Food wastage

[forgotmyusername1]

Apparently the average family throws away £800 a year of food.

I can honestly say we throw next to nothing.

What are your top tips for avoiding food wastage?

Are you a user or a chucker?

We are fairly affluent. But that's not the point about food waste - nobody, however well off or hard up they are, would set fire to a £20 note ever few days just because.

Buying food which you don't eat and throw in the bin is doing just that. Throwing money in the bin. It doesn't really matter if you can "afford" the waste or not. You wouldn't have the heating on full blast and the doors and windows wide open, or pay for two meals in a restaurant with the intention of just eating one.

@forgotmyusername1 "Unlike the softer seeds of something like a cucumber, the seeds of bell peppers are hard, and can serve to be a choking hazard. It’s important to remove all of them if you are serving the bell peppers to your guinea pig. "

Source: guineadad.com/blogs/news/guineadad-food-blog-can-guinea-pigs-eat-bell-peppers#:~:text=Unlike%20the%20softer%20seeds%20of,served%20to%20your%20guinea%20pig.

Does anyone remember the chicken breast thread on here? A woman claimed she was roasting a whole chicken, removing just the chicken breasts for her and her DP, and binning the rest.

Couldn't work out if it was a wind-up or not.

Pretty sure I don't throw away more than few pence a week. Just put the shop away and this weeks casualties were one soggy carrot and a slimy end of celery.

Well there's actually dodgy which is nowhere as common as what MN thinks is dodgy.

I probably eat reheated rice at least once a week. Half the time that's after its been in the microwave all night and I have it for breakfast or it's been in the fridge but sits on the shelf in my office until lunchtime. This has never made me ill.

I ignore pretty much all the food hygiene rules that MN says will make me ill and the only time it has happened is about 30 years ago and that was due to a prawn sandwich from the work canteen.

Thinking about it,that's fairly common. Some years ago Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall did a programme about how we should eat higher welfare chicken and he asked people why they didn't buy it.

Several people who claimed they could only afford the cheapest chicken were shown doing just that, buying a whole chicken, only eating the breasts and throwing the rest away.

Pretty disgusting really. Before chicken was available so cheaply the rest of the meat would be used in a pie and soup or sandwiches, because making chicken last for more than one meal was very much a thing long before Mumsnet existed.

going off-topic but I always think like this in the threads about splitting the bill when eating out as a group and posters rush on to say just paying for your own food is 'tight' - I wouldn't just randomly hand my friend £30 quid or pay for their new shoes if we were out shopping together, so why would I subsidise their cocktails/steaks when I had soup and water? Obviously if the difference is just a few quid either way fair enough, but otherwise just pay for what you personally had, as you would in any other scenario!

The only thing I throw out a lot of is salad, because it goes slimy so quickly - even if I have a bit with 2 meals a day I'm not going to eat a whole lettuce/bag within 3 days! Other than that I freeze 90% of stuff that's coming close to its sell-by date, there's not much that can't be frozen. Even things like bread/cheese, milk.

Well everything in the freezer is bags of veg and meat or my meals thats Ive made and I never label anything! So I play freezer roulette with myself. Just got out an oxtail stew and rice for lunch. Wasnt quite sure what it was

Tonight I believe its a lamb, spinach and mushroom curry with freekah but I cant tell. Im going by the colour and made an assumption!

@Bjorkdidit same here, I ignore most of these rules and use by dates, and I can't remember the last time me or any of my kids had an upset stomach. Frequently reheat rice, pick out soggy bits from a bag of salad that's been there a week and use the bits that look fine, eat stuff past date frequently. I only use frozen meat or fish so don't worry about that going off.
Family of five and barely throw away any food. Have maybe a quarter to half a small green bag in our food bin each week (mostly chicken bones or similar). Bread in summer is the only thing that often catches us out.

They really are. There are threads on here about it all the time. One wear, in the wash and then 'it just goes on a quick wash'... which is actually the most expensive way to wash clothes.

But to the point of the thread - we waste hardly anything. We have food waste collected by the council, so we can visibly see what we are chucking each week. We rarely fill one of the compostable food bags each week (bear in mind it includes inedible things like bones and peelings). There is so much chat on the local FB group about how the food bins aren't big enough. I reckon you could easily put 5 or 6 of the bags in them. There is a LOT of food being wasted!

