What can be done to reduce food waste?

Fen1

1. Proper Home Economics and money management lessons in schools ( preferably from primary school onwards).

2. Free Home Economics and money management lessons in colleges and universities. Too many students have no idea how to budget nor how to cook a quick, nutritious meal.

3. Encourage shops to sell ugly fruit and veg. I don't care if my apples aren't of equal size or dimension, as long as they aren't damaged I will eat them. Get shops and consumers away from the idea that only 'perfect' produce will do.

LameWolf

Being able to buy ONLY what we need would help. If I require one orange in order to make a carrot'n'orange cake, for instance, I don't want to have to buy a bag of 6 oranges.

Get rid of BOGOF and let's just have lower prices per single item.

Sell by dates are also a big problem; so many folks seem to think that food suddenly becomes poisonous when the sell by date arrives!

lillibet_dripping

A good place to start is with the farmers themselves. If they weren't under such pressure from the supermarkets to grow perfect food (because the supermarkets think we, the consumer, won't buy it otherwise!) they wouldn't have to plant so much to cover what the supermarket will reject.
Also, GET OUT OF THE EU - then we won't have to import a certain quota of milk only to have our UK milk poured down drains.
I was a full-time food technology teacher IN A PRIMARY SCHOOL. My children could all make bread, soup, pizza, muffins etc by the time they left year 6. When they got to year 7 in 'big school' they had pizza on the lesson plan and were asked to bring in a ready-made base, for goodness sake! They were miles ahead of all their classmates.

tori.k

As others have said Education is key and needs to be started in schools. The information not only benefits the future generation but will filter to the adults in a household.
I would love to see a proper return to see more loose produce in supermarkets, the act itself encourages people to buy what they need and is socially better for single people or those facing food poverty.

It would be easy to get the retailers on board appeal to their brand vanity, offer recognition to the company that reduces the most waste, the one's thats most productive to the local food charities, Give them reducing quotas for waste and offer recognition for those that achieve the targets, make them more transparent by having to give the consumer statics of their waste, nothing fancy a traffic light system on tonnage would suffice. In fact why not try something like Britain in bloom on a waste theme, reward communities that recycle and actively reduce waste.

As for the comparative approach more need to done to support and advertise local & especially seasonal produce very few people actually now know the seasons of food as we have become so used to having everything available all year.

septemberblues

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

Further thought:

- Couldnt communal type kitchens (eg school kitchens? some church halls have decent size kitchens?) be advertised as running a free session or two for learning to cook in a waste-saving way?

Waste food could be collected from whoever-wishes-to-donate (eg supermarkets being the basic suppliers) and put in this kitchen. A suitable person/people there instructing anyone attending the course (which would be free obviously). The course to consist of showing people how to think up/prepare food from the random ingredients and they all share lunch from what they have produced part way through the day and then take home the rest of the food they personally have made with them for dinner (and take any leftover ingredients they wish to as well).

That would be my basic idea for a course.

But there could be a second course specifically on food preserving - bottling, low-cost ways of drying food, etc.[/QUOTE

I agree with the above, lots of people would love to know how to make their food go further and how to cook leftovers. The younger generation have no idea as this wasn't taught in schools. So not just teaching in schools, there's lost generations out there wishing their food money would go further but not knowing how.

GreyQueen

Stop packhouses washing carrots. You used to buy carrots with earth on them, I remember it in supermarkets and I'm only in my early fifties. Then you got the washed option, then the earthy option was taken away.

Washed carrots rot quickly and reportedly about a third of all of them bought are thrown away because they rot before can be eaten.

Also, stop the packaging of quantities being about one-third cheaper than the price per kilo of the same item veggie/ fruit item bought loose. A lot of us are singletons and don't need to buy stuff by the kilo pack, or the three pack.

Bagged salads are an abominable waste or resources.

Overall, re-iterating what others have said upthread; education needs to be brought down the very basic cooking and shopping level, for those who've not got sensible parents to guide them and we have a lost generation of parents who weren't given proper education themselves.

Above all, we need a cultural shift to regard waste of all kinds, but especially of food, as morally repugnant.

