Food waste in the first world... what to do?

I put spare food into plastic containers as I serve our meal and put it in the freezer immediately afterwards. The danger the experts perceive in putting hot food in a fridge or freezer is the danger that the fridge will be warmed above its recommended temperature.

But if you actually think about it. To do that and have the fridge above the recommended temperature for a significant period of time you would have to put a catering size dish at boiling point into a small fridge and most of the time we are talking about portions for one or two being put into, at the smallest, an under counter fridge or a bigger freezer.

Etheltbags Why not make a small casserole with only as much in it as you can eat? Buy a pound of, say, stewing beef, divide into 4 smaller portions and immediately freeze three of them and make a small casserole with the remaining 4oz. I often go the supermarket and buy just one carrot or one leek if that is all I need, that's the joy of loose vegetable displays. Again spare veg can be chopped and frozen raw if you have to much, ditto tinned veg if you do not need to use a full tin.

It does require planning menus and shopping but it doesn't just save food waste, it saves money.

Most of us must be able to remember the days when a fridge was a rare luxury item. Any cooked food had to be left out because there was no where else to put it. Some people had a larder, others like us had a cupboard. At christmas the turkey would sit on the kitchen for a week and no one was ever ill after eating it.

So many people nowadays don't seem to have any idea what they can do with food. If I cook a joint or a chicken I expect to get at least two hot meals, two lots of sandwiches for lunches, a curry if there's still some left over, and the rest boiled up for stock. I've never got over the couple on television who used to cook a chicken, have some slices of breast for dinner and then throw the rest away because they didn't know what to do with it!

But go with your own judgement, ethel, I would hate to think someone had followed my advice and got food poisoning.
If you are ill, don't send for me please, I am no good with sick.

The best lasagne I ever ate was the second half of a monster one I made. The dish was too big for the fridge so I covered the remains with tinfoil and left it out on the worktop overnight. It was reheated next day and tasted even better than the first half had.

Actually, I was thinking that too, rosequartz, but didn't dare say it!

If the food was freshly cooked, I would have thought it would be fine left in a covered casserole dish overnight and then refrigerated or frozen the next morning. Food is supposed to taste better the next day when it has 'matured' a bit anyway (isn't it?).

(the only drawback to mine and Elegran's methods is that you are, of course, left with an extra pot to wash, but c'est la vie...!)

Put it into a fresh, covered (cold) container and stand that container in a shallow bowl of cold water. Drape a wet cloth over it, dipping in the water. The evaporation will cool it faster. That is how we used to store perishable food overnight before refrigerators. We never had food poisoning.

There should be some way in which we could off load the unwanted bog-offs so someone else could benefit - perhaps a daily collection by a food bank or charity for the homeless from the store, particularly if the product is fresh, vegetables/fruit for instance : I love cauliflower raw, but am hard pressed to consume 2 in a sitting! . If I froze all the bogoffs there would be little space left in the freezer and there's only so much you can do with it anyway.
On the subject of when food should be eaten, I am of the sniff it then keep it or chuck it school and like Flickety have never knowingly poisoned anyone - give me time. I am always very, very careful with rice having been on a food hygiene course years ago when the fear of God was put into us on the horrendous things that could happen if it was not cooked or kept properly.

Transfer the leftovers into a pyrex or similar container and cover with just a piece of kitchen roll until you go to bed. Put proper lid or kitchen foil on at the last minute.

I must admit I don't always wait until things are absolutely cold before I put them in the fridge - not ideal if you have other stuff in there that might be affected but we haven't been ill yet...

any tips on how to cool food quickly, when I get in from work I sometimes have a casserole but that is after 7pm. Im usually ready for bed by 10pm and the casserole hasn't cooled very much and I must admit I have thrown it out rather than stay awake to wait for the wretched thing to cool, slow cookers seem to keep their heat even when switched off.

I don't often keep rice, but if I do I rinse it through with cold water to cool it quickly after cooking, refrigerate or freeze it straight away. I believe it develops the harmful toxins if left in a warm heap.
I wouldn't keep rice from a takeaway ( which we hsve very rarely anyway).

Yes, always reheat very thoroughly.

In the winter I batch cook using the slow cooker then freeze portions big enough for one or two.

Well done Flickety for being so well organised- just shows that even for a couple or single- a bit of fore-planning can do the trick. I've always cooled and then put left-overs in fridge and re-heated properly- and as you say no-one has become ill- ever. Apparently you have to be particularly careful with rice- but we regularly cool and put in fridge overnight and, again, never ever had any problems.

I don't know how things are going in the UK but I have noticed here that many food items that were expensive (for what they are) are now selling for £1 (that seems to be the benchmark price) - has anyone noticed that in their area?

I agree with Rosequartz, food left out to cool and refrigerated should be OK, especially if you reheat it thoroughly before eating it. Most food if thoroughly reheated to boiling point should be safe to eat.

