Love Food, Hate Waste – Shopping

by Michael Smith

According to the Waste & Resources Action Program (WRAP), a quasi-government operation in the UK, more than one third of all food that is bought by British households ends us as waste.

Often this is due because of people simply not understanding how to store this food, especially fresh produce, whether fruit or vegetables, including potatoes, carrots, etc. and also people seem to assume that a carrot must be thrown away when it has become a little black in places or a potato when it has developed shoots; neither of which is the case.

Another thing that people seem to assume is that the “best before” date means that if it a day or two or such “out of date” it means that the food can no longer be used for human consumption and hence has too be disposed off. In most case that too is a fallacy.

One way, maybe, of reducing the amount of food that we waste in our households would be to shop for food, especially for fresh produce, whether vegetables or fruit, on a daily basis and only to buy as much as we need on the day or the next day, rather than do a weekly shop as most of us do.

But, who has the time to do this, nowadays, where in most families both father and mother go out to work and where there are also many single person households where it is also not always possible to go shopping on a daily basis.

Those of us who have that possibility of getting our produce on a daily basis, whether from a greengrocers, a farmer's market or even the fresh produce section of a supermarket,, should consider themselves blessed in this way, as they really have a great way of cutting down on the food that they waste.

In addition to that, and we have talked about this before, there is the need for many to learn and relearn proper cooking as regards to what to do with leftovers and also to learn proper ways of storing produce.

Lakeland, as we have seen in another article, has developed some storage bags for a variety of produce and I am just, at this moment, putting the Potato Bag through its paces and the way things are looking after a week of having potatoes in them is that the bag is doing a great job.

On the other hand, while it is easy to buy such storage bags and such, when it comes to potato storage, and that of most root crops, all that is required is a frost-free dark place and the crops to be stored in a canvas or burlap sack. Much like the sacks that, in the olden days, potatoes came in.

There is a source of such sacks that often is free even and that are pet shops where some feed stuffs, such as nuts, come in burlap sacks or Hessian sacks and those will hold about 2-5kg of potatoes, depending on their size. Those sacks are very often thrown away by the storekeepers, so it is well worth inquiring as they can also be used for a variety of other tasks.

There is no need, if you have the time to inquire and a friendly store or two about, to buy any special storage bags but then again, at a retail price of a little over £5 for the Potato Bag from Lakeland that also is hardly an issue, especially when it comes to keeping food fresh.

The old-timers sure had their ways but some of those, obviously, are not suitable for the urbanites and suburbanites amongst us who do not have a garden where to grown and then put up potatoes for the winter in clamps. So, other storage methods need to be found and keeping potatoes in bags in the dark and away from frost is something that can be done, for starters. And this can be achieved buy purchasing such bags from vendors or to get some freebies and DIY.

The proper storage more often than not is the deciding factor as to how well food keeps at our homes and hence the factor as to how much food – and with it money – we waste.

Waste not, want not, I was told as a child and that has always stayed with me. Still as valid today as it was then in the 1960s.

© M Smith (Veshengro), February 2009
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Campaign to reduce and stop food waste is working

by Michael Smith

Householders are eating up a campaign designed to cut the quantity of food going straight in the bin, according to its organizers.

The “Love Food, Hate Waste” campaign, run by Government-funded Waste & Resources Action Program (WRAP), aims to provide tips and encouragement to those wanting to cut down on food waste, and therefore their shopping bills.

The campaign was launched in 2007 and claims to have helped close on two million households reduce their food waste, amounting to savings of almost £300 million and stopping 137,000 tonnes of waste going in the bin.

Those statistics may be impressive but they are nothing if compared to the true scale of the problem.

WRAP suggests that 6.7 million tonnes of food is thrown away from UK homes each year - a third of the all the food that we buy - and this costs us, the consumers, the sum of about ten billion Pound Sterling annually.

Liz Goodwin, chief executive of WRAP, said she was encouraged by the impact the Love Food Hate Waste campaign has been making: "At a time when every penny counts, saving nearly £300 million is a great achievement for hard pressed consumers.

"Food which ends up in landfill produces damaging greenhouse gases and is a terrible waste of resources. We're delighted that the Love Food Hate Waste campaign is helping individual households enjoy more of their food, help the environment and save money."

"We recognize,” She continued, “that although the results of the first year are encouraging, there is much more to do, and we are confident we can continue to support the growing number of households cutting back this waste."

The campaign has been promoting practical advice and tips to help people make the most of the food they are buying, and waste less of it. Many of these tips and hints can be found on the organization's website.

What WRAP, the organizers of the “Love Food, Hate Waste” campaign which, after all is funded by the government, are really interested is is not our pocketbooks and how much we can save if we do not waste the amount of food as we do but to keep waste out of landfill. That is what it really boils down to. And that is because the governments, local and central, will be held to account by Brussels (an d now someone tell me yet again that we have not given our sovereignty away to the EU) to meet certain targets in reduction of waste going into landfill and could be penalized if those targets are not met.

That is, basically, the long and short of it and not that they want to help us, as the people of the people of this country, save money.

On the other hand it is indeed a great deal of food that is being wasted by people who are often just a little ignorant as to what a “best before” date means, or a “use by” date, and also as to how to store foods.

Bananas, for instance, do not belong into the fridge and neither must other fruit ever be stored in the same bowl, for instance, with bananas, as they give off a gas that makes other fruit ripen rapidly, and hence reducing the shelf life of other produce. Not many people seem to know this though for again and again one sees – even on the TV – bananas in the same fruit bowl with apples, pears, grapes, etc. and while this is just about OK for a display on a table for the day they definitely should not remain in there after a dinner, for instance.

Food storage is the greatest problem to make the campaign work properly, closely followed by people's ignorance as to the meaning of those dates. In addition to that people also will have to relearn and learn the skills of how to make meals from scratch and from leftovers.

The reduction of food waste is not just important as far as landfills are concerned but more so even to continue food security for this country. Our wastage of food can b e damaging in more than one aspect and hence it must be reduced and stopped and it can be done, to a great extent.

© M Smith (Veshengro), January 2009
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