Discarded food

[fivemack]

ewx points at this article, which is the very carefully-surveyed source for the various claims you see about food waste. It's tedious to read, because the food is divided into categories which are all carefully named with the names always referred to in full, so the string 'meat and fish meals' appears much more often than in continuous prose, and there's lots of data presented as paragraphs which would take up less space as unadorned tables of numbers.

I'm a bit surprised by the clause on composting, because food waste thrown on the compost heap is just as much thrown away as food waste thrown in the bin in the sense of not being food thereafter.

It's an interesting report, and it seems to fit in with what I can remember of my experience: throwing gone-off food away isn't something that sticks in the memory, but certainly sprouty potatoes and brown apples are among the things I remember throwing out. I've deliberately bought very little prepared food for several years, after living off it in my first year living out as an undergraduate; but packaged salads do turn swiftly to compost in the bag.

The conclusion I think I'd want Tesco to draw is that many of the products they sell, particularly salads, pork products and cooking sauces, need more preservatives and a longer shelf life, and possibly to be sold in smaller portions - for potatoes, certainly, I buy a five-pound bag and let two pounds of them turn into sprout-ridden monsters at the bottom of the cupboard. I've often thrown away half a pack of bacon, since I think of bacon as a staple, make one meal using three or four rashers, and actually only eat bacon once every couple of weeks by which time the rest has turned green and smells nasty. Similarly I've often used half a jar of pasta sauce and found the second half of it covered in white mould when next I want pasta sauce.

The conclusion for food-eaters to draw is that they should weigh out rice and pasta rather than pouring it into cooking-water from the jar, probably not buy packaged salads, and shop more often buying smaller portions of things. The last is of course not a counsel of economy; my aunt's habit of buying lots of one-pint milks and freezing them in the plastic may well make sense. I don't know how alone I am in always clearing my plate, where 'food left on plate' accounts for 30% of avoidable food waste; this is less avoidable in families with picky children.

Comments

[redbird]

I know I could do better in this regard (even if we disregard this post-surgery period where I'm picking at almost everything). I also wonder how, say, my not getting around to making stock/soup from the carcass of the last duck I roasted would get counted in this. We almost never buy potatoes in those sacks, for similar reasons, even though the price per pound is usually better than if I buy loose potatoes from either the same supermarket or the local farmers' market.

[crazyscot.livejournal.com]

shop more often buying smaller portions of things

Hear hear.

I can particularly recommend the Milton farm shop, from whence I recently bought more fruit and veg than might be reasonable; but, which not having been through the ludicrous supermarket delivery chain, I have faith in it.

[ailsaek.livejournal.com]

Back when I ate bacon, I kept it in the freezer. I also put carcasses in the freezer to save them for when I want soup.

Which isn't to say that food never goes to waste around here or anything like that.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I don't know how alone I am in always clearing my plate, where 'food left on plate' accounts for 30% of avoidable food waste

Ooh, don't tell me that; I'm at the point where what I need to think is "it's just as wasted if it's added to my waistline". (I try to cook sensible quantities, and not take food I don't plan to eat, but really, deciding not to eat something on my plate is mostly a good thing.)

Similarly, shopping more often not only takes more time, it also requires additional auto mileage around here. (It's possible to get to supermarkets and back by bus from where we live, and if you shopped three times a week the amount carried might not be too much trouble on the bus if you have strong hands, but each round trip takes about an hour. And if everybody shopped more often it might actually require more mass transit runs, too.)

There's something weird with your bacon; it should keep in the refrigerator for many months. Remember, it was invented to store meat for months *without* refrigeration.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Your bacon might keep better if you took it out of the plastic when you opened it and used your four slices and wrapped the rest in greaseproof and then put it in a tupperware.

At least, mine does.

I have recently discovered a source (actually it was there all the time but I didn't notice) of smoked farm-cured bacon, with no added water. It's lovely, and I'm finding myself using bacon much more because it's so lovely.

[martin-wisse.livejournal.com]

Shopping more often for smaller portions has one obvious drawback: it's much more expensive, even including the food you waste buying in bulk.

Also, if I understand the summary correctly, this is about food wasted by household; it would be interesting to see how much food is wasted by the supermarkets themselves.

[jvvw.livejournal.com]

We've had a food waste recycling scheme run by the council for the last year which has the interesting side effect of making you very conscious of what food you're throwing away.

A certain amount is vegetable peelings etc. obviously, but the three main problems for us I think are not being able to buy some stuff in sensible portion sizes, our plans for the week changing for some reason, and the fact that we get a vegetable box and sometimes we fail to engineer the week's meals sufficiently well around it (and the portion sizes are often too large even though we get the smallest box).

It's also made me much more conscious of what non-food we throw away too and what has non-recyclable packaging and what doesn't. That bothers me more than food that gets thrown away as the food gets composted whereas the other stuff goes into landfill. No idea if that is logical or not, but I guess it depends why you think food being thrown away is bad.