[loz]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7492573.stm

Stop wasting food', urges Brown

Britons must stop wasting food in an effort to help combat rising living costs, Gordon Brown has said as world leaders discuss rising prices

The PM said "unnecessary" purchases were contributing to price rises, and urged people to plan meals in advance and store food properly.

A government study says the UK wastes 4m tonnes of food every year, adding £420 to a family's shopping bills.

So, how much food do you waste? And why?

[Mr Incredible]

(a) no idea
(b) her indoors is crap at maths and incapable of buying the correct quantities for a given time period.

[Moosh]

We waste hardly anything. We make a weekly menu of what we want to eat and then draw up a shopping list that satisfies the menu. The stuff that does normally go out of date is milk and bread.

Any waste fruit or veg. gets fed to the guinea pig and rabbits or if it's too far gone then it's composted and is then used to grow our own veg.!

Cheers
Moosh

[Ed Selley]

Very little- an egg might sail past the best before and I will occasionally find a garlic has tried to germinate but otherwise as I only cook and feed myself it is easy to judge quantity.

Does it count as "waste" if a tired onion or the like is consigned to the compostor now and again?

[jerryfb]

Originally Posted by loz

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7492573.stm


So, how much food do you waste? And why?

So I know I might be infecting this thread with Brownitis (where any thread becomes an opportunity to diss the current government) but it is worth pointing out that most wastage occurs in the food chain before it gets to the consumer. Just check out what supermarkets waste each week on damaged goods and past sell by date products. A bit of judicious management here could work wonders. Anyhow to go back on topic.

We used to waste loads of food but now much less as we eat more veg from our garden and most food waste is recycled into more veg. Most things keep a long time. Most often wastage comes from things like cream and meat products. We buy much less of this now. Frozen food also really helps

[Brausch]

So much food is transported such vast distances and part frozen that it doesn't have much of a life and supermarket BOGOFs mean you wind up with more than you wanted (try selling it for half price instead). Not wasting huge areas of land growing Biofuel crops might be a good idea too.

[JohnG]

The only waste I have in the food department is due to the supermarkets selling stuff that only lasts a couple of days after you've bought it, despite it being well within use by dates. If we could get food that lasts as long as it should do then there would be far less waste.

[Mr Incredible]

Another contributor is when buying groceries online, taking JohnG's point..... Tescos will pick stuff which has got the fewest number of days remaining of the "best buy" date.

[loz]

We waste very little food in our house - but that might just be a consequence of us eating too much...

I was quite shocked when they were discussing this on TV and people were throwing away what they hadn't eaten of a joint of meat after the first meal because they were either just ignorant of what to do with it the next day, or didn't know it was OK to keep it because of worries about food poisoning. Now that is waste.

Whereas we are quite happy to eat yesterday's "left overs". e.g. we normally buy the biggest chicken on the shelf and that does for a roast on sunday, chicken and chips monday, chicken risotto tuesday.

Sell by and use by dates are the biggest con.
And I agree with other posts that supermarkets should be discouraged from encouraging us to buy more than we need.

No need for BOGOF, just reduce the price.

[overkill]

Being honest, (no implications people) in my opinion (and the wifes) as a family we waste far too much food. It either doesn't get used, as it's stuffed in the fridge and forgotten, or by the time it comes round again, the stuff has gone off anyway. Fruit and veg is allowed to go off, as we buy it for the kids, and they only eat it in fads. The missus and I cannot eat it all.

We say to ourselves every week, 'we must make sure nothing gets wasted' but it always does somehow. *slaps wrists*. However, when we had a garden (when we lived in the South) next to nothing was wasted as we had a massive compost on which all left over veg material was tipped. If we had a council that either supplied composting units (that didn't honk like a graveyard), or took away veg waste for compost, then we would waste far less.

As for the other factors, the supermarkets, the farmers themselves (who waste tons of food), the food mountains etc, they all make up for shocking statistics when you see just how much is left to rot.

Britain in fact, as a nation has a dismal record, as landfill and waste collection (from supermarkets et al) shows when compared to other countries. Although in the West in general food waste is a real problem. In the American NE, the yanks ship out massive barge loads of the stuff and dump it on any available islet off the coast.

As for 'biofuel' being blamed for the 'food price crisis' the words 'red' and 'herring' spring to mind.

[Miyazaki]

Originally Posted by overkill

Fruit and veg is allowed to go off, as we buy it for the kids, and they only eat it in fads. The missus and I cannot eat it all.

In my day, if I didn't eat my dinner, I had it for dinner the next day.

You're too soft, I tell thee.

[Astraeus]

Doesn't Brown's statement fly in the face of basic economics - the more of an item you purchase, the less expensive it becomes? The current inflation of food prices is surely due more to producers not having planned for an increase in demand and thus supply is dwindling as opposed to demand simply outdoing supply. If we suddenly dropped the amount of food we purchased, the cost per good for the supermarkets and producers would rocket and we'd have even more expensive food.

[kbfern]

Comming from the older generation (born only 8 yrs after WW11 ended) food was still on ration then.

Cosequently we waste very little,my bin is full most weeks but it ain't with food,just all the packaging the stuff comes in.

It amazes me when they show people on the tv that throw away loads of stuff that only went out of date that day or the day before.And when they add it up they throw away £50-£70 worth of food per week.

[Sad099]

Only food that tends to get wasted in our house is bread and salad

Salad only because it tends to go off even though its still within the use by date.

Maybe also the odd banana - but thats pretty much it.

We tend to plan for the week and buy accordingly and re-use the next day.

I have to admit though we did used to waste food before - my wife used to buy lots of junk food - crisps , biscuits etc which used to sit there - reason she bought them is because they were on special offer - BOGOF etc.

