Food Waste

[MaryN]

With all the furore about food shortages, I thought I would dig a bit deeper into the subject, just out of interest. MB's comments about the potential shortfall in food imports into this country intrigued me.

So, did you know that in the region of 2 to 3 million tonnes of food is wasted by the food industry in the UK each year? This is just the food industry, mind. The total wastage including that from households is somewhere in the region of 10 million tonnes! These are obviously figures that would vary from season to season and area to area, but it does beg the question how could this country end up in a starvation situation.

A lot of the food wasted by households has been overbought and no efforts have been made to reuse or recycle it. I now have every sympathy with that MP who suggested that people learn to cook!

[Mortblanc]

A good deal of that waste comes from mandated behaviors. One egg in a carton breaks so the law says the entire carton must be thrown out. You can't move eggs from one carton to another. That sort of thing.

There is also the amount of food thrown away in unopened packages due to passing its "use by" date. Taken off the shop shelf or thrown into the bin at home.

There is also the amount of cooked food that it thrown away daily due to laws governing cafes, take out and fast food. Some places must throw away food at intervals through the day and never carry food over to the next day.

There is also the waste due to broken refrigeration machinery, both commercial and in home. Power goes out, or the compressor breaks and you find yourself with 10 tons of melted frozen fish, or just a home freezer full of spoiled meat and ice cream.

Right now you can conserve, eat your leftovers, avoid waste. There is still food to conserve in the developed world, but for how long?

What we are facing shortly is a completely different situation world wide that has a good chance of snowballing up the ladder of national status. One half the food production of the world for this year has disappeared. You are still thinking it will only be an inconvenience to you, because you are in a developed nation. Those other people will starve, but you will be OK, because your nation has status.

With so much waste how can we starve?

We can starve because we can not eat yesterdays' leftovers when we had nothing to eat yesterday. You can not save, conserve, economize and recycle what is not there. The memory of waste in times past will not fill your belly next autumn.

There is about to be the largest mass migration of humans, from the countries that are starving to the ones that still have food, that has occurred in human history. When they start walking they will push a wave of people ahead of them like a tsunami as the greatly reduced amount of food in each region is consumed and they have to move to the next.

Actually the only starving people we need not worry about are the ones living on islands. Unless they can walk on water.

[Straight Shooter]

I would imagine most on this forum do not entertain Waste of anything Mary especially food ! Like BP we eat mostly freshly prepared food ....wild child does most if not all meals from scratch ...like most people our age ....there’s very little waste ...if any , if there is the chickens recycle any we do produce .

Back when we were first married , from day one WC knew what to do cooking wise , back then girls we taught how to cook in school as well as at home by mother’s and grannies ....boys were taught how to garden , woodwork and metal work ....preparations for life .....that’s the way it Was .....not the way it is now , times have changed , things have moved on ....and yes that MP is right to raise cooking issues ....thing is we / I would say that being of a certain age ....thing is Mary ....older people speak from experience after living a long time ( if their lucky ) just this fact gives them the perceived right to lecture the upcoming generations of we know better ....and we do ! Know better but we live in the fading past of our world and have trouble coming to terms in their new reality .....sounds like you have a problem with people starving in this country and how could this be possible ? ...It’s very possible is the truth but just my opinion ....the U.K. holds no special dispensation to avoid such events nor does any other nation on Earth ...none ! ....been on here a lot of years Mary ! Maybe it’s time to bugger off ! Gracefully !

[bigpaul]

back when I first got married (wife number one) the only take aways were fish and chip shops and supermarkets didnt exist.
these days people can just pop into a supermarket and get food from around the world in a time of plenty, like MB says food is thrown out when it reaches its used by date, that always amused me, some thing that is fine at 5 to midnight will kill you 5 minutes after midnight, nobody used the "sight, smell, taste" test on food anymore, if its overdated it goes in the bin.
mind you the food industry and manufacturing are the worst culprits for waste much more than households.
if people starve after the collapse that is their problem for not planning ahead, even an idiot can see the way things are heading what with grain and sunflower oil affected by the war in Ukraine and other crisis will occur in time.

[Joe]

I’m pretty guilty of wasting food if I’m totally honest, just before covid kicked off I increased flour to over 100kg and 80% of that went in the skip after about 6 months but this did give me the capability of making 200 loafs under a worst case situation so I wasn’t complaining.
In addition to that I bought dozens of cans I would never use, things like spaghetti hoops which might appear nuts but at 20p for a can it was almost enough to keep someone going for a day with a bit of bread.
This was my back up to my back up, I needed something cheap to extend food capabilities for a few extra months and for a few hundred pounds it was perfect.
Now overall loss of the covid pandemic might amount to hundreds of pounds, maybe 500 but I did factor this in prior to the event.
So yes I’m guilty of food waste but it was not a normal situation.

[bigpaul]

I was always advised " store what you eat, eat what you store", just because something is cheap if it isnt what you normally eat it will probably sit at the back of the shelf and never get used, false economy I think they call it.

[Joe]

Totally agree BP but if you can extend your food capability by several months just by throwing a few hundred at it then it’s a no brainier.

[bigpaul]

not if it dosent get eaten, thats my point.

[Mortblanc]

Do you think it would be OK for me to open the two cans of sausage I just found in the truck dated 2/07/11.

I hate waste!

[bigpaul]

I'd be concerned how different temperatures might have affected the can's contents in a truck, but you'll never know unless you open them.