UK bins £8bn of food each year.

[Callisto]

"For every three bags of shopping brought home, one ends up in a landfill."

How can this be? I find this quite extraordinary; immoral and obscene. How can this nation be so careless and wasteful and who are the people that can afford to do this?

In the past I have been guilty of throwing things away. It can be easy done - buy too much, plans changing and not getting food used up quick enough, forgetting about things in the freezer, etc.

But I have made a concerted effort to chang and it is working. Menu planning helps as I only buy what we need. And if I find our plans are changing and I will have left overs, I remember to move food into the freezer, or if necessary I will use food to make something that is freezeable such as a soup made from leftover veg, etc. And I stopped using the freezer in the garage as I used to foget about it.

I also try and only cook what we intend to eat that day - have had to relearn portion sizes, esp for dry food after it is cooked. Uness something that can be frozen afterwards.

I do still end up throwing the odd thing away but very little these days.

Absolutely agree hulababy.

This week I forgot to do a menu plan, so had no idea what was in my fridge/freezer/cupboards when I was in the supermarket. Add that to going to the supermarket hungry, and impulse purchasing, and I will throwing food away this week .

Given that I'm the only person I know in RL who menu-plans, I imagine than many people are chucking food out each week.

I know that my Mum chucks a lot away and she is not even fussy about what she uses, ie reserves leftovers etc. But she just is not very systematic about what she buys/uses.

I do a lot of the things that hula suggests. I also dumped by tumble dryer (freecycled it) and brought the freezer out of the garage into the utility room (it is an undercounter upright) so that I can use that more, along with the fridge freezer. I get an organic veg box, so I have to menuplan round that. Obviously because the veg is organic it doesn't keep as well and we do end up with the odd rotting pair or mouldy clementine. The other thing I do is freeze nearly all my bread. We are not big bread eaters and if I don't we find something lurking in the bread bin a couple of weeks later.

That was meant to be re-serves

I had to stop the organic veg box as I found it doesn't keep very well. I now buy local veg more frequently throughout the week but in smaller quantities which seems to help.

All the meat I buy goes straight into the freezer unless we plan on eating it that night. Then I vaguely plan around the veg that needs to be eaten most quickly. But then DP and I don't object to wrinkly carrots or food past it's sell by date. We employ the 'if it smells and tastes ok it probably is ok' technique unless it is chicken.

Same here Hula.

Actually last week I has to throw away two pieces of sole. I had frozen it, got it our and it smelt/looked a bit odd. Then read that it couldn't be froze (never had that before). Anyway didn't seem quite right so had to throw it

6.5 billion of it is mine.

i am v. wasteful.

its cos poeple shop once a week rather than daily. So things go off. I tend to get things most days. Loaf of bread from the baker, veg from the greengrocers. Does cut down on waste.
But sometimes I cook too much and the leftovers lurk in the fridge until they go fluffy

needmorecoffee - i think you are correct, as a child I remember druing school holidays going shopping every day with mum to get fresh food, the only things she ever bought weekly were household things and some fruit. She was on a very tight budget as well, so menu plnned and didn't buy what she didn't need

agree with needmorecoffee. And I imagine the waste direct from supermarkets is astronomical, too.

The £8 billion is just household food waste - it doesn't include the waste from supermarkets, restaurants etc.

we shop once a week, with a top up on Wedsnesday for bread and bits of extra veg

we do not throw ANYTHING away

stale bread is saved for the park ducks at the weekend, everything else is eaten

we do not menu plan either

it is not rocket science to shove meat in the freezer as soon as you get back from shopping and look at what veggies need using up first etc

I've never thrown away a third of what I buy (nothing close), but we have wasted too much food. My New Years resolution is to change that this year and I have started by buying more expensive food, but less of it! e.g an organic chicken, but make sure every last scrap gets used.

We also get a veg box and when it arrives, I go through it and work out what needs using first and plan to use the things that will keep longest at the end of the week.

