Food Waste

According to the BBC, institution that I thought was above reproach until recent admission of fixed phone in voting and keeping charitable contributions, we are wasting 3.6million tons of food each year in the UK. 3.6 million tons is 3,600,000,000 kilo of waste. Can this be true? 60,000 people live on our island. So that’s 60 kilo a year for every man, woman and child. 240 kilo per average household of four. I just can’t believe it. 5 kilo per week for each family of four ( I know families don’t come in fours but they average out at about 4, probably!). According to WRAP the average family with children wastes 27% of the food that they buy. So the 5 kilo each week that we waste is 27% of what we buy. That should bring my weekly shopping in at 17 kilo unless I am much mistaken. (I would be surprised if it does weigh this much)


I am disgusted if this is true. Horrified, in fact... We have to do something about this. I have included at least a day of leftovers in my new meal plan but more importantly I keep an eye on leftovers and make sure they get eaten up by someone or frozen for another day. I know it is easy for me because I have teenage boys who are able to eat 8 meals a day if required. But it is do-able for most anyone if you are a little flexible.

Yesterday I made egg mayonnaise for Beloveds lunch. I had leftovers from Saturday dinner. One son had toast and the other ate at his grandparent’s house. In the evening we had a barbecue. Today I took left over French bread for lunch with a couple of nice sausages. I heated them in the microwave at work and they were scrummy. Eldest son and husband had leftovers salad, potato salad and cold meat for lunch. Youngest had noodle soup straight from school (he doesn’t like food at school, just a big breakfast and an early dinner and another later one) and we all had leftovers for dinner. Tomorrow Beloved will use up the egg mayonnaise in a baguette with some left salad and potato salad. The boys will have pizza and I will have corned beef sandwiches with the meat left over from Friday. It’s a continuous rolling use up of leftovers rather than a specific way of dealing with them. It works for us. In my bin today were some tins (cat food) for recycling, a half dozen lemon peels (can’t find a sensible use for these) and my sad failure, 6 inches of French bread which is too hard to cut. I should probably have ground up the bread for bread crumbs but the freezer is full to capacity.