Interesting article on the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26909147 Do you waste much food? I waste very little - so am wondering, is food waste as big a problem as they are making out?
Not in this house, I like buy one get one free offers, I eat loads of fruit and veg and rarely chuck anything away.
Like Shirley, I eat lots of fruit and vegetables, although a lot more vegetables than fruit. Nothing gets thrown away that is edible, and as I do not over-buy food it is extremely rare that anything goes "off" and has to be wasted.
I don't understand about food 'waste' the only thing I waste is things like the end of a cucumber and that goes into the compost bin. Peelings go to the goat next door in return for apples off their tree. But then when shopping I plan exactly what I am going to need for certain meals and a well stocked store cupboard , freezer and herb bed mean I can knock up a meal with any left over bits like a couple of eggs. So nothing is wasted.
I'm not a meal planner as such as Iain and I often eat different meals but my cupboards are stacked to the rafters, my fridge and freezer full. I cook stuff and freeze some and refrigerate some, so no need to bin it. Also rather than chuck stuff away when it's bogof and I don't think I'll use it all, I just pick up one not two.
Very rarely - I absolutely hate wasting food. Even if it's past its sell-by date I still happily use it, unless it's very obviously 'off'!
Meg - ends of cucumber and peelings [and outer leaves of lettuce and white cabbage, together with the stalks of white cabbage and cauliflower] get chopped up and mixed with Pereg's wet meal. I do not eat potatoes so do not have any peelings from them [although I would not give her potato peelings even if I did] but I sometimes have carrot peelings as even though I scrub them sometimes they need peeling as well. So I guess you could say that Pereg is my way of composting them!
I do waste a lot of fruit in the summer but that's because I inherited a lot of fruit trees when I bought this house. I eat, freeze or make jam with as much as I can but even so there's still a lot that goes to waste. I can't even give it away because everyone else has as many if not more fruit trees as me.
Malka I tend not to buy white cabbage, there are always green cabbages available and I prefer the taste unless making coleslaw. Being on my own I buy small cauliflower and eat the stalk and outer leaves . I don't peel carrots just scrub them, they are organic and I eat the lot .
I think the problem of waste may be down to younger working people who don't plan their meals and can't cook so buy lots of convenience food which goes out of date.
There are no green cabbages here. No sprouts, no spring greens, no spinach - no proper greens at all. It is possible to buy frozen sprouts and frozen spinach, and when it is in season it is possible to buy mangold [chard?], so I make do with white [or red] cabbage. But as I only eat salads during the long summers, I do get through a lot of white cabbage! I do miss greens though...
Between phoebe and my friends pigs not much gets wasted here. Im weird about yoghurt i cant make my self eat it soon as it hits the date on the tub im even funny the day before so phoebe eats these. I ignore dates on most other food. If fruit has any soft spots i again wont eat it i like most fruits when there still quite hard. Phoebe or the pigs get the fruit and veg that has past it for me. My friend told me off last week as i had some potatoes and they had those eye things on them so i picked them off and boiled the potatoes she said you should bin them once they got eyes on so i informed her if that was true my peelers wouldnt have a thing for picking the eyes out.
I can remember my father chasing me round the room with a piece of meat on a fork and forcing it into my mouth because I had left it on my plate! And I can also remember sitting at the table sneaking bits of food into a bag, which I'd then take out and give to the local dogs. (They weren't starving strays - in those days it was quite usual for dogs to be let out in the morning and return home at night.)
I cannot say that we were every hungry but nobody ever complained and plates were always cleared, and I well remember Mother tut-tutting as we walked past the pig-swill bins if there was someone emptying their left-overs into one.
I hated vegetables as a kid and the only way my plate was cleared was because my elder sister ate it for me.
My grandfather had a smallholding and used to keep my mother supplied with eggs which even as a baby I refused to eat .... I still hate them! When I was about 2 years old and recovering from measles my mother gave me a small Cadbury's milk chocolate bar that she'd somehow managed to buy which I promptly gave to the dog .... she said she could have cried as she hadn't tasted chocolate for years. I remember my father coming home with this yellow weird looking thing which I was told was a banana. It was the most delicious thing I'd ever tasted and bananas have been my favourite fruit ever since.
Yes, I remember my first banana too. Then a little later - (think it was the mid 50's before they came back into confectioners shops) - I can still remember my first dairy cream lemon bun, deeelishous!
my gran talks about having to grow fruit in secret "back in the day" as there was none around and people would pinch what she was growing and the chickens and pigs were under lock and key and people would try and pinch them aswell. She lived on an estate but Pops had a small bit of land where he kept the chickens and pigs. they used to live in there aswell at first in a bus my pops converted. My mum was 5 when they moved to a house and she saw her first set of stairs.
