Throwing food in the bin

Pandora123_2

I know that most people on these MSE forums are very careful about not wasting food and utilising leftovers and so on, but how many of you know people that are wasteful about food?

We had a kind of Christmas do at my DH's dad's place, and at the end of the meal, there were tons of leftovers... from curries and papadums (takeaway) to big dishes of rice and potatoes (which one of my SIL's brought) etc. DH and I were the only ones that took any leftovers... everyone else was throwing EVERYTHING into the bin. A whole stack of papadums (we rescued about half before they went in), lots of lovely curried potatoes, tons of rice, spring rolls, onion bhajis. We thought everyone was going to take a bit home and set aside some for ourselves but were absolutely gobsmacked when everyone started chucking it all away! :eek:

Does anyone else find this kind of behaviour shocking? It's not as if it had been sitting around long after everyone finished... everything was on heater trays and was still hot, so there was no worry about food poisoning or anything. It's just that some people don't "do" leftovers I guess.

How common is this among non-MSE-ers?

:A

angchris

i hate to see waste of any kind but it really hits home when you see perfectly edible food that someone took a long time lovingly preparing just scraped in the bin unwanted :mad: my mum is terrible for this sometimes and because through experience i know what shes going to do with it i jump in first and ask for a bowl to take it home in or happily wrap up leftover sunday tea sandwiches and take them home for my sons lunchbox the next day. i always freeze my leftovers, they are useful for when its just me in the house and i cant be flaffed to cook or for dh to stick in the micro at work. dh calls me mean sometimes when i refuse to give the dog the leftovers and keep it for us
it used to really kill me at work in a coop when i had to log and dump the out of date food in the wheeliebin, 90% of the stuff was still perfectly useable and there was masses of it sometimes there would be 2 trolley loads of pre packed fruit and veg or yoghurts/meat etc literally 7 or 8 hours out of date. we were never allowed to take it home it was such a waste :mad:
had i of had a bit more guts i could of lived very well bin diving under the cover of darkness at 1 am :rotfl:

Kaz2904

When we arrived in Scotland after a 7 hour drive for my Grandads funeral my Mum ordered an Indian for us.
There was masses of food there and DH normally eat in stages. We finished the first lot and she slung it all- I was horrified!

My MIL always sends us home with packups of food. So does my Aunt but DH is very wasteful of food- he just chucks out anything left.
He always used to sling the bread crusts- which are my favourite toasted!

dolly_day_dream

I do wonder, if we get around to being charged for how much we throw out, if people will continue with these practices? I used to consider myself very frugal then I took a careful look at how much I threw away with a view to slimming my bin (might as well it is the only thing that slims around here!) I have gone down from 1 bin liner to half a bin liner per week for 2/3 adults.

The sooner that people get over their afluenza the better for us all.

ceridwen

That would have irritated me as well - to see perfectly good food go to waste - both from the point of view that I could have saved some money taking it myself and from the environmental viewpoint (wasting resources).

I like value for money me and try to save any food that would otherwise get binned - but, in my case, thats not that likely, as my mother also dislikes binning food and in the social circles I mix in people tend to have similar feelings about wastage of resources for one reason or another. So I really only notice "binning" going on at work - where I dont "rescue" it because its not the sort of food I eat.

ceridwen

Quick unrelated thought time - you were burning the midnight oil Pandora! I hope you're in bed - sleeping!! of course - right now you LOL

spaghetti_monster

I moved in with OH this February - he's very MSE, bargain hunting, no unnecessary spending, saving electricity etc etc but was always chucking lots of food away and letting stuff he bought go off.
But I think this was because he isn't so hot on cooking... and anyway, I've now taken over and Old-Styled the kitchen!!

But it's funny - the other day he told me off for forgetting to switch off the kitchen light (leaving kitchen with both hands full!?:cool: )
Then later he left the crusts of his toast for throwing away and went to get some yogurt. This was one day past sell-by-date so he refused to eat it (I will use it anyway if it looks/smells ok );)
I find it funny that he doesn't seem to see this aspect of green living/money saving so easily, and I guess he would say the same about me leaving lights on (I do try and remember!:o )

A cool thing we have here in Holland is a brown bin for garden/food waste that gets picked up weekly. So what with that and recycling paper, glass etc the normal weekly bin is quite small.

