Tonight: From Bin To Banquet

ceridwen

anguk wrote: »

I get annoyed at the amount of things supermarkets throw away.

The other day I was in my local Tesco 5 minutes before it closed and they had only reduced the use by that day stuff by 1/4, so a joint of meat that was originally £4 was now on sale for £3! There was no way they'd sell it at that price so it will have just been thrown out. If they'd reduced it by 3/4 they would have probably sold everything and at least made some money.

I get envious when I read posts from people saying they've picked up bread etc for 10p or 20p because we never get reductions like that in my local store.

Dont I know exactly what you mean.....in my area you have to consider yourself VERY lucky to ever spot anything reduced anywhere to even half price....my mind boggles at the thought of how low a price things are reduced to in some parts of the country..but I'm so used by now to having to "pay through the nose" for EVERYTHING in my expensive part of the country that it barely registers that we've got that extra cost of living here as well...grr! We're obviously just "milch cows" I reckon in my part of the country and automatically regarded as being wealthy - even if we are far from that...Anyone wanna see my payslip to prove that I'm very far from wealthy?......

RightyTightyLeftyLoosey

Bump - on now.

tyzer2001

Well, i was disappointed - i think they could have made that an hour programme and dealt with the subject in more depth.

Blairweech

I agree tyzer - could have been an hour easily. Barely even skimmed the surface - most of the programme was spent talking about his last 'experiment'!

Annoyingly, my OH rang at the exact time he was discussing things with the retail chap, so spoilt my grasp of the whole thing. Did think it was good that AWT was making a variety of meals though, to show what can be done with 'leftovers' (I always struggle for inspiration). Also made a good point that everyone needs to be vigilant about waste, it is not just the supermarkets throwing things away.

Went into Tesco @ about 10pm once and got to the fruit and veg reductions just as the staff were taking them all off the shelf to be chucked away. Asked if we could have some, was told 'no, they have been taken off the system now'...surely, they should be doing that after 12pm, as technically it was still in date?!! Stood my ground though, and they gave me the stuff for free.

sammyjammy

I was having a clear out the other day and found 8 tins of tomato soup, BB date was 07/07 and I didn't even considering throwing thme in the bin, I've had one each day for lunch this week, blooming lovely they were.

I agree about the supermarkets not reducing things, when I worked in Tesco all food had to go in the compacter, i guess that makes it impossible for people to take it out of a skip but maybe things have changed. I think the reason things aren't offered to staff is because things would get "spoiled" on purpose.

ginnyknit

Watched with interest and disgust, I think the whole sell by date thing should be scrapped - it may well have to be if things get any worse! It was all good nourishing food that Mr W-T made, nothing fancy and looked great and not one person complained they said. Years ago they used to feed pigs with the food from my mums cake shop - if they did that now we would have damn good pork if they were fed on that lot tonight. I presume it needs the people of Britain to back a campaign about food waste?

winniepooh

ginnyknit wrote: »

Watched with interest and disgust, I think the whole sell by date thing should be scrapped - it may well have to be if things get any worse!

Couldn't agree more

Flat_Eric

I agree, 30 mins did not do it justice. It would have been nice to have had people representing the supermarkets answering to Jonathan's questions rather than just the chap he was interviewing trying to avoid giving any decent answers.

I heard the statistic some time ago that of every four bags of food we buy from the supermarket, the contents of one bag end up in the bin. I have been very guilty of throwing away food in the past and being too cautious over the best before / use by dates and throwing stuff away. so I do agree that it is not just the supermarkets that are guilty of throwing away food. They do have a lot of explaining to do in my opinion however because clearly they are the route of the problem. Why cant they do away with buy 2, get 1 free or 2 for £?? and instead reduce the price to begin with?? I dont want 2 loafs of tiger bread (getting the two loaves for 75 pence each), I want one so have to pay full price of £1. Why cant they sell at 75p instead? Also I have heard it mentioned that they are deliberately generous with sell by dates, i.e. short date stuff when it will probably be fine for weeks after because bad planning means it doesnt get used and we throw it away and thus means we have go to the supermarket more often to replenish stocks.

I am reading Waste by Tristian Stuart (well looking at the pictures!!) and this talks of one supermarket whose strict policies for the quality of the food they sell dictate that 4 slices from each loaf (being the crust and first slice) are discarded which means 13,000 slices of bread are binned everyday. This incensed me so much I have even considered boycotting this supermarket. Why do supermarkets assume we want "perfect food" ??? I love it when there is a farmers market and you can buy mishappen muddy peppers, weird looking tomatoes etc.

This morning I ate ham that I bought from the deli counter of a supermarket on Tuesday (old me would have binned it), this evening chucked in with my sweet and sour chicken were peppers bought 15 august, spring onions bought before this date (as use by date was 15 august), an old orange that must have been in my fridge at least a month and I feel no ill effects whatsoever. Something needs to be done.

Scarlett25

It was interesting, but I thought it should have been an hour long to go into more detail. I'd like to have seen supermarket bosses invited along to a meal made from their supermarkets waste food!

zippychick

My neighbours little boy came in to play connect 4 (which all he does is keep making up new rules so he wins), so i missed it beyond where AWT came in.

He didn't seem too hateful in this episode, considering I really can't stand the man.