were very serious about not wasting food. If we cook too much we just have it again the next day, or freeze it for later.

Here's a tip. If you've got bones from a roast, bag them up in the freezer until you've got enough to fill a stock pot and then make stock. It will be amazing and make superb gravy or base for a sauce or stew.

We don’t waste much edible food but we get an organic veg box so have quite a lot of skins and stalks/tops/leaves depending on the veg.
teabags and coffee grounds and egg shells.
chicken carcass after we’ve made stock and fish heads/tails.
we almost never let supermarket food go off.

Nope. Put them in a little pot or old jar with olive oil.

bread and cucumber, bags of salad, wrinkly satsumas, black bananas - i thought i was pretty good, We now have a food waste bin so there is no hiding!

Yes, then I freeze portions of stock.

jars of pesto are the MOST annoying things,
they go mouldy after one use, how to get round that?

I don't know but a while ago we had an olive ciabatta and while it was in the oven it gave off such a powerful smell of manure that we didn't eat it and have never bought it again. Put me off for life!

Pour a layer of olive oil over the top to seal it.

Freeze it in portions that you'd put on pasta.

We also waste almost nothing by freezing things that won't get used, using up veg before it goes off, making soup etc.

Also generally using common sense rather than sticking to dates. Someone mentioned throwing away eggs- how long must you have had those in without eating them?

But a MN tip that revives bendy carrots- put them in water and they'll be back to normal after a few hours and you can keep them like that for at least a few days.

Food waste stats are astonishing, given almost everyone seems to complain about the cost of food. Yet its said that each household wastes £10-15 per week on average. Why are people buying so much food and throwing it away?

But if no one in the household is going to eat them, like the PP said, what would be the point?

Im just answering the poster who asked if they go off. The answer is no, they dont go off if ocvered in oil or brine

Too much, really. Just two of us and I'm the problem one, not DP, who eats pretty much anything and is waste-conscious. I have histamine intolerance so need to eat fresh food otherwise I have problems. I buy food online as I can't get to the shops so that probably doesn't help. Was easier when I lived over the road from the supermarket and used to buy a few things every few days.

I do compost waste veg but only from April-October as after that it's too cold and nothing rots down.

I have improved over the last year or so but 'could do better'!

Food waste stats are astonishing, given almost everyone seems to complain about the cost of food. Yet its said that each household wastes £10-15 per week on average

None of it is MNers though judging by this thread!

"Couple of floppy carrots" is fairly common here. Sometimes a bit of rotting lettuce or other vegetable, or the last bit of this or that in a neglected jar.

Certainly nothing on a large scale or worthy of lasting guilt.

I dont buy salad products apart from flavoured beetroots, tomatoes and cucumbers, I only buy cherry tomatoes and mini cucumbers

When I was buying salad products it nearly always went slimy in the bag so I was chucking that in soup but theres only so many lettuce and spinach based soups you can eat

I dont buy things that Ive learned go to waste.

I don't meal plan, I don't go shopping with a full list (only stuff that has run out) and I still rarely have food waste beyond teabags, banana peels and onion skins.

I just look in the fridge, see what's there and needs to be used, and then use it on a daily basis. By use it, I either cook it and eat it that day, cook it and freeze it for another day, or freeze it then.

Living alone means I can use all sorts of odds and ends up in random ways, and it helps I am not very fussy about perfect meals either.

I make soup regularly, especially at the moment when the leeks in the garden are ready, I pick the 4-5 biggest every week to put in a soup. Everything else in the fridge or drawer that is nearing its demise goes in as well.

My neighbours come over for a week or two about 5 times a year and give us the contents of their fridge/cupboards when they go back. Carrots I peel, and freeze for roasting. Cheese I cube and freeze, we had some on pizzas this lunchtime. Anything else tends to not be too much so I'll just make sure I cook something to suit that week.

I find zero waste is impossible.
My bin currently contains meat bones (left over from making stock), fish bones & skin, egg shells, outer leaves of cabbages, root veg peelings & a small overdose of cooked pasta. And an accidentally cremated slice of pizza.

Very little, we meal plan so only get what we need for the week. There might be the odd bit of fruit that goes mouldy before we eat it but that’s about it.

The only thing I struggle with is mustard, horse radish, jam etc. they say use within 3, 6, 12 weeks and I can’t use them that quickly.

We have an allotment so often have loads of veg we have to use. We have some large silicone ice cube trays and we freeze veg or soup home made savoury rice and pre cooked veg and save them in big bags . Then you can use up the left over veg and if you can’t eat it just freeze it. You also have cooked onions etc if you need some for a recipe so you don’t need to buy a whole bag. We waste virtually nothing and any peelings go in the compost

Ah, in that case - we have a wall chart which has meals on it by the date they go off!

Almost none. I’m a planner and know what to buy and what we’re eating. We always freeze (or have the next day) leftovers. For example our Monday evening meal is pretty much always a rehash of our Sunday Roast in some form.