Great British Waste Menu

[alan refail]

Looks like a promising series coming up. Let's hope it is well made and draws some serious attention to the appalling waste of food in this country.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00tkr88

[Nature's Babe]

I just bought three bags of quinoa flour and two of organic linseed rich in omega 3, all reduced, just £1 for five, just on its sell by date, but perfectly fine, I used one bag, and some reduced lamb mince, with the addition of a little sunflower oil, and chopped fresh herbs from the garden tonight,a sprinkling of linseed and baked some really tasty hard crunchie dog buiscuits for my dog, lip smacking goodness and should keep the dog in buiscuits for a little while ! No waste here, even the peelings and paper waste make compost.

[Primrose]

I'm shocked at how much food is wasted in this country. It's a sure sign that many people are too affluent for their own good. I suppose those of us who were brought up during wartime and the immediate aftermath when food rationing was in place learnt that food was not to be wasted and that with a little ingenuity, all kinds of leftovers could be used up and turned into something tasty. A relative of mine once carved four portions of meat from a huge turkey at Christmas and threw the rest away because she had no idea what to do with the leftovers !
Think we need to bring back compulsory cooking lessons in schools too. Even a couple of leftover potatoes in our house are saved to make a savoury omelette or frittata for breakfast the next morning.
I'll be intrigued to find out how the programme pans out or whether the producers try to "ponce" it up like they do the gardening programmes.

[Monika]

Apparently, the Co-op is planning to introduce special stands for "Eat today" food, things which are just reaching their sell-by date, in order to reduce food waste.

I am horrified in supermarkets sometimes to see rows and rows of food items (pates, prepared salads, spreads and prepared fish food, like dressed crab, spring to mind) which are almost at their sell-by date and which they are never likely to sell in time. Do they overstock or what?

I believe some supermarkets have organic digesters on site to process the food which is thrown away. The waste is quite disgusting.

[Johnboy]

I suspect that the vast majority of food waste from supermarkets is caused by government legislation. If a supermarket is caught selling something after its sell-by date the fines imposed are so swingeing that it is cheaper to dump it.
I believe that it was Alan that said some time ago that in his household they go by smell-by rather than sell-by.
I would suggest that Cheese improves with age and I will buy Stilton and store for at least six weeks before I even consider eating.
You visit a restaurant and get a Camembert served up that was made about a week before and has had no chance to mature which is as insipid as it looks. A mature Camembert should run across the plate and smell awful but therein lies the taste. If a supermarket were to sell you a Camembert in that stage they would be heavily fined. The same applies to a restaurant if they served you a Camembert in that stage or one in that state was even found in their fridge they would be fined.
I suspect that there are times when government departments governing food should take a good long practical look at their policies.
JB.

[alan refail]

I believe that it was Alan that said some time ago that in his household they go by smell-by rather than sell-by.

Hi Johnboy

It was indeed, and over two years ago at that

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5489

The trouble is that food safety regulation was, in the case of many foods, much needed and has surely avoided many illnesses. Unfortunately the dates set for some foods (cheese is a good example) are "super cautious". Having said that, vacuum packed cheese is not the same animal as a whole cheese - stilton does not mature the same way sealed tightly as it does in the whole cheese - and most people would bother to open the packet to let it breathe.

We had our two student granddaughters here over the past few days. One of them is at Glasgow School of Art and she and her friends regularly source their meals from supermarket "waste" bins - Waitrose being their "bin of choice". So much more sophisticated students these days

I suspect, too, that they know a lot more about food than the general population.

[Johnboy]

Hi Alan,
I do agree that we must have certain food standards but I suspect that they have gone far too far with their regulatory powers.
I would suggest that there is more difficulty, health-wise, from people not unfreezing frozen meat. A partially frozen chicken cooked in that state can be quite lethal as probably other meat products cooked in the same state. This is where a government education programme should come in and there should be public service announcements about methods of storage and defrosting times. For instance, if I am to have a frozen chicken for Sunday lunch then I would remove it from the freezer on Thursday evening and place into the refrigerator and remove it from there several hours before it is to be cooked into room temperature.
I wonder how many people do that? It might be interesting to know.
I would suggest that even if frozen meat is defrosted in a microwave it still needs at least a couple of hours at room temperature before cooking.
Government food propaganda is so poor that it seems to try and shock people rather than use a rational informative approach.
JB.

