Foodie thoughts

WAR ON WASTE SHOULD BE FOUGHT IN FRIDGE

My relationship with my fridge is complicated. There’s a part of me – inherited from my mum – that won’t allow me to throw three peas away. At the same time there are science projects festering in the deepest reaches, provenance unclear, type nonspecific, date some time in prehistory. More often than not whatever it is gets the mould scraped off it and thrown in the pot anyway. I live to tell the tale.

Some of it inevitably gets binned. It’s not just me. The volume of food waste generated in the retail supply chain, the hospitality sector, and in homes stood at 9.5 million tonnes in 2018, down from 10 million tonnes in 2015 according to a study from the Waste and Resources Action Programme. It now stands at around 4.5 million tonnes each year which is going in the right direction, but till pretty shocking.

New research from Samsung suggests that 42 per cent of the food Brits buy is thrown away each year, meaning £2,675 of your hard-earned winds up in the bin. That’s one hell of a holiday, when we can go on one. It seems we’re unsure where to store common kitchen staples for the sake of longevity. There are some surprises. Where do you keep fruit – in the fridge or not? I’ve never chilled it other than apples for extra crunch. Bread? Never. You won’t find HP Sauce there either, or eggs, garlic or tomatoes. Seems I’m wrong. Advice is to store all these in the fridge to give them longer life. We’re not the worst culprits – 20,000 people surveyed in 11 countries revealed that Switzerland wasted the most amount of food, closely followed by Norway, Italy and France.

The most wasted food is fresh herbs, followed by ready meals (46 per cent), sauces, condiments and desserts (45 per cent) – desserts? They rarely last longer than a day in this house. We all sling almost half of the bread we buy, and 41 per cent of the sweets and chocolate. I’ve never been guilty of that.