Do you throw away food?

Thanks for the links @mtrain, it is a brilliant way to make use of surplus food.

Labelling what goes in the freezer is a good habit to get into, sounds like you will have a few mystery meals. I have a couple of felt pens I bought from Betterware more than 20 years ago that write on freezer bags that are still invaluable. They might not get used very often, but it is amazing they still work after all this time.

Nestle had a recall of instant coffee after they introduced a new style of jars some years ago. Some customers had found broken glass in their coffee. They offered a full refund and reintroduced the old-style jar. I had about a dozen jars of Alta Rica so took a photo and put in a claim. Knowing that glass is quite dense and would settle to the bottom of the cup and be visible, I inspected the rim of the jars and used the coffee rather than waste it.

The Food Standards Agency provides allergy alerts: https://www.food.gov.uk/news-updates/news/allergy-alerts-news I support what Alfa suggests about passing on food to those without allergies or intolerances. Waste not if you want not

Buffets are inherently wasteful. But I suspect there’s also a psychological issue, with hosts and hostesses seemingly pathologically terrified that the guests will leave hungry. “Are you sure you’ve had enough?” is a refrain I seem to have heard most of my life.

An hotel we visit occasionally has a wonderful Sunday help-yourself lunch. Turkey, lamb, pork, beef roasts. Coincidentally – (!) – they have a well-attended curry night two days later with a help yourself “buffet” including lamb, pork, beef. They also do turkey sandwiches for lunch. Most of these establishments are likely to have a minimal waste plan to ensure they do not also waste profit. What generally goes to waste are the vegetables left on peoples’ plates and tables.

We do not like to see guests (which includes family) go home hungry. We also like to ensure they have food they like. So when we have a gathering – picnic or a buffet – there is generally excess food. I make no apologies for that. However it usually gets consumed the following day or two.

If we wanted to reduce food “waste” we could consider, as Ian says, those who simply eat to excess. But how do you control consumption? Rationing did that during and after the war but i doubt any one would want to return to those days even though people were generally fit and well.

We had a Sunday Roast Dinner in a pub today where the whole meal was plated up and served to the table. I rarely leave anything uneaten but this meal defeated even me and I had to leave some roast potatoes and some broccoli. We had no room for puddings.

Just in case rationing makes a come-back I have not discarded our family copy of the Daily Express Wartime Cookbook which told people how to make the ration go round. It is frequently asserted that the population were healthier during rationing than at any time before or since.

I wonder if one reason why rationing might have improved health was because sugar was possibly one of the most heavily rationed?

Quite likely.

With less processed food around and more meals cooked from scratch, food in the rationing era would also not have contained all the chemicals and dubious additives that we are now accustomed to.

Would roast chicken have contained these ingredients as sold by Waitrose:
British Chicken Breast, Salt, Wheat Dextrose, Stabilisers Di-, Tri- and Polyphosphates, Antioxidant Sodium Ascorbate

Or Sliced Roast Turkey from Tesco:
Turkey Breast Fillet with Skin (96%), Salt, Modified Potato Starch, Dried Glucose Syrup, Turkey Protein, Dextrose, Flavourings, Yeast Extract, Stabilisers: Sodium Citrates, Triphosphates, Antioxidant: Sodium Ascorbate, Acidity Regulator: Sodium Lactate, Preservative: Sodium Nitrite

I am surprised that the Waitrose roast chicken contains no preservative. 🙁 Including dextrose (glucose) is a good way to promote growth of bacteria.

I have just checked and no other ingredients are listed.

I think it was Sainsbury’s who added milk to a lot of raw chicken. I’ve just checked a few chicken products on their website but they are not listing any ingredients. Hmm.

During the first half of the twentieth century many people kept chickens in their back gardens or yards, first for eggs and ultimately for the table. This also dealt with any left-over food. The hens’ diet might not have been wonderful but corn was cheap, plentiful and not rationed so that was the basic chicken feed and there would have been no extraneous additives.

Not all cooked chicken does contain preservatives. Many products including cooked meat are packaged in a ‘protective atmosphere’ to slow down growth of bacteria. This contains nitrogen or carbon dioxide and no oxygen. Carbon monoxide can be included to delay browning of fresh meat.

I wonder why the manufacturers of processed foods feel the need to include sugar in their recipes. I often make homemade soup and never think about adding sugar.

Ah – the good old days, when no one could afford a ‘fridge, antibiotics had only just been invented and Which? was asking what was wrong with crystal radios.

But manufacturers could do more to prevent food waste, as could those who traditionally eat too much. Hands up if you’re overweight…

When I was a child we had a meat safe in the large walk-in pantry adjoining the kitchen. I only remember it because it was used for storage in the garden shed for many years, after we became owners of an English Electric refrigerator. That was several years before we had a television set capable of receiving the single programme available in glorious black & white.

My mother visited the local shops frequently, though a lot of the vegetables came from my father’s garden. Nowadays the supermarkets sell ‘perfectly imperfect’ and ‘wonky veg’ but in these days it was normal. I wonder how much cosmetically imperfect food is wasted because people are reluctant to buy it.

Tesco use Fairshare for collection of non-perishable goods but I don’t know if the same company collects surplus food that has reached its ‘use by’ date.

Apologies – Correction: fairshare.org.uk.
Should read: fareshare .org.uk

I had not realised but went to the right website. 🙂 I find it disappointing that the FareShare has four employees receiving over £60k, according to their accounts. I wonder if their jobs could be done efficiently by recently retired people at no cost, making more money available for their charitable work.