Julie Welch
bottom end up so you can easily see which slimy bit to chop off. As for tomatoes, they’re the Rasputin of veggies – virtually indestructible (yes, I know a tomato is actually a fruit but let’s not quibble). There are two in a bowl in my kitchen which have been there since late April and are not even squishy.
Conversely, there is an art – only learned after years of experience – to being able to pinpoint the exact time an avocado is perfect, a window of roughly 12 hours between its being rock hard or brown, mushy and horrid.
In fact – and I hope this won’t horrify anyone who comes to dinner at our house – I’ve been ignoring best before dates since they were introduced, and if truth be told I don’t set much store by use by dates either. I can actually remember a time when a maggot rollicking around at the base of a Stilton cheese was proof of its authenticity and deliciousness.
It’s probably a good idea to take a stronger line on meat than you would with fruit and vegetables but that’s where the miracle of human anatomy comes in. We have noses, and unless some misfortune robs us of it, a sense of smell. If that piece of chicken seems a bit iffy when you sniff it, into the bin it goes. That said, when I was a student and ate at the university canteen I once tucked in to dish of the day, liver and onions.
Halfway through, when I’d stripped it of its coating of lovely, oniony gravy, I noticed that the liver was green. I didn’t think much about it at the time and suffered no ill effects.
Later I discovered that meat was dyed green if it was unfit for human consumption and only to be fed to animals. Speaking of which, I once served up roast leg of pork to some rather important guests who tucked in blissfully unaware that four hours before they arrived I had caught my cat tucking into it on top of the fridge where I had left it to defrost. Everyone lived.
Chefs such as Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall are way ahead of us on this. They’re busy raising awareness about food waste and campaigning for regulations. The hospitality industry as a whole accounts for only 10 per cent of food waste. Which means it’s the rest of us who must be the biggest culprits.
THE point is, food waste is unethical. It’s a shattering thought but according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation one third of the food we produce – close to one trillion dollars’ worth of grub – goes in the bin. Saving a tiny proportion of that would be enough to feed the 825 million people in the world who struggle to get enough to eat. And with world population – now 7.6 billion, set to reach 9.8 billion by 2050 – that problem is not going to go away.
And it’s not just the food we’re wasting. There’s the water and energy involved in growing it, storing it and carrying it. What a colossal misuse of the Earth’s bounty. I’m not saying we should bring back the cheese maggot but in a world of rising hunger and environmental destruction, let’s stop with all this throwing away of perfectly good food.
So what if we have to spend a few minutes trimming warty potatoes? Isn’t that much better than letting them end up in landfill where they rot quietly, farting out greenhouse gases?
‘I’ve always ignored best before dates’