Hugh's War on Waste

Gigervamp

Rainy-Days wrote: »

There was five of them left and they went to seed (went soft and had a couple of new shoots) fairly quickly even though I kept them in the potato cloth bag, so I put them in the compost bin!

You'll probably find a load of potatoes in the compost next year! That happened to me once.

PasturesNew

missbiggles1 wrote: »

Even mentally ill people have freezers!

Not necessarily. Not everybody has a freezer.

And you're forgetting "freezer fear". I have freezer fear. Some food can't be frozen as the thought of eating it after it's been froze petrifies me. It starts to play on my mind.... and I'd be gagging/sick at the thought of eating it. It's not a rational fear; I know the food's fine to eat..... it just turns me pale with fear.

Once in the freezer, for me, it's a battle to get some things out as I fear the fear..... then, suddenly, I seize the day and feel able to tackle the problem item .... and I'll cook it .....

Freezer fear is real

I have a "thing" about fresh/raw meat (can't touch it) .... and I bought a piece of turkey ... and stuck it in the freezer. Then it was the fear of the thing.... until finally I snapped. I needed to cook/eat it as it was holding me back from feeling I was in control of food/the freezer.

I hated/dreaded cooking that ..... but it turned into a brilliant curry, which I enjoyed. But I'd feel the same fear of freezing/cooking/eating it again.

Eating frozen meat's harder for me to get round to than eating fresh meat. Raw meat, fresh or frozen, just grosses me out .... but I like the end result.

missbiggles1

Pollycat wrote: »

Even mentally healthy people have freezers but I'm not sure all of them know what it's possible to put in them - hence all the stuff chucked away.

So back to lack of education and laziness rather than MH issues.

fuddle

Rainy-Days wrote: »

I can't agree with you entirely on this Fuddle, sorry - because there are bigger issues at hand. The supermarkets are the primary drivers of this and it is they who are setting these standards.

On the backdrop of that there is all sorts of extra things going on, there is the labour, the fuel costs (not just harvesting but planting as well and getting it to store) there are the resources that are involved not just the diesel for the farm machinery, but everything from the growing process to the harvest to getting it into the stores perfectly washed and bagged - all that was shown last night was pre-packed. Go into every supermarket and only a small amount is actually loose fruit and veg. If I only want two Leeks why do I need to buy a pack that has four in it? Even though buying two loose leeks works out more expensive than the pre-packed stuff!

Classic was last week I got a pack of charlotte new potatoes, it was actually cheaper to buy the pack than actually buy the exact quantity that I needed loosely? What happened? I threw the remainder out this week because they were not going to get used! Thats just mad and it's downright wasteful, but in truth it was the cheapest way of buying it!

We have become accustomed to buying food already washed and prepared - through laziness in some part but also for asthetics by the supermarkets. If we were forced into only buying what was needed - i.e. not pre-packed then the rate of household food waste would - in theory I hope - drop.

I constantly read and hear people saying that they resent the BOGOFF offers because simply they just want one item. If they actually halved the price of that one item it would make life easier and I agree on that point. Classic one is Lurpak spreadable. I don't want two 500g packs of butter for £4.00 I just want one so why can't I have it for £2.00 why do I need to pay £3.25 for a single one? The supermarkets drive it because it's turnover and revenue boosting. The shareholders are to blame as well constantly pushing the supermarket for bigger profits to fuel even bigger dividends!

So in summary you are sort of rightin that we are all part of the cycle of this, but the biggest culprit by far and away is the supermarkets and it is their tactics that need to change!

It's alright. You don't have to apologise for disagreeing with me. I'm not right. It's just my opinion based on what I saw in the programme and my own cynical mind not wanting to take what I was being 'told' at face value.

I am horrifed at the waste too and not naive enough to think that the supermarkets don't play dirty. I have boycotted T for years I just don't think that we can wholly blame the middle man in all of this but I do see why many would disagree.

Lyn your post was fantastic my friend.

VfM4meplse

PasturesNew wrote: »

Freezer fear is real

I've never come across this before, does it exist in isolation or do you have other specific fears?

I couldn't manage without my freezer, it's my weapon against food waste. There is very little that doesn't go in it

missbiggles1

PasturesNew wrote: »

Not necessarily. Not everybody has a freezer.

And you're forgetting "freezer fear". I have freezer fear. Some food can't be frozen as the thought of eating it after it's been froze petrifies me. It starts to play on my mind.... and I'd be gagging/sick at the thought of eating it. It's not a rational fear; I know the food's fine to eat..... it just turns me pale with fear.

Once in the freezer, for me, it's a battle to get some things out as I fear the fear..... then, suddenly, I seize the day and feel able to tackle the problem item .... and I'll cook it .....

Freezer fear is real

I have a "thing" about fresh/raw meat (can't touch it) .... and I bought a piece of turkey ... and stuck it in the freezer. Then it was the fear of the thing.... until finally I snapped. I needed to cook/eat it as it was holding me back from feeling I was in control of food/the freezer.

I hated/dreaded cooking that ..... but it turned into a brilliant curry, which I enjoyed. But I'd feel the same fear of freezing/cooking/eating it again.