Huge numbers of people won't use anything past the BBE date. They won't crop up on this thread as confirmation bias means it will mainly be clicked on and read by people who don't waste food. But they are most definitely out there in big numbers!

They really are. There are threads on here about it all the time. One wear, in the wash and then 'it just goes on a quick wash'... which is actually the most expensive way to wash clothes

And the showering and cleaning. I think we're up to three showers a day being standard practice on here now, consuming a bottle of shower gel per person per week.

And you must never question or complain about someone spending half an hour in the shower each day. Because 'it's just basic hygiene'

@TheTripThatWasnt oh I'm sorry I completely misunderstood. I thought you meant would only wear clothes once then get rid of them! 😂😂

Do most normal families waste that much?
We throw practically nothing. Any leftovers get taken to work the next day for lunch. If anything needs eating then we will. If salad needs using up I'll cook some chicken and put it all in a wrap. If we have lots of bits that need eating I'll tell the boys right we've having 'bits and bobs'.

I read that Edith Piaf did that! Don't know if it's actually true though.

According to this the inside of the pepper is fine for piggies

We don’t waste food.

I keep hearing the £60 a month stat on the ads and wondering how??

We throw out the odd half bag of salad in the winter when I don't grow it. Crusts of bread sometimes and I did just find a potato in the back if the cupboard with a sprout about a foot long!

I suppose there's the odd bit of uncleared plates but that's not a lot. If it's too much when I plate in then a portion goes in a Chinese tub for later or the freezer.

Throwing away meat would be unusual. It's happened once or twice as a result if hospital stays or something unexpected but otherwise we do a quick mental count of days and freeze anything it's clear we won't use.

I don’t know, I often look at people’s shopping lists on here and wonder how they can eat so much in a week. I spend around £100 a week for three of us and usually have leftovers to freeze, old bananas for smoothies etc.

I try to meal plan but sometimes the week doesn’t go to plan Things will usually go in the freezer but things can end up in the bin like an open tub of cream cheese that’s gone mouldy, or salad that didn’t get used up.

In my house, it's meat and yogurt.

A mixture of OCD and depression means i have good intentions for cooking proper meals, but when it comes time to actually prep and cook, there's no motivation.
I do also have sensory issues with raw meat texture, and some days i just cannot face touching it, even with gloves on.

As such, a fair ammount of the time it comes to use by date, and it either goes in the freezer, or gets thrown out. Stuff that goes in the freezer typically only comes out if it's something like christmas/easter etc where i'm not the one cooking it.

Yogurts it's an attempt when shopping to plan healthier eating, but then choosing other snacks over them and finding them a few weeks out of date when i actually want one.

We freeze meat on the day of purchase and take it out the freezer the morning we will use it. The date becomes irrelevant then.

I know what you mean with touching raw meat. I use a knife and fork to chop it when raw - I never touch it

I’m surprised that most people don’t put meat into the freezer when they buy it. I keep out whatever I’m using the next day and everything else goes into the freezer and comes out when needed.

I wouldn't put meat in the freezer unless I thought (or knew, eg when I'd bought a big pack for the freezer) it wouldn't be used before the use by date.

I might put it in the freezer if it was getting near the date but otherwise I'd just put it in the fridge so saves the hassle of getting it out again at the right time to defrost.

For example, I bought a leg of lamb on Thursday and plan to cook it on Monday. It's currently in the fridge and will stay there - the date is 10 April anyway, so I could leave it until next weekend if I wanted to.

It drives me absolutely mental that my DH doesn’t look at whats in the fridge/going off before he goes to the shop.

I don't have a freezer big enough to freeze things that will be used by their use by date.

I meal plan and hate waste. I freeze a lot and split meat packages. I have lots of zip lock bags to keep things longer like open packets of cheese etc. I buy filtered milk with longer dates or skimmed which seems to not go off as quick. The guinea pig gets the veggies and the dog gets leftovers that we don't freeze or save for lunch the next day. We are not overly strict on due dates, DH worked in food safety so knows what we can get away with. We love "too good to go" and use it most weeks from Morrisons.