Throwing away food

[Charlotte]

I've just read this on the BBC news site:

Are 1.3m yogurts really binned a day?

It surprised and shocked me because I can honestly admit to virtually never throwing away uneaten food.  About the only stuff that Liz and I have to bin are crusts of bread and the occasional bits of fruit or veg that have become inedible (the stuff from the organic veg box has a shorter shelf life).  That all gets composted, anyway.

So, this is stuff that's thrown away by consumers.  The big supermarkets throw even more away, I'd have thought.

How much food do you throw away?

[Elleigh]

I try and freeze stuff that I am not going to eat, before it goes off.

[mike]

we try and cook and freeze stuff when we can, but there are normally some manky veggies / limp salad left in the fridge on a sunday.  Working from home helps, I can polish off stuff before it's too late  <burp>



[sound of penny dropping] p'raps that's why I'm a fat bastard [/d'oh]

[αdαmsκι]

Never.  This is partly because I'm living in a shared house and there's not a lot of room in the fridge so the stuff that goes off gets bought and used up straight away.  However, I imagine it would still be the same even if I didn't live in a shared house.

[alchemy]

I try and freeze stuff that I am not going to eat, before it goes off.

Same here. I've found that most stuff lasts a lot longer than the use by date would have you believe

Compostable and recyclable stuff goes in the recycling bin and most of what's left is packaging that can't be recycled - which I try not to buy too much of in the first place

[Gattopardo]

I've just read this on the BBC news site:

Are 1.3m yogurts really binned a day?

It surprised and shocked me because I can honestly admit to virtually never throwing away uneaten food.  About the only stuff that Liz and I have to bin are crusts of bread and the occasional bits of fruit or veg that have become inedible (the stuff from the organic veg box has a shorter shelf life).  That all gets composted, anyway.

So, this is stuff that's thrown away by consumers.  The big supermarkets throw even more away, I'd have thought.

How much food do you throw away?

There was a tv program on it recently, bbc? also one about eating beyond sel by date food.

A family, in the program, bought lots of fruit then threw it away as it got slightly bruised or some banana getting over ripe and then being thrown away as no one would eat them.  Icleland throwing away chocolate as the paper had been damaged.  Stuff like that.

I only throw away the odd bit of fruit and veg

[hellymedic]

I throw away food when it's manky.
I mean when there's a dense mycelium of fungal hyphae...

[Ian H]

Occasionally I have to compost some veg that's really beyond it. Nothing much else. I put out a very small black bag for the bin men this morning — the first for three weeks.

I can't read best before dates without my specs, so I never notice.

[andygates]

What I don't eat the worms do.  And I was raised on "cut the blue corner off, the rest is fine".   

[Charlotte]

Absolutely.  The way that people sling stuff out because their fruit is a little soft or their cheese a little hard annoys the hell out of me.

Cook the soft fruit and whack the dried up cheese on some toast made from old bread.

Even old meat is quite safe if it's well cooked<sup>*



_{*</sup>Disclaimer: IANAO (I am not an omnivore...)}

[Gattopardo]

Absolutely.  The way that people sling stuff out because their fruit is a little soft or their cheese a little hard annoys the hell out of me.

Cook the soft fruit and whack the dried up cheese on some toast made from old bread.

Even old meat is quite safe if it's well cooked<sup>*



_{*</sup>Disclaimer: IANAO (I am not an omnivore...)}

You are right, I think we are turning in to a society of fussy eaters, where every thing has to be over packaged and cover in shrink wrap.

[nicknack]

I clicked 'never', which is pretty much the case. However I did cut the blue, furry bits of crust off some bread the other day before I toasted it. Furry bits went to the birds.

[tiermat]

It's taken 8 years but I have finally managed to to teach Mrs T that food doesn't go off at 00:01 of the day it says "Best Before" on the package, and she actually looks at stuff in the fridge and thinks "ooo we could make X, Y or Z from that".  A good example was last night, I came home and had no idea what we should have for tea, she looked in the fridge, saw we had 3 slices of bacon left from the weekend, and a large batch of fresh eggs from my mum's chickens, so suggested making scrambled eggs with bacon.  Problem solved, bacon close to or on BBD was used up, our tummies were full and it was yummy....

[Wowbagger]

Stuff occasionally lurks so long in the back of our fridge that it evolves into some exotic life form. I confess to having trouble kneeling or bending down for long / far enough to examine the back of the fridge properly. We could really do with putting it on a table.

Yesterday the nectarines I bought last Thursday were perfect. I warned the others that if they didn't partake, I would finish them by the end of the day. Mrs. Wow had one, I had the rest. I had to cut a bad bit out of one of them.

We throw little away, although I think we sometimes buy too much veg. We need to take into consideration that we have some very good green veg growing in the garden atm

[Maffie]

We are getting much better at not throwing things away, I try to preplan meals so i buy the exact veg we need and stirfry, pasta sauce and risotto are all great ways of using up soft veg.