Eating frozen meat's harder for me to get round to than eating fresh meat. Raw meat, fresh or frozen, just grosses me out .... but I like the end result.

I know that lots of things are more difficult for those who are mentally ill so I sympathise, I also know that not everybody has a freezer. However, as somebody who's suffered from depression, I know it didn't stop me freezing food that I didn't feel able to eat and it was that aspect I was addressing.:)

Pollycat

missbiggles1 wrote: »

So back to lack of education and laziness rather than MH issues.

I thought I'd already answered that:

Pollycat wrote: »

I do understand your point but I think that poor education probably out-weighs the issues that people you mention above have about food.

NewShadow

missbiggles1 wrote: »

I know that lots of things are more difficult for those who are mentally ill so I sympathise, I also know that not everybody has a freezer. However, as somebody who's suffered from depression, I know it didn't stop me freezing food that I didn't feel able to eat and it was that aspect I was addressing.:)

Just to share my personal perspective and experience.

My ex-OH had quite serious and long term depression. I'm saying had, but I'm reasonably confident it's still ongoing as I think, for him, it's a lifelong thing.

When he was fine, he was fine. When he was a little 'down' he didn't have a great appetite, but could talk about it, and could accept it, and could think logically about freezing food, or putting it back in the fridge, or suggesting someone else had it.

When he was bad he would leave plates of food that had been cooked for him to rot in the oven or microwave or counter. He'd hide plates of food under the bed - not so I wouldn't see them, but so that he wouldn't have to see or think about them.

As mentioned above, he'd want to be 'better', so would buy trollies full of fresh fruit, veg, exotic ingredients - and intend to cook them. When he was like that, freezing them would be a sign of defeat - yet another thing he wanted to do and was too (insert derogatory term of choice) to do.

He wasn't like this all the time, but I also don't think this type of depression would be unique to him.

When he was bad, shows villainising (all) waste, or dismissing it as an education problem (which he would take as him being lazy or stupid) would have made him worse.

Rainy-Days

fuddle wrote: »

It's alright. You don't have to apologise for disagreeing with me. I'm not right. It's just my opinion based on what I saw in the programme and my own cynical mind not wanting to take what I was being 'told' at face value.

I am horrifed at the waste too and not naive enough to think that the supermarkets don't play dirty. I have boycotted T for years I just don't think that we can wholly blame the middle man in all of this but I do see why many would disagree.

Lyn your post was fantastic my friend.

I suppose what I negated to say in my 'rants' is that we need to blame the EU in this as well. I am not right completely either, and have gone off on several tangents about this, but I am utterly disgusted at what I watched last night. They have been dictating the size and shape of a banana - for example - for years. In all of this you look around the world and see abject poverty and the EU along with supermarkets are driving levels of unprecedented waste on a shocking scale simply because it just does not conform.

I knew it was bad but not this bad. I had a clip at the end of the programme (played it back several times as I had it pre-record) and it is showing Hugh 'bin diving' next week bringing out huge bags of perfectly good fruit and veg. The thing is this has been going on for years. A good friend of mine used to be a lorry driver and they used to go into a bakery who make allot of supermarkets own cakes. She told me the scale of the waste was terrible.
If they did not have the best before date stamped on the box it was skipped as it came off the production line. It may have missed the stamping machine by a short margin but if was not there it was binned. Why? The supermarkets would not accept it even with a manual stamp and would have rejected the full pallet load, so rather than risk that it was easier to skip a few! Its just so damn wrong. Yet I hear of old peoples homes nearby who would be glad to have those cakes but can't!

Its stupid stuff, a box is dented but the contents are sound and the whole pallett load is sent for rejection and the supermarkets are doing this - it can be just one box and it's refused!

This is sheer madness and the beaurocracy that is tied up with it, some of it directed at us from Brussells, has to end. You can kind of see where companies such as Approved Foods have come in and filled a market gap and it proves that if something is at the right price people will buy it - so the supermarkets are wrong to say its consumer driven because if that was the case Approved Foods wouldn't have been in business more than six months yet that company is thriving!

And look how many of us on here will stock up on YS items to whip them in the freezer! The reduced section in all the supermarkets has quite a trade in customers!

Now I read that allot of councils up and down the country are watching Bury and Rochdale councils who are currently only emptying the black general waste bin once every three weeks! It's slightly going off topic but it's kind of wrapped up in the same point that we just cannot go on like this. Fifteen years ago (or thereabouts) we had recycling foistered upon us to change our perceptions of how we deal with waste - again Brussells driven directive. For the two of us our black bin is full once a fortnight - how we will deal with every three weeks I just cannot comprehend it but it will come in I am sure of it!

[Deleted User]

I think part of the waste problem is the amount of packaging on lots of products, pet hate is individual chocolate biscuit bars that come in multi packs with individual wrappers on the bars, inner wrappers dividing them into units of 6 or 7 and then outer packaging with the brand name on them, sometimes even included is a rigid plastic inner tray, it's crazy and all goes to fill up our dustbins, heaven forbid that we should be forced to 3 weekly collections though, particularly in the heat of summer, we have wrigglers after 2 weeks in the heat, after 3 weeks we'd have plagues of bluebottles and blow flies, yukkk!!!