Food Wastage.

As we all know too much food is being wasted nowadays,what do you do to cut down on food waste,what tips would you give to try to alleviate this problem.

Instance.
My wife was throwing out a box of 6 eggs yesterday,she said,"they are out of date". They were only a few days o.o.d.
I said to her"crack the eggs into a plate before using them,then you will see or smell them if they are off". She did this and all the eggs were perfectly ok and we used them. I didn't tell her my mother did this years ago before fridges, when the foodstuff was stored in a cold kitchen pantry.

What things do you do to cut down on food waste.

 

As human beings we do have plenty of senses (eyes, nose, taste buds) to alert us to whether food is ok to eat or not. Apart from perhaps shell fish which is notoriously dodgy more often due to where the shell fish were feeding and on what!!!! prior to capture rather than anything else, I totally ignore sell buy and best before dates.
Except for a serious dose of food poisoning from having eaten a lobster which had been less than fussy what it ate I have never had food poisoning and have regularly eaten food deemed out of date. Trust your senses as they are much more likely to keep you safe than any label. I was involved with food trials with Unilever for many years, we humans are a pretty tough species and not nearly as fragile as some think we are!!! unless of course you are already ill or either very very young or conversely ancient. Music I often have eggs in the fridge which are a good 6 weeks out of date, by far the best for hard boiling! The smell of a rotten egg is 1 you will never forget once smelled!!! if it doesn't smell bad then it's fine.

 

Eggs can probably go a lot longer than a few days o o d, even after a month they are still OK for baking. They might not be spanking fresh but there's nothing harmful about them. This is the problem with use by/sell by dates, people have lost the ability to use any vestige of common sense because of them.

Avoiding waste -
I mainly buy raw ingredients and cook my own stuff.
If there's stuff that needs using, plan a meal around it.
Don't go shopping for new stuff while there's still a lot of old stuff around. If hungry enough I will eat it.
Ignore any use by/sell by dates, instead carry out the look & sniff test.
If there's any veg that needs using up, make it into soup and freeze. Or just eat it, even better.
Buy Webb's lettuce whole, not bags of salad - keeps for ages if you take the plastic off first.
Remove or open plastic packaging on veg before storing.
Think ahead, don't buy highly perishable food unless you know there will be an opportunity to cook it in the next 24 hours or so.

Admittedly, it is much easier as I only have myself to cater for and please.

 

Silu, I think we're eating from the same compost bin!

 

I love reading the comments on this thread. I think gardeners per se are a lot more sensible than our non gardening friends in the main. I store my bread flour in a large sealed container under the stairs and decant as and when needed into a smaller bag for kitchen use. It regularly goes beyond the BBD but is still smelling sweet and fresh.
Our parents managed to raise us without all this BBD and I never have a jippy belly . I abhor waste. Too many people in the world don't have enough to eat. How could I throw food away?
Jenny

 

This thread has no doubt been generated by the revelation from Tesco that they have thrown away £30k worth of food - just the 'tip of the iceberg' I should think, I wonder how much the other big supermarkets threw away over the same period.

a-a

 

I seem to be making nothing but jams, chutneys, stews and curries at the moment. Anything that is a glut is frozen and then used later in the year.

One thing I should do is make breadcrumbs from the ends of loaves of bread which I throw out. But never get round to it.

 

If you keep hens nothing gets wasted, not even vegetable trimmings, peelings, etc. as the harder stuff can be put in a flask of boiling water to cook. Nothing ever goes in our kitchen waste bin. Reports of average families wasting £700 p.a. seem like a load of nonsense as somewhere e family must be one chucking out £1,400's worth of food p.a. (£3.84/day). That would be like us throwing nearly, if not all of our food away!

I get fed up with all these reports suggesting how families can save loads of money, as that simply isn't the case for those who don't chuck loads of food away, have turned down their heating/changed supplier, always check out the cheapest deals on food/insurances/etc., drive economically, etc., etc. as for some who've been doing these things for years and years there's no more savings to be had.


P.S. My lunch today consisted of a 250g jacket potato (6p), half a packet of reduced stir fry veg. (7.5p) a small piece cheese bought in bulk whilst on special offer and using a voucher to get £5 off my bill, so £2.75/Kg (25p), some home grown tomatoes and a hard boiled egg from our hens, total cost 40p (allowing 1.5p for some spread on the spud) for a healthy meal and zero waste.

 

I try never to throw anything away.

Any odd veg left go in the freezer, to be made into bubble and squeak. End of bread gets whizzed, and frozen, and then use them to make treacle tarts.

When I do a roast, any veg especially parsnip, pumpkin and carrots, make a lovely soup.

Stale cheese, any flavour gets grated, frozen, and then I use for quiches.

In effect, any little bit gets put in the freezer, and I just have to think of something useful.

 

Strange TESCO story this
If they are going to stop BOGOF, then they will not be buying as much from the producers, so the producers are about to be hit in the wallet As they are only going to be buying half the usual produce
Tesco themselves are going to lose profit, as although we all fall for something for nothing
or buy one get one half price, They are making a bigger profit selling two items than one

If not a gardener and Unless you are a big family or a rabbit it is pointless getting two lettuce's for the price of one

Jack McH