As we try to eat healthy they used to sit there and then get thrown away - biscuits and crisps would go stale etc.

I stopped that as it was definately costing us every week
now we make a list when we go shopping or I do the shopping instead

[Sonic67]

Maybe GB should bring back all the wartime public information films and the 'Dig For Victory' posters.

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/politi...-200807071072/

GORDON Brown has outlined plans to recapture the political agenda by acting like your old gran.

The prime minister is urging people to finish their dinner and reminding them that during the war Britain had to eat mice, tree bark and bits of shoe.

[Toasty]

Any guesses where the next tax hike sights are heading?

[Sonic67]

So Government advice has so far been stop being so miserable and don't waste your food.

hotlinked image removed

[wormvortex]

Only food we waste is bread/milk as it goes out of date without us realising it sometimes. Actually the bread seems to go moudly when it's in date half the time??? Don't really know about the milk as I don't ever use it

[kbfern]

A little tip when your bread has gone stale,you can use it for toast but even better make a bread and butter pudding, yum yum

Butter both sides 4-5 slices of bread then cut into quarters

place them layered in a dish and between the layers sprinkle with sultanas and sugar.

mix 1 egg and a pint of milk and some vanilla extract and pour contence over bread.

Cook in oven for around 45 mins at 200 deg C untill golden brown,then eat

[nheather]

We waste quite a lot. This is primarily 'healthy' food such as fruit, vegtables, salad which goes off before we can eat it - it's not that we are buying healthy but not eating healthy it's just that these products don't really suit the 'shop once a week' ethic - in my experience very little supermarket-bought fresh produce will last a week.

I guess the answer for Gordon Brown is that we should eat more junk food. Frozen burgers, chicken nuggets, ready meals, crisps, buiscuits, ice cream etc. don't go off so don't get wasted - and they're cheaper that eating healthy aswell.

Only joking off coarse but the government has got a real paradigm to tackle - eat healthy vs junk and wasteful vs efficient - the two aims, in many way contradict.

Cheers,

Nigel

[funkyspider]

Originally Posted by kbfern

A little tip when your bread has gone stale,you can use it for toast but even better make a bread and butter pudding, yum yum

The idea was to cut back on food wastage to reduce the shopping bill.

So instead of wasting 5 slices of bread at say 30p you are now using butter, sugar, sultanas, 1 pint of milk, vanilla extract and energy to cook it.

I'm going to try it tho

[JohnG]

To prove my earlier point I bought some peaches on Saturday, best before 10th July. 2 out of 6 have gone mouldy already. I bought some bananas last week and they looked perfect on the outside (slightly under ripe) but on the inside they all had turned nearly black.

[loz]

Originally Posted by JohnG

To prove my earlier point I bought some peaches on Saturday, best before 10th July. 2 out of 6 have gone mouldy already. I bought some bananas last week and they looked perfect on the outside (slightly under ripe) but on the inside they all had turned nearly black.

Well it could be the conditions under which you store them.

Who these days has a pantry or larder for example, that was designed to keep foods? (before we all had fridges)

[JohnG]

No you misunderstand, the bananas were like that as soon as i tried them when I got home. The peaches I put in the salad container in the fridge.

[mjn]

Very little. Anything (except meat) leftover, that is not edible again, goes in the composter.

[la gran siete]

I hate wasting food so not much goes the way of the dustbin . What gets me, though, is the amount of useless packaging that manufacturers use.Its a con as well as the amount of edible food one gets is far less that the size of the packet.Lots of plastic cardboard and air.

[krish]

www.thisismoney.co.uk/consumer/savingideas/article.html?in_article_id=442624:
Are 'best before' dates a £10bn rip-off?
- We throw away billions of pounds worth of food every year because the label says the Use-by date has passed. But do we really need to waste all this money? Johnathan Maitland takes the 'Best Before Challenge'.
(I believe it was also a "Tonight" report on ITV)

He goes a bit crazy with the discoloured steak and mouldy bread, but otherwise a lot of common sense

[SimonH]

Generally very little, we have a dog, a wormery and a house backing onto fields with what appears to be starving animals in it.

Food never goes off in our house we shop twice a week approximatley, anything not used up by ourselves, the dog wolfs down, potatoe peelings, banana skins, egg shells, used teabags etc go into the wormery, anything edible the dog doesn't want goes out on to a wooden stump at the back of the garden and it's eaten by foxes, squirrels, all kinds turn up.

We don't even fill 1 black bin liner per week, and there's 2 adults, a dog and a little girl.

All in all, we don't waste much food if any, just can't remember ever throwing out food in years.

[SimonH]

Originally Posted by la gran siete

I hate wasting food so not much goes the way of the dustbin . What gets me, though, is the amount of useless packaging that manufacturers use.Its a con as well as the amount of edible food one gets is far less that the size of the packet.Lots of plastic cardboard and air.

Agreed, we actually go through more recyle bags now than actual rubbish bags, my wife's a vege, recycling, be green maniac, and she's constantly moaning about how much plastic, polythene, cardboard etc is used on packaging.

It's a massive over kill in most places, and could often be hugely reduced.

[nheather]

I tend to ignore 'best before' dates and look at the state of the food instead - my wife on the other hand won't touch anything that is 'out of date'.

I don't really subscribe to the conspiracy view that they are a means to make you throw away good food and buy new. I'm more inclined to beleive it's to do with our ligigation culture - play it extra safeto make sure that there is absolutely no chance of someone eating bad stuff even though they followed all instructions.

The only thing I play extra safe with is seafood.

Cheers,

Nigel