[Deleted User]

Some excellent points, put quite succinctly I think.We are all, I think conscious of the waste of the planets resouces, especially when it comes to food.
I caught a bit of a cookery programme a week or so ago, and the food looked delicious ,but it was not what I would say was what the majority of mainstream ordinary folk cook and eat. Haute Cuisine is very nice, but hardly within the budget of many

Like most people today I like to stretch my money as far as I can, yet also want to eat enjoyably.Luckily because I can actually cook, and know what time of the year things are in season, I can manage on a reasonably inexpensive budget.To me the addition of today's herbs and spices make even the most basic food taste a little nicer. But I am of the older generation which means that junk was something in the attic:) and not on your plate, and ready-meal meant you food was on the table waiting for you to eat it.
I sometimes wonder what folk do with all the 'time saving' minutes they seem to want/need when it comes to cooking Do they perhaps have more time for their families or hobbies or is it just to slump in front of the T.V. until its time for bed.

Perhaps re-education is needed of more than just cooking and budgeting perhaps we need to start seeing life as something to be lived and not just 'got through'

I have my 'slumping 'moment when I am tired, but its never meant I couldn't rustle up a meal if I had to in a hurry for perhaps an unexpected visitor.

Today's life seems to be hurtling along at the speed of light ,what for I wonder.Go into a supermarket and everything is rush and tear, no wonder our children and grandchildren seem to have so many problems They just can't have a bit of patience and think 'maybe there is another way to live without throwing the food in the bin .Try perhaps with the youngest member of the family and see how excited they are when you show them how to make the simplest of things.I have seven adored grandchidren and I have taught them all to be able to feed themselves ,even if its only something on toast. You can't blame the kids if they haven't been taught It all comes back to education again.Not just the three 'R's but being able to make something they can eat would be a great step in getting a generation to appreciate that food is as much a resource as the ozone or anything else to do with the environment. Saving a tree whilst eating a pot-noodle in a plastic pot isn't that 'friendly :):)

Islandmaid

Am I right in thinking that during the wartime rationing, the likes of Marguirite Patten, went around the country teaching how to 'make do and mend'?

I think a lot of young families would welcome some practical advice, not in a finger wagging way, but general advice on how to make meals out of ingredients, not buying put together meals meals from money hungry supermarkets ie chicken pie, ready made mash, tub of gravy and microwaved peas.

PasturesNew

The only way to reduce it would be for all food to be sold in plain white packages, so no tempting "impulse buys".... and for people to be rationed to a certain £ value, or a weight of food.

You can't stop people being people - whatever sort they are.

Remove the incentive - by white packaging.
Remove the "free for all" - by rationing.

[Deleted User]

Teach the young that food is a resource, that someone has had to grow it, tend it and harvest it, send it to market and that if you waste what you buy you are throwing away hard earned money, hard earned by YOU!!! Teach them nutrition and that a balanced diet does not consist of mars bars, chips, chocolate bars and fizzy drinks, no matter how palatable these items are.

Teach people how to cook, NOT food technology and how to produce a marketable product with shelf life and a pretty wrapper but proper old fashioned 'COOKERY' so that they can look in the veg rack and fridge and produce a sustaining meal from what they have, not dash out for a takeaway.

Teach people how to grow food, many years ago when Mr Noah was counting in his livestock two by two and I was in my youth the secondary school up the road from where I lived not only taught the female pupils how to cook, sew, clean and look after a home including budgeting and child care but the male pupils were taught to grow and tend a pretty fair sized kitchen garden, how to keep the soil in good heart, how to mend and keep their buildings in good order and the skills needed to go out and actually be employable they even kept bees!. Now I know this is 2016 and not 1959 but I constantly hear employers on the news say the skills are lacking in school leavers, surely that is not a good position?

Teach people how to preserve foods, how to make jams, pickles, bottle fruit, dehydrate fruit and veg, how to make cordials for soft drinks, how to dry legumes for winter use and teach them how to use what they have processed to best effect, do this before oldies like us who DO know how are dead and gone and can't pass on what we know!

If there is room and time in the curriculum teach this across the board from pre school to leaving age at 18 to each and every child that is lucky enough to be given the education available in the UK, REGARDLESS of gender!