Cut food waste with the Kitche app

Stop overspending on food you don’t use with the help of this free app

MANY OF US probably do not worry too much about throwing away the odd bit of food now and then, what with everything else going on in our lives. Especially if it goes in the food waste bin. Sometimes you buy too much — these things happen, right?

Once you start adding up all the food you throw away, though — and all the money you end up wasting on all this unneeded food — you might be shocked at how much you go through. The wasted energy in growing and shipping the food, and the wasted money you spent on it, is now a serious concern. Surely something should be done about it?

Well, as you would expect, there is an app for that: it is called Kitche, and it is totally free. This app is designed to keep track of all the food you buy, as well as everything you keep in your store cupboard, and getting started is as simple as scanning a receipt. Once Kitche knows what you have and when you bought it, it will send you reminders to use the food before it goes out of date. It can also offer up tasty recipe ideas and track how much you throw away to encourage you to waste less in the future.

Not only is Kitche incredibly useful, it is also supremely easy to use. What could become a tiring chore is instead a quick fix that comes with plenty of benefits. Before you know it, you will be wasting a lot less without even trying. ALEX BLAKE

Scan a receipt

When you open the app, you will see an empty product list in front of you. Tap the “+” and take a picture of a receipt to start adding food to the app, or tap “Gallery” to add a picture of one you have snapped recently.

Review products

Tap “Crop & Submit”. Kitche will scan your receipt for products it recognizes, then will open a list of what it found. You can remove items if you want. Tap “Add” to insert something manually, or tap “Next” to continue.

Once you have added food to your products list, you can then search for recipes that contain these ingredients, helping you use up leftovers.

JARGON BUSTER On the At home tab, long press an item to delete it, add it to the buy list, or copy it to the top of the tab. You can also select all items from here.