If these figures are true we should be ashamed of ourselves

[Twinklemegan]

BBC news story

The figures here about food waste are staggering and appalling. What is going on out there? Have we lost all the life skills of our predecessors?

Our answer to food waste is simple. Get a Labrador. They eat anything, even with mould on and give you adoring looks for ever. Go on Gordon/ Alistair give tax breaks to Labradaor owners!!

Oh and buy less, eat more veg/fruit and love student food even when your memories of being a student are dim and distant

People tend to have less time these days, and I think that is part of the reason - long commutes, both parents working to pay the mortgage...

Also average % of income spent on food has dropped dramatically, so there is less financial incentive too.

I loved the way that every single news channel illustrated this story by filming someone throwing perfectly good food in the bin.

Shameful wasn't it.

I must admit when my compost got too full and I had to start throwing veg waste and soft lettuce etc in the bin the mumber of bags we were putting out for the bin men increased by a third. I was quite shocked. Little worms have done their job and there's more space now so less rubbish. We rarely throw any meat/fish/dairy away. We freeze most of that and only take out what we need. We have a cat to deal with those sort of things anyway. It's really only scraps from the DCs plates that ends up in the bin.

And yes, BBE dates are usually fairly flexible. A good sniff usually does the trick. Certainly I'd take a chance with veg and fruit, and even meat if it was going to be well cooked.

yes, isn't BB4 dates there for the safety of the shop rather than the customer. Insurance companies insist on this incase the shop get prosecuted for someone being ill from "old food".

And agree. A good scratch, sniff and squeeze should tell you alot about the freshnes of what's in your hand.

Same principal applies to your food stuffs too......

oh pan, the old ones are the best, eh?

Whaaaaaa???

It is very very rare I throw food away. Usually it'll be something I've cooked that has gone horribly wrong , luckily that doesn't happen too often!
I've used stuff past sell by date, always check it first.
I plan my week's meals in advance so to avoid wastage.
Agree it is very shocking.

bananas dont go in the FRIDGE!

if you do have bananas which are about to go off, however, you can freeze them.

just chop them up, wrap them in foil and voila, instant smoothie mix in.

I throw a fair bit of food away - mainly because my children seem full as soon as the food hits the plate and I just refuse to eat everything on my plate - I will always leave some food on my plate ...

I just can't be ar*ed to freeze things - if they aren't forgotten or not labelled, I just never seem to remember to defrost in time...

you can compost a lot of waste, too.

Wish I could get a composter, but they are usually such a huge size and we have nowhere to put it...

i have a tabletop one from Lakeland.

It's not true that once upon a time before Use By dates no-one ever got ill. Quite a few people used to die from food poisoning, as it happens - haven't got the figures to hand but meat/fish pastes, for instance, were responsible for a lot of illness, IIRC.

Best Before does what it says - you can eat the food after that date if it seems OK to you. Use By is more important - the contents could do you some harm after that date.

It's up to you if you want to take the risk, but don't imagine the information is spurious. The 'oh, it's only to help the supermarkets/manufacturers sell more food' idea is an urban myth.

In the case of fruit and veg though it's a nonsense wouldn't you say? And I've had stuff go off way before its use by date so I don't generally trust them either way. I do make sure I use meat up before its date though.

I agree it's pretty awful how much we waste. I used to be brilliant about it but since I've had DS we waste so much more food - principally because when it was just DH and me we used to buy what we would eat, and then eat it all.

With DS I never know if he'll eat a whole bowl of pasta or just 2 shells and then refuse the rest.

To add to the BB4 date controversy, I do think people take them too seriously but I don't think they're only to help the supermarkets - i think they are more to help consumers not get ripped off by unscrupulous merchants who are selling sealed packets of food.

It was different in the days when everything was sold open and you could go and have a look in the flour bin to check for weevils or sniff the pork chops to check they were fresh.

Now everything's in plastic - how can you tell if a joint of meat is 5 days or 5 weeks old if it's hermetically sealed?

I think it's easy to spot rotten fruit and veg for yourself.

not really that relevant, but I have just had to return a jar of seasoning to my local shop that was a year and a half out of date, I bought it yesterday

a year and a half that should have been

We serve the food in pans or serving dishes and let DCs help themselves so they can choose the right amount for them. Of course sometimes their eyes are bigger than their stomachs but we don't throw that much away.
Then any leftovers (from the serving bowls) can be recycled into another meal.

Have been doing this since they were 4 and 2. (I serve the soup though!)

Some milk in fridge at our toddler group. Smelled perfectly fine to me, two days beyond Best Before date. i suggested we put it in our coffee.

Shocked face from one other mother. She had previously tried drinking milk which was only one day past the date and had 'a sore throat' and felt 'ill'.

So about a pint of perfectly usuable milk got tipped down the sink.

I seem to be one of the only people I know who will happily eat/drink something if it doesnt smell off and isn't covered in mould. Everyone else seems to treat a best before date as LAW. aarrrg.

this is one of my pet hates too! You should check out this website for recipes for leftovers - the carbonara one is good

www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/

by planning our meals properly we've recently managed to knock about £10 off our weekly food bill (and I thought we were careful before!) any veg past its best gets made into soup or snaffled by the chickens