Chucking out food

I hate throwing food away and often eat things after their bb date but always careful with use by dates - maybe 1or 2 days over but no more. The consolation I have is that vegetables etc go on the compost heap but cooked foods, mouldy bread etc. goin my food waste bin which is collected by the council for recycling every week.

I never chuck food out unless it is bad and I use my nose for that . This idea of chucking food out because it is past its sell by date is monstrous.

In our family we have a tradition of having what we call mouldy soup ( I don’t actually use anything mouldy) but at end of week any vegetables, cooked meats etc go into a soup. Sometimes I throw in some macaroni and call it minestone but family still call it mouldy soup ? It has always been delicious.

I think the pandemic has maybe got us all thinking more about waste. Before Covid I used to find myself throwing a lot of stale bread to the birds. When the pandemic started I couldn’t get bread due to panic buying, so got good quality ingredients from Amazon and baked my own. I’m still doing it now and find I waste much less as I can size the loaves to suit and freeze excess dough to bake later. When baking, things like scones, muffins etc, they get bagged up and go in the freezer and taken out as needed, and I’ve taken to baking smaller pies and batch freezing. With the exception of tomatoes, I stopped buying salad stuff in winter as I found it mostly got thrown out. I used to do one big weekly shop but found that at the end of each week I was throwing away more than I could justify. I now shop three times a week and waste hardly anything.

I try my best not to waste food. But I do stick to "use by" as much as possible. I use chilled things within a day of the dates.

Nowadays so many people do a once a week shop probably buying too much "just in case". Also most food is packaged and whilst only needing eg two items the pack may have 3.. Do you incorporate the 3rd (eating too much) or set the item aside in the hope it will be used and it never is. Also the fashion for huge American style fridge freezers I feel contributes to food waste. More space so fill it up! Producers are obliged to give information on best before and use by dates on prepackaged foods. Yet if you go to a butcher, greengrocer, baker,delicatessen store you come away not knowing how long the foodstuff has been in the store or when it should be consumed by. We need to start using common sense, our eyes, noses and fingers in assessing the quality of foodstuffs. Perhaps a tv series hosted by some expert chef and nutritionist to give practical information about buying and storage of food rather than the cooking ones would be a benefit to a lot of people.

My sin is bags of lettuce, really shouldn’t buy them as they usually end up in the compost. I only buy avocados 1 at a time but you have to catch them before they go off.

Our local council has a food waste collection system which seems to be working very well. We are provided with two lidded containers, one small to keep in the kitchen and one larger one in which the bags from the smaller container can be put when they are full. The bags are special compostable bags but newspaper or kitchen roll can also be used to wrap food in. The large container is collected every week and taken to a special facility which turns the food waste into Biogas. We try not to have too much waste but even with fruit and vegetable peelings, the odd slice of bread that has gone mouldy, meat bones, eggshells, tea bags and coffee grounds we usually at least half fill the larger container.

I rarely throw out food, I can usually make something out unless it really really bad. It is amazing what you can make with leftovers. I even mash up dry cake add an egg and a little milk, then put it in the oven. Bread if it goes dry is put in the food processor, then dried out in the oven stored in a jar for breadcrumbs.

Nanna8 I buy bags (nets actually) of avocados as you do. I put two or three in the fruit bowl and the rest in the veg box in the fridge. When I eat one from the bowl, another comes out of the fridge to replace it and to ripen up.
It's very rare that this doesn't work as when they arrive they are invariably on the hard side.

We waste very little here. I'm not bothered about dates on cans and jars if they are sealed. I like to think I apply common sense about things - but am (for example) more wary now of left over rice than I was before we knew more about it. If I think I've cooked you much I don't leave the extra simply "out" in the kitchen to cool till bedtime as I might have done once. I'll stand it in cold water and fridge it asap.

Nope, no waste here. Much too tight! Don't do rigid with dates but defer to nose and touch. Daily main meal is always a combination of what's in the fridge and what most needs using up. If the fridge is empty, I turn to the store cupboard and find something there.

You can get bags from Lakeland. That really do extend the life of fruit and veg

I put all salad in one as soon as I buy it and the difference is amazing

Make do and mend was from a WW11 slogan which many will recall applied when we were all subject to rationing.
My mother 's version / contribution was what the family called a 'bitsa pie' which were any (some chance)? leftovers of meat and veg from previous meals then covered with a pastry lid. I never forgot how we enjoyed these meals and introduced my own husband to one of these 'bitsa' pies when struggling to pay our mortgage in the early days of our marriage.