[Deleted User]

I never throw food away,I was brought up during rationing and to me throwing food away is a sin.Last Sunday I went as usual to my DD's for Sunday dinner.She has a roast chicken now bear in mind there were her her DH and five children plus myself the chicken took quite a bashing .Afterwards she said 'Do you want to take whats left Mum as there's not enough to make a meal for 7 on the plate' .' Yes no problem', I took home several slices of chicken, plus one leg and a couple of wings. On Monday morning I chopped some peppers and mushrooms plus a tin of value chopped tomatos and mixed it all up with all the chicken I had got from the left overs .There were also a couple of cold roastie spuds there as well that I quartered.Sprinkled some curry powder over the top and made up a litre of chicken gravy from a cube and chucked that on the top. a stick of celery chopped up went on top of that and half a chopped up onion. put on the hob on a low mark .Stirred it a few time for around half an hour .Hey presto one pot of curried chicken.
tasted it to make sure it was to my likeing then devided it up into five single portion brown earthen ware dishes.When cold put in my freezer. I now have five meals of curried chicken for me to use as and when I want .One dish added to a cup ful of cooked rice and I have a meal that has cost me

value toms 13p
half and onion 4p (the other half I chopped up to go with sausages the next day)
one pepper 30p(part of a pack of six )
one chicken stock cube 10p
one stick of celery 5p
4 mushroom 20p
sprinkle of curry powder 3p (I had a huge jar from a shop that was reduced to 50p )
Half a cup of long-grain rice from my big bag of rice 3p

I have five meals for 85p, I think thats pretty good going. That works out at 17p for chicken curry with rice for one person. A lot cheaper than the supermarkets ready-made meals at a quid a throw
it is possible to live on very little with a bit of foresight and a bit of invention.
I love to have a challenge with food and to me it's great to see what I can come up with that is filling ,nutricious and cost effective

dND

alex_w wrote: »

But it's funny - the other day he told me off for forgetting to switch off the kitchen light (leaving kitchen with both hands full!?:cool: )
Then later he left the crusts of his toast for throwing away and went to get some yogurt. This was one day past sell-by-date so he refused to eat it (I will use it anyway if it looks/smells ok );)
I find it funny that he doesn't seem to see this aspect of green living/money saving so easily, and I guess he would say the same about me leaving lights on (I do try and remember!:o )

IMO I think it's because we've become institutionalised and taken away from our food production. OS'ers apart, the blame society we live in leads to us not being taught how to asses our own food but to rely on date stamps. Then you can stand up in court and say "yes judge I ticked all the boxes so I'm not to blame" if someone does get ill.

One side effect from throwing all this food in the bin is that the rat population is booming. :eek:

I think the only way to change this is to either charge per bin - which goes against another part of me that believes the state already takes too much - or a very long and slow re-education of the children of today back to OS principles and understanding of their food.

I made my children smell and taste milk that was souring rather than gone off so they knew there was a difference and have tried to make them aware of what food should be like. Have I succeeded... only time will tell but at least they are aware that the date stamp isn't the only way to assess food.

Gingernutmeg

alex_w wrote: »

A cool thing we have here in Holland is a brown bin for garden/food waste that gets picked up weekly. So what with that and recycling paper, glass etc the normal weekly bin is quite small.

I live in SE London and we have the brown bins too - they're very handy when you've got a titchy garden, like I have Now that I live somewhere with a better recycling scheme, it's amazing how little you end up with in the 'bin'.

CRANKY40

I hate throwing food away. I try to "portion" things as I buy them and then freeze them so that I don't end up with a huge stack of something to be eaten before it goes off.

It's easy to throw food away, but would people be as happy just to place their hard earned cash straight in the bin? I try and see everything I put in the bin in terms of money not food. It makes you think.....