FOOD GLORIOUS FOOD

Imagine being offered 8 free meals a week…

That’s the kind of offer none of use would refuse, especially at the point where every penny is so precious to all of us. Right?

According to Love Food Hate Waste, in the UK we throw away enough food each week for 8 extra meals. As we approach Food Waste Day on 26 April, our sustainability expert Sarah Walkley looks at how we can avoid food waste and make the most of what we are buying.

Roughly one-third of the food we produce worldwide is never eaten; it is grown and thrown away. Some is left to rot in fields, some is damaged on the way to the shops and never sold and some sits on shelves for too long and cannot be sold. But in the UK, individual households are responsible for 70% of the food that is wasted.

We throw away a lot of fruit and vegetables, particularly potatoes and carrots, but also meat, fish and baked products like bread.

That’s not great for anyone. We are all spending more on food than we need. We are throwing food away while other people do not have enough to eat. We are investing time and resources to grow that food; about one-quarter of the water we use goes to grow food. We also generate a lot of emissions making fertilizer to help crops grow, heating greenhouses, transporting food and cooking it. According to Love Food Hate Waste, we could save 36m tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions if we reduced our food waste to zero – that’s about 10% of all the emissions in the UK.

But the good news is that this is something that we can all change and if we learn the habits when we are young, they will stand us in good stead for life.

What’s on the menu?

Spending time planning our meals for the week ahead is a great way to ensure that you buy only what we need. And you don’t have to limit yourself to a basic shopping list, why not spend time designing your own restaurant menu for the week ahead?

Super storage:

Making sure that you store your food in the right way can make it last longer. Some fruit can last longer in the fridge than in a fruit bowl, but bananas and whole pineapples last longer at room temperature. Bananas should also be kept separately as they give off an enzyme that makes some other fruit ripen more quickly.

Go on a date:

Food labels include a lot of information. Learn the difference between a use by date and a best date. Use by dates indicate the period when a product is safe to eat. Products marked with a best before date will still be safe to eat after the date, they just won’t be quite as good as they were when you first bought them.

Love your leftovers:

Get creative with your leftovers. Soups, stews, stocks are all great ways to use up ingredients that are not at their absolute best. And there are lots of websites where you can search for new recipes by ingredient, giving you inspiration for what to do with the other half of the cauliflower or cabbage.

Get everyone involved:

Children that help to cook dinner are more likely to enjoy their dinner and finish their meal, because they helped to make it!

If we still have food left over then there are plenty of organisations around that can help us to distribute it to those that need it most or even to anyone in the local community, regardless of their circumstances.

Food waste apps such as Olio help to connect you with people in need in your local area who might have a use for your leftovers. Organisations such as Fare Share, City Harvest and Food Cycle collect surplus food, which is then distributed to those who are in need.

Community Fridge organisations are popping up in towns and cities across the country, many are part of the Fair Divide network - a Community Interest Company that works to inspire healthier and happier communities by saving perishable foods from waste. Many community fridge’s are open to everyone and work to save tonnes of food from ending up in landfill each year.

Sarah Walkley is a freelance writer and researcher on a mission to empower everyone to play their part in addressing climate change and nature loss.

She set up Purplefully to help organisations develop their sustainability strategy and communication.