[glallotments]

I was shocked when I saw a TV programme where they showed a mountain of thrown away bananas - some weren't even ripe but obviously for some reason didn't conform to standard - they were going to be used as biofuel in a greenhouse.

Maybe if the government don't want US to waste food they should start by looking at how THEIR regs or EEC regs cause food to be wasted!

[macmac]

Anything that educates us about waste has got to be a good thing.
Our local authority has just introduced the "various bins" waste collection.
I am puzzled as to what people actually put in a wheelie bin ?We compost and recycle and put a tiny amount in the food bin what's left for the wheelie ?

[Johnboy]

Hi Macmac,
In this area we started using Wheelie Bins earlier on in the year. These are for salvageable items only, paper, glass and plastics and the normal Black Bag system deals with the rubbish. The bins are emptied fortnightly and the bags weekly. This means that the bins are all as pristine as they were delivered and I must say the system works very well. I understand that by doing it this way, that which is salvageable, is very easily sorted and this has reduced LA costs quite considerably. This means that only the black bags go to landfill. They propose at a later date tackling the black bags but it is one step at a time. We may get another Wheelie Bin of a different colour instead of the black bags.
I am really quite impressed with the approach that the LA have taken as quite a lot of thinking has gone into the scheme.
JB.

[macmac]

Hi Johnboy,Our LA have issued big wheelies for landfill,2 green boxes for recylcle and a brown caddy for food.The wheelie is collected fortnightly as is the green bag waste,the rest weekly.
Although it's early days (started July)there have been dreadful problems,I think mainly brought about by peoples reluctance to recycle.They just want to dump black bags in the street.Personally I think it's a splendid system my only gripe being the HUGE wheelie which is an invitation to fill

[glallotments]

We have three wheelie bins - one for garden waste, one for ordinary waste and one for paper. Then we have a green crate for plastic and glass. They collect each alternative weeks so fortnightly.

Must admit most weeks we don't put any bins out for collection but some people have bins that have the lid propped up as they are so full. Very rare that we have any food waste - we just cook what we need to eat - only waste tends to be spices and such like that have gone well past their useable life span.

[Primrose]

Maybe the Coalition should introduce 12 months of stringent food rationing. It would be a severe culture shock to the population but for a whole generation of retailers and food consumers who have never experienced food shortages, I think some valuable lessons would be learned.

[Geoff]

Our scheme has just changed.
Initially we had a grey wheelie for landfill, a green wheelie for composting (I use it to collect stuff I'm going to bonfire), a box for plastic bottles (they don't recycle any other form of plastic), a box for glass and a box for cans and paper (they separated these as they picked them up). One week a truck came for the grey wheelie, another truck for the plastic and a third truck for the other two boxes that they emptied into separate compartments. The alternate week the green bin truck came. We rarely half fill the grey bin in two weeks. If they had a scheme for recycling tetrapaks we wouldn't even manage that as the bulk is fruit juice and long life milk cartons. The boxes I used to put out monthly and even then they were rarely full. Something of a pain taking them down the drive to the road side - I have made a truck by fixing a pallet to the frame from a wheelbarrow that the body was knackered on, more recycling!
This has been going for two years but this month it has changed to still the two wheelie bins, one box for paper and one box (or multiple boxes) for everything else (glass, tins, plastic bottles). I think they have started sorting at the landfill site. They are talking about a food waste collection system, I think they already have it in the built up areas. We put negligible food waste to landfill, can't think of much beside chicken bones. What the dog and the birds don't eat goes in the compost, we have loads of rats anyway so I don't think the very small amount of plate scrapings in there makes much difference.

[Redfox]

We have 3 wheelie bins, black for rubish, green for recycling, and now brown for composting. My brown bin has only been put out 3 times in 18 months, and that was only as it was full of ivy, which had been cut down.
My black bin goes out once a fortnight although they do empty them weekly and the green bin for recycling once a month.
I agree that there is far too much waste in this country, we only cook what we are going to eat and there is seldom leftovers, and then what is we use the next day.