Don't Throw Food Away Challenge

melanzana

I don't like wasting food either.

But I have to confess, that in order not to waste food, I chuck bits into the freezer.

Where they lurk forever. Only to be discovered when on a defrost day (6. Monthly or so), and get chucked, because they are "why did i freeze that? or taking up precious room for the food I DO like.

Is anyone else a freezer storer of odds and ends that get in the way eventually?

I think the freezer can sometimes be a bother. I think I am not wasting food, but ends up that I am.

Freezers should be for the food you like, and you will absolutely use.

Defrosting the freezer has been an eye opener for me.

thriftwizard

Don't tell DEFRA but we have virtually no food waste, thanks to a small flock of voracious chickens. They do get plenty of layer's mash & corn to scratch for, but they're also very fond of anything we might happen to have going spare like well-soaked stale bread or cake, spaghetti, macaroni cheese, leftover rice, slightly-brown salad leaves, apple cores, outer leaves of cabbage & cauliflower - there really isn't much they won't grab, fight over & eventually turn into eggs.

Things I can't turn into a leftovers dish (curried chicken with chickpeas, tonight, from yesterday's roast chicken; bones to be boiled up for soup base tomorrow morning) & they really have no interest in, like broccoli stalk peel, goes onto the compost heap to be returned to the soil. Bones go into the Green Cone. Twice I've had flyers left by the binmen stating "We've noticed you're not using your food waste bin..." with helpful instructions on how to fill it each week. But I hardly ever need to open it...

MrsAtobe

We have a dog, our food waste bin is used for another purpose

paulineb_2

I used to buy from sites such as approved foods, but tend to shop more at home bargains now, I don't mind eating food past its best before date (as approved foods sell a lot of it). I make a lot of soup, so use any leftovers that way. Any scraps of fruit or veg left over go in my mums food waste bin or compost bin.

I don't throw food out these days, when I used to buy more processed foods, Id sometimes not eat something and it would end up in the bin.

A relative works with kids and they throw a lot of their packed lunches away so she collects whats left as scraps and it gets fed to the local crows, seagulls or pigeons. Before there were food waste bins in her place of work anything that was leftover would be automatically binned.

I don't buy a lot of bread to eat myself, eat more potatoes and sweet potatoes now, live on my own and always struggled to eat my way through a loaf.

GreyQueen

thriftwizard wrote: »

Twice I've had flyers left by the binmen stating "We've noticed you're not using your food waste bin..." with helpful instructions on how to fill it each week. But I hardly ever need to open it...

Yeah, I've had that.

When our block was moved over to communal rather than individual waste and recycling facilities, we were issued with dinky little food waste caddies to collect our kitchen waste and transport it to the communal bin.

How kind, thought I when I got mine It's a perfect fit for my bike basket. And thus it goes off for a spin to the lottie and into the composting Dalek, same as it did back in the day.

Fosterdog

There's no food waste here at all.

Between planning meals, freezing extra portions, only buying what we need, scraps for the dogs, rabbits and wild birds, then the compost heap for non meat waste it all gets used. The only thing that ever gets thrown are bones but that's after I've used them for stock and put them out for the birds and even they end up in the food waste run by the council.

meritaten

I no longer buy 'bag salad' unless I KNOW that the hungry hordes are about to descend! there is far too much in them! OH has salad every day in his sarnies and we tend to add a salad 'garnish' to meals - but I still used to have to throw some away! I spend a bit more and buy a 'living' salad which will keep for a couple of weeks or more. OH likes iceberg lettuce which keeps for ages - but I dislike it on the grounds it doesn't taste of anything! so 'his' lettuce will keep for a couple of weeks in salad drawer in fridge. 'My' lettuce lives on the kitchen windowsill (oh dear, you should see my windowsill! parsley and basil growing, tomatoes ripening (I buy the most unripe ones I can find and ripen a few at a time), I have some hazelnuts (free from my tree) hardening their shells - it looks a mess! There's hardly room for the cat who likes to observe the world from there!
I hate throwing food away - if a pepper goes a bit wrinkly and soft I chop it up and add it to the bag of chopped peppers in freezer - eventually I have enough to make a huge pan of red pepper soup! and most of that gets frozen in plastic cups to make 'one portion' meals!
bread - well the birds don't get any! stale is grated and kept in freezer!
the only thing I find annoying is buying carrots etc and if I forget to take them out of the plastic bag they go mouldy in days!

melanzana

Some have said that Approved Foods sell past sell by date.

If that's the case, why do the big multiples not sell same, or donate to homeless etc?

Am I missing some light food safety regs here?

meritaten

Poundshops do too - my mum buys multi bags of crisps there - most of them are fine - its just the odd bag which can be a bit 'stale'!

lobbyludd

I really don't know where these estimates come from. No-one I know wastes anywhere near the amount of food that is stated in the oft quoted figures. To balance myself out people would have to be dropping their shopping straight in the bin after coming home from the supermarket.

It's an estimate and the figures usually don't take into account the parts of food that people throw away because they are generally considered inedible by humans: egg shells, banana skins, tea bags, coffee grounds, nut shells, onion skins, bones (which even when I boil for stock don't disappear - I'm not making glue and don't have pigs!).

I've given up making my own compost as it just attracted more of the dreaded slugs into the garden. So yes - I do use my food caddy every week, but most of the stuff in there wasn't ever edible - but is still counted as food waste in estimates - and actually those people I know who only eat processed food have next to no food waste because they aren't prepping anything.

I don't buy bagged salads because I found they did go off (I really don't like lettuce in soup) as only I will eat it - the children swearing it is the food of the devil. And I don't buy milk from our corner shop unless it will be drunk that day - no idea what they do to it, but their milk always goes off overnight.

I do have bags of leftover veg in the freezer with carcasses etc that i'll make into soup/chunky stew. e.g. todays sc recipe is the last of the beef joint from last christmas with leftover frozen veg. I eat orange and lemon skins and apple cores and bread crusts because I really like them.

don't do so well with the kids leftovers: if they've had tomato ketchup, which again I can't abide then it's binned: their food needs vary day to day and I'm not going to bring them up to eat when they aren't hungry just because i've not got the portioning right, I encourage them to try new things for health but not force them to eat things they don't like.

So whilst I try and reduce waste, I take the figures regarding consumer-based food waste with a very large pinch of (non-wasted) salt. I actually think much more of it is down to those selling food - in my 20's I used to live over a bakery and delicatessen, our food bills were tiny as they skipped massive amounts of edible food every evening.