Also, I have stopped buying processed food altogether, whcih means apart from the fruit/veg and some dairy, everything in the house will more or less keep indefinitely (meat in freezer), so if it doesn't get used this week, it can be used next.

I chuck far less away now I've stopped doing food shopping at the supermarket. It means shopping more often, but the quality is far superior and actually costs less.

This was a great article from the Times at the weekend telling you how to plan better and waste less.

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/real_food/article3171515.ece

Since I've started "real" cooking, I've found I generate a lot more food waste such as meat bones, veg peelings etc. With ready meals, there's pretty much no waste, as the portions are so stingy anyway.

I am measuring pasta now, so there isnt any wasted, but still find we eat different amounts from one meal to the next, so some ends up in the compost, when its left on the childrens plates.

yes, agree on article, there is a second installment this weekend

we go to our farmer for meat on Saturday, shove everything in the freezer when we get in

I do the supermarket shop on Friday, top up Wednesday like I said before

nothing goes off or gets wasted

I really can't see how you can throw a third of your stuff away

unless you get tons of ready meals with sell by dates on them maybe? veg doesn't go 'off' as such as you can put it in soups

slightly tickled by the random list of things in your store cupboard. Tinned anchovies? [vom] and buying a whole cow, too

But basic sense, really. Pyrex do really good non-plastic freezer containers, which I recommend, because you can cook with them too.

yes she does come across as a low level ponce at times

but she does talk sense

I use anchovy paste - in a tube like tom puree

add to pasta sauces, gives a nice salty depth to them

I changed my habits when I moved to Germany. The Germans I knew then would never throw anything away, if there were a few things left after the meal they would be put in the fridge for the nest meal. They were also extremely strict with the dc that they should eat every last crumb on their plate.
When my 2 dc started Kindergarden in Germany they were booked in for breakfast too (you had to ) and they were always shocked at the little ones being made to finish even the last crust of their bread and if they didn't manage it then it was served up at lunchtime alongside the lunch food. I was never SO strict with mine but I know most German friends do that. I suppose it gets the dc used to not wasting food in the first place and only really asking for food if they want to eat it.
Another thing over here is, most Gernmans tend to shop daily for the fresh food and bread and just do a weekly shop for dry products like the rice, pasta drinks etc. I know my sister in the UK throws loads of mouldy looking veg out of her fridge when her supermarket delivery comes every 2 weeks.

This site is all about the campaign to cut down food waste and has some really good ideas on it, both for cutting down on what you buy in the first place and using up leftovers.

I think the figures are slightly misleading, certainly the report I read included used teabags being thrown away, which I wouldn't strictly count as 'wasted' food.

But yes, even disregarding that, the volume of waste is shocking. I think it's a symptom of us all being used to cheap food, so it really is almost disposable.

Putting my smug hat on, I can honestly say we don't waste any food at all. We menu plan so generally we buy what we need. Any leftovers are usually incorporated into another meal - it's amazing what a gorgeous soup you can make from that one parsnip, two carrots, a potato or two and that funny bit of swede left in the fridge!

All peelings, tealeaves/bags etc are composted. We have a Green Cone that can compost cooked food, for example the odd spoonful of pasta left on someone's plate. It even deals with bones and meat. We also have chickens and they're brilliant at dealing with odd bits of fruit and veg peelings or the like.

Things like bread - if a few slices of bread are left from a loaf, I either blitz them in a food processor and freeze the breadcrumbs, or make something like a bread pudding or a charlotte or a gratin topping.

It's not rocket science, it just takes a few minutes' thought and a tiny bit of planning. So when I sit down once a week or so to menu-plan, the very first thing I do is look at what's in the fridge, freezer and cupboards. Half a bag of mushrooms that need using? Make a quiche or a soup or whatever. Some cheese getting near it's best-before? Grate it and freeze to use straight from the freezer. Just the sorts of ideas our grandmothers did day in day out, probably because they couldn't afford not to.

exbatt - where do I get a "green cone" We have compost bins, but I thought you weren't supposed to put cooked food in?