[Kathy]

We live near the supermarket, so have a tendency to pop in every few days and buy the veg that are reduced to tenpence.* This means that we find ourselves throwing a few bits of manky fruit and veg into the compost each week, as we are unable to eat an entire kilo of blueberries or a pound of kale before they go furry, but that's about it.

*I know, our actions mean that the supermarket does not have to pay to throw away its surplus, so we are encouraging a wasteful society, but it's cheap!

[Notsototalnewbie]

I try really hard not to waste stuff, because my mum taught me it was Very Bad so I always feel terrible. Yesterday morning I threw away four avocados that were all brown inside; but they must have been rotten when I bought them on Monday afternoon (4 for £1 at the market) so it really wasn't my fault. I don't pay much attention to sell-by dates if food looks/smells ok.

My worms died even though I went to great pains not to over or underfeed them or feed them the wrong foods...

I was thinking composting might be simpler. I was worried that just me and Rob might not produce enough but I could give it a go, the council will sell me a bin at a reduced price anyway.

[Clare]

I've been completely honest and clicked "a few manky bits of fruit and veg" although the last such thing we threw away was the end of a cucumber which had gone so soft I put my thumb through it picking it up, that was about two months ago.  I'm assuming you are not refering to peelings and such like.

We used to go around the supermarket once a week and buy exactly the same stuff as we did every other week, then throw a fair amount of it away by the end of the week as it had gone furry.  Since coming back to Britiain and being on a savings binge for the next trip fund, we have been much more organised and plan a menu every week, then make a list before we go shopping.  We get all our fruit and veg from a 'local' farm shop (15 miles away  ) and it has a much longer shelf life than supermarket or local greengrocer's produce and is cheaper.

We also keep an eye on things and if (for example) the cauliflower is looking a bit ropey then it's time for cauli cheese, rather than "I fancy chilli, can we have that instead?"


NSTN - there are 2 of us and we used to have a fantastic 3 bay compost heap made of ex pallets which we could easily have enlarged, admittedly that was with a large garden, you should be fine with one of those compost bin thingies.

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

And I was raised on "cut the blue corner off, the rest is fine".   

Cut the mould off bread/cheese, scrape the mould off the top of the jam. I was brought up the same way.

I throw out more than I'd like to but I'm not as bad as a lot of people. If I have veg in the fridge about to go off I try and cook it all up into pasta sauce and put it in the freezer for the days when I don't want to cook. I threw 5 peaches out at the weekend though, because within half a day of being put into the fruit bowl, they were rotten and oozing. I was not pleased. Mainly it's the odd bits of veg I've forgotten about at the back of the fridge.

[Pete]

Almost all food entails a certain amount of waste.  What about apple cores?  What about banana skins or orange peel?  Compostable, OK, but not eaten, so it doesn't end up as food.

Reminds me of that old jingle:

He that buys land buys many stones,
He that buys meat buys many bones,
He that buys eggs buys many shells,
But he that buys good ale buys nothing else.

...not that I'm sure plenty of 'good ale' doesn't get wasted, too.

As regards wasting palatable food - well a lot depends on whether there are children in a household.  When I was a kid, the nation had just come off rationing, food was regarded by adults as a precious asset, failure to eat it (however stodgy) was a mortal sin, and children who left stuff on plates could be brutally punished.  I speak from experience.  I would not care to return to those days, but where aversions are prevalent, some way of dealing with them, compassionately, would be a benefit.

[rae]

Children.   I would dearly like to brutally punish them for not cleaning their plates, but yes, times appear to have moved on.   So we end up tossing a lot of what they are meant to be eating. 

Apart from that, not a lot.  Carcasses, very old veg that has gone off.  Stale bread gets fed to birds if it is too hard to eat.   I too scrape the mould off bread, much to Mrs rae's disgust.    I've never thrown a yoghurt away - you can eat them a month over their sell by date, no problem. 

[Charlotte]

I bought some sour cream in the supermarket once.

That had a sell by date, too 

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

Ohhhh, I'm having dad flashbacks "how can yogurt have a sell-by date? That's just ridiculous. It's off anyway."

[Mrs Pingu]

I threw 5 peaches out at the weekend though, because within half a day of being put into the fruit bowl, they were rotten and oozing. I was not pleased.

Mmm, me too. I do get annoyed when I buy a couple of punnets of raspberries and 2 days later they are all furry.

[Wowbagger]

I threw 5 peaches out at the weekend though, because within half a day of being put into the fruit bowl, they were rotten and oozing. I was not pleased.

Mmm, me too. I do get annoyed when I buy a couple of punnets of raspberries and 2 days later they are all furry.

I never trust the "buy 1 get 1 free" on soft fruit unless you are going to make pies as soon as you get home.