I do not worry about having to buy larger packets of food because I portion it out and freeze it. I just get one slice rf one small portion out of the freezer as I need it. This applies to sliced bread, all cheeses, soft and hard, vegetables and meat. We eat a lot of casseroles and stews. I will make casseroles using a pound of meat and then use a third of it for a meal for DH and I and spoon the rest into two plastic containers, which I label and freeze.

At any time I will have 10 or 15 home made ready meals waiting use in the freezer. Most food will last in the freezer far longer than recommended. The recommendations are based not on safety but flavour. Personally the only food item that I have experienced a decrease in flavour quality with is bacon - it was still eatable, just not as good.

'Sell by dates' are aimed at Supermarket stock control not eatability and most 'use by dates' incorporate a wide margin of safety. And dry goods and tins have an indefinite life. Manufacturers only put 'sell by' dates on them because of the inflexibility of EC laws and, again, are based on flavour not safety.

So far, nobody has got food poisoning from food I have prepared, but I do cook food thoroughly and do not like meat to be still red or even pink before I eat it. As I said we eat a lot of casseroles and stews bcause they need hours of long slow cooking.

A food scientist may correct me but I would not think that freshly properly cooked food, covered and left to cool then put in the fridge when cold would develop salmonella. I have sometimes left it out (covered) overnight by mistake and it has been fine. (So far)

They should make smaller packets for single people, MIL used to say the same. Not everyone wants or needs large packets or bogofs.

Incidentally the thread on so-called 'slop buckets' ( food recycling bins) is also of relevance. I am surprised that not many people on here are keen to use them.

I agree and feel that it is obscene to waste food but I do every day and cant do otherwise. As I live alone I have to buy the smallest package and that is often too much for me. I also look at the dates of the food and try to eat it before the date but if I buy a small carton of soft cheese I have ot use it within 5 days, I may open it and have it on day one, day two I have it just because its open and by day five I just bin any left as I m totally sick of it. As Im at work I don't cook much but when I do I find myself getting anxious to cool leftovers so they can go in the fridge, some people say put in fridge warm, some say let it cool which can take hours so I then throw it away in case its got salmondella. My friend cooks a meal and plates two up, she then puts the other away for the next day but I find if I do that I just don't fancy it anymore and bin it. I have a wormery in the garden for uncooked food but I cant help throwing away stuff, also I throw lots away from the plates as I just don't know how much I fancy,l I get bored eating meals and end up chucking half a plateful. Im so trying to diet and all the leftover portions just get forgotten in the fridge. groan Im just no good at saving food.

I prefer to buy 'loose' veg rather than pre-packed - plenty of knobbly potatoes and carrots to choose from, but the bagged ones seem to be much more popular with supermarket customers here. They only have one small section for unbagged potatoes in our local Tesco and Asda.

As mentionned in the other thread, I really like the new initiative by the French supermarket Intermarché- to have a new range of fruit and veg, called 'ugly' (moche)- where they are now selling tons of fruit and veg which would be discarded due to a slight kink, shorter, longer, smaller, bigger, with a little lump, etc- but perfectly good, healthy and edible.

Well done them. Would be great to see large UK supermarkets following suite, and of course all over the world.

If I buy bogofs at all (there don't seem to be so many of them these days), if it's freezable I put one in the freezer as soon as I get home. Cheese keeps well anyway, and sometimes I give any extra yogurts, fruit etc to DS for the DGDs.

I just made a couple of banana cakes (one now in the freezer) because last week's bananas were going brown. No good for the diet of course.

Far more food is wasted in the harvesting and transport of crops to primary markets than is wasted by us at home. Much of this is in less developed countries where transport, facilities and cooling and crop protection facilities are limited.

I caught a programme last week where two young mothers were using website checks to spread their shopping round about 5 different supermarkets (as ever they were large city dwellers where this is possible) in order to buy it as cheaply as possible. According to them they did this every week and had to do so to feed their families (they were not on benefits and looked as if they had reasonable incomes). I couldn't help wondering how much of the food they bought so economically would actually not be eaten and end in the bin and that the time and effort they put into this economical shopping would be better spent planning their menus and then shopping in one supermarket and consuming all the food they bought.

Yes Flickety, it is amazing that with all this talk of food poverty, etc- still so much goes to waste- and I am sure not only for the better off.

Perhaps schools could start talking about food waste and how to avoid it- accommodate bogofs and left-overs, etc, as part of food studies (whatever fancy word cookery is called nowdays ;) )

Our baker does make bread pudding, so I assume he does just that, but not often, I think most of his bread sells out. I turn any spare bread into breadcrumbs and put them in the freezer, but we do not have much.

The best way to stop people wasting food is to make it more expensive. If they can afford to throw it away it is too cheap, ditto clothes, most people have far more than they need.