Hugh's War on Waste

charlies-aunt

Pleased that I'm not the only one who thought the 'reject' parsnips were better than the premium grade ones!


Shocking that a whole field of cabbages were rejected because the outer leaves weren't cosmetically acceptable


I buy what fruit and veg that we don't grow ourselves from our local market - several home growers sell their produce straight from their fields with the earth still on them - the 'mucky' carrots and untrimmed cabbages stay fresh for many days longer than the prewashed, prepacked supermarkets and have a more distinctive flavour


Much rather have a paper bag of cheap,ungraded but tasty Cox's Orange Pippins bought at the farm gate than a plastic tray of 'perfect' (but tasteless) Golden Delicious from the supermarket

meritaten

I sort of meal plan in my head when I go shopping - and I already have a good idea of what I have available in the freezer. the freezer is semi-organized into
Top Drawer
Baby Ava's homemade baby meals
cartons of chicken livers and offals (OH loves them)
chops and cubed meats for casseroles

Middle drawer
Veg - both Supermarket and homegrown
one or two portion bags of leftover casseroles etc.
frozen prawns and fish

Bottom Drawer
Ice Cream and homegrown fruit for jams etc

I normally check the use by dates on meats etc - but got it wrong tonight! the chicken legs I bought last Friday had a use by of 4th November and I cooked them tonight - except half way through cooking I thought 'Whats that funny smell'? it was the chicken legs! so instead of chicken and chips OH had tinned salmon and chips!
maybe my fridge wasn't cold enough - have had the heating on over the last couple of days but hadn't adjusted the fridge temp..................have turned it up a notch now.

meritaten

charlies-aunt wrote: »

Pleased that I'm not the only one who thought the 'reject' parsnips were better than the premium grade ones!



Much rather have a paper bag of cheap,ungraded but tasty Cox's Orange Pippins bought at the farm gate than a plastic tray of 'perfect' (but tasteless) Golden Delicious from the supermarket

I always think that 'Golden Delicious' is an offence under the Trade Descriptions Act!
They aren't Golden and they certainly aren't Delicious! Tasteless Pap!

and what happened to 'Russet' apples? you never see them now and they were my favourites!

[Deleted User]

Grand scale food waste has always got my goat! I work in a hospital and the patient's canteen end up binning lots of food every day because they can't reheat it and staff are not allowed to eat it either. I am sure some of it could go to a soup kitchen for the homeless, but no it goes in the bin.
Supermarkets not only bully farmers, pay them a pittance and have weird standards which mean so much food is wasted, but they also bin perfectly fine food from the stores because of display until dates. Then if some poor soul tries to get some of the food from their bins they have them done for theft!
There really should be a change in the law forcing supermarkets to donate unsold food to food banks, soup kitchens or for feed for animals and they should be fined per kilo of perfectly fine food that they waste! (I think France do something similar to this)

Goldiegirl

missbiggles1 wrote: »

I really do appreciate the importance of meal planning when on a budget and I also hate waste, however, I couldn't bear to know what I'd be eating every day for the next 3 weeks, or even for the next week if it comes to that.

How do you know what you'll fancy eating on any given day or doesn't that matter to you?

I operate a very similar system to Pollycat.

I keep an accurate freezer inventory, and meal plan 2-3 weeks ahead.

But it is just a plan, it's not rigid and set in stone.

Meals can be moved around within the week, or, something else could be taken out of the freezer if I really didn't feel like something on the plan, or circumstances meant that I couldn't cook the planned meal.

It's just a framework to work within.

Kim_kim

honeythewitch wrote: »

I expect that if the mis-shapes were sold very cheaply instead of dumped there would be no waste at all.

I don't understand why they don't use the ugly/wonky fruit & veg for the value ranges.

Also, what about processed foods, won't they buy ugly/wonky fruit & veg?
Hospital meals, school lunches......
Prisons.

It's quite offensive to deliberately throw so much food away - with so many hungry in the world.

Lynplatinum

hi All

Re how much Hugh FW paid for his farm etc. Yes, he is a highly paid, Eaton educated person and isnt it refreshing to see someone with such a background trying to stand up for the ordinary farmer and producing recipes that are easily do able in your own home at a reasonable cost (ok some are expensive and would come under the 'treats' section of life!!) At least he is doing something!

Re carrots vs ready made £1 lasagne. The problem with these £1 meals is that they are v small and are nutritionally of poor quality - usually having too much saturated fat and sugar in them (including savoury ones).. The problem is a lack of education with regard to the way one can learn to cook, cheap, nutrition dense meals from scratch. I am not talking from the perspective of a rich person who thinks £5 per person is cheap but from the perspective of a woman who bought up 2 boys for 4 years on benefits after fleeing from a violent husband with the contents of 2 cars (not including pans/plates/cuttlery) then i moved on to a lowly secretarial role for a further 4 years before climbing the career ladder. Most of my plates are still those that I bought from the CS for 10p each when I worked there!!! (20 years ago!)

Re the economic argument - if we do not start valuing our smaller farmers and paying them properly we will end up importing the majority of our food and so being at the mercy of price hikes by other countries. This has already happened with our fuel because of a lack of investment by successive governments in small scale alternative energy producers - imagine if every factory built since 1990 had been made to cover it's roof in solar panels - that might have been a game changer - but governments tend to be advised by those with vested interests in keeping the large corporations going - including farmers and farming.

More people are employed in small companies than large ones in this country - France and Germany rely on small producers for their food! So large is not always better.

So if folk like Hugh FW can encourage people to become more like us on the OS board than so much the better!

Eyeore

Couldn't have put it better myself Lyn! As a country we need to be looking at becoming far more self sufficient, in many areas, but just for starters the amount of food waste is an absolute disgrace and yet it could be so easily turned around!

sistercas

MrsLurcherwalker wrote: »

Having just watched the first programme I am absolutely appalled that a supermarket could reject such a huge amount of perfectly edible and nourishing parsnips just because they don't conform to appearance standards. Do the supermarkets think that their customers are completely stupid and will only buy uniformly shaped and sized veg? How terrible insulting to the british public and how completely wrong their policy is. We grow parsnips on our allotment, we get big ones, small ones, fat ones, thin ones, wiggly ones and perfectly straight ones and they all taste absolutely the same and I use ALL of them, this presumably applies to ALL other vegetables produced for the british market and the wastage must be unimaginable let alone the people who farm the land to grow the crops for us being put out of business by those same supermarkets, it's just not on is it?

Hear hear :T

kathrynha

Nargleblast wrote: »

I still think it is worth surplus fruit and veg being made up into fruit and veg packs and given out at food banks the next day, along with an info leaflet on how to prepare and cook the produce if the recipients needed it. That way people needing help from food banks would get a bit more variety in their diet.

I believe part of the issue is food bank customers not having the money for the gas/electric to cook the food.
Maybe food banks could diversify and make soup/stews/etc out of the food and distribute that instead of the raw ingredients. It would be much more healthy than the processed food they currently give out.

drinkupretty wrote: »

There really should be a change in the law forcing supermarkets to donate unsold food to food banks, soup kitchens or for feed for animals and they should be fined per kilo of perfectly fine food that they waste! (I think France do something similar to this)

I would like to see this happen. I remember in my childhood all non-pork school dinner waste went to a farm to feed pigs. I would much prefer pigs fed that than antibiotic infused artificial food