Well I am still alive after eating yoghurts and eggs one week out of date. My mother often scraped off the mould from jam and cheese. I do like blue strong tasting cheese which is in itself bacteria and if there is any extra mould I would scrape that off to but that rarely happens. As for limp lettuce, the French use it in soup but I never have.
As I live on my own, I buy a lot of frozen vegetables so I can just use the amount needed, so as to have ‘fresh’ without waste, although it is a shame it comes in plastic bags, but they do get used for bins.
I buy avocados loose and choose them by gently pressing the point to test how soft it is like I do when buying a melon.

Do you remember buying half a cabbage from market stalls? I wish you could still do that. Cabbage is one of the things that keeps for ages, even when cut, but we still don't eat it that often, so eventually the last quarter gets thrown on the compost. Alternatively, they could breed smaller cabbages.

storey49
Did you, like myself, recall food rationing which makes you appreciate just what can be achieved which such little effort.
Special offers, however, are my weakness.

why not scoop the avocado out and mash into a smoothie.I don't waste anything

Cheese will last for months if carefully wrapped. After all it has already been matured for months.
Being housebound I have to depend on deliveries. Vegetables often get wasted because they are in packs although I find that if little gem lettuce is washed and stored in a plastic bag in the salad drawer it will last two weeks.

Without reading the posts above my immediate reaction is that I do not throw out food. A lot of energy goes into food production and there are people who don’t have enough, so I regard throwing out food as irresponsible and inconsiderate. I don’t mind if I get a bashing for my comment ?- I will not change my mind. It is not difficult to plan purchases so that everything is eaten. It just takes a bit of thought.

I too was brought up not to waste food.

I have managed to master the art of buying a quantity of anything that I know we can eat while it is still good.

Any meat, fish or milk that gets pushed to the back of the fridge and forgotten is offered to the cat. If he refuses it, it goes into the bin., Old vegetables into the compost, except for potatoes that I will consider planting in the garden once we no longer have frost at night.

We are constantly bombarded with information about the world's resources being used up too fast due to our carelessness, so throwing food out should be considered in this light, surely.

Public health authorities insist that food that has been served in a cafeteria or dining-room in care homes, hospitals and businesses must not be used again, so I suspect this has coloured your daughter's thinking.

I do not think the rule needs to be followed in private home, as long as those who prepare food, or put it away, remember to wash hands first.

I was taught that all food should be kept in boxes with tight fitting lids, as I am certain you were too, and never left in the packaging or the tins it was sold in.

I very rarely waste anything. After a meal any left over food goes straight in the fridge or freezer and meals are planned round what is in the fridge/freezer.

I was born before the war so also try not to throw out food.
My mother was very thrifty - if there was leftover bread she put it on the oven base to dry out then crushed it with the rolling pin to make breadcrumbs. to coat fish cakes etc.
But there were rarely any leftovers as food was so short. Everyone was thin in those days, but healthy.

I am a 'baby boomer' so did not suffer from wartime shortages. However I am from a working class family where money was very tight, so Mum had to be creative to make ends meet and feed us all - so leftovers were unheard of.

Today, DH and I try to only purchase what we will eat. Most food leftovers are put in the composter. We do not take chances with out of date food unless we believe it to still be edible.

I frequently think that there needs to be a type of grocery store that caters to single people where they would sell fruits, vegetables, meats, cans of food and other items in single person sizes.

Ten years ago, when I was still working, I gave myself a stern talking to about food waste. A couple of days a week and most Saturdays, I would shop for food with no clear idea of what was needed. I often got into a buying loop where every trip I'd tell myself we were short of some specific item and buy it again and again e.g. eggs, or I'd impulse buy something we might have on Friday or whenever and it would eventually get thrown out (along with excess, months old eggs or mouldy stuff from the back of the fridge). We also had a takeaway every week, usually curry.

I decided this had to stop so first we made a list of all the meals we liked to have and slotted them into a two week grid. Then, with a copy of the grid on my phone, I knew which meals were coming up so I didn't impulse buy. This revolutionised my shopping habits, I spent less money and the food waste was reduced to nearly nothing. It worked so well that we extended it to a four week grid. During lockdown it's been on a whiteboard on the wall.

We are not hidebound by this. We change the plan ad lib if we feel like it but the principle and reduced waste continue. We also reduced the frequency of takeaways and now it's only on the plan once a month. That has saved a lot of money and saved us from all the fat, salt and sugar they contain, too!