About one third of our food ends up in the bin according to a recent study.
This doesn’t really surprise me very much, if our household is ‘normal’.
When I was doing a ‘big’ shop, once a fortnight and topping up in between, I seem to remember throwing away vegetables in the salad tray, to make way for the new stuff. I would do this week in week out, for some strange reason. It obviously hadn’t occurred to me to actually try something novel, like cook with them! The items being thrown away were simply replaced by fresher items. Now I think about it, it seems really odd behaviour.
I shop every few days now and although I feel as if I am spending more….I can go in for a loaf of bread and end up spending £20, at least the food is being used and eaten. And it’s fresher…I find it a bit odd that some of the vegetables I would throw out had been in there for a fortnight, and still looked as fresh as the day I had bought them.
And then there is the wastage that children produce. We are still in the ‘no crust’ stage, and only eating a tiny amount of what I serve up, the rest goes in the bin. I refuse to be a mother-food-vaccuum-cleaner hybrid and eat what’s left on the plate…just as well, or I’d be unable to fit through any doors!
I told my Dad about this food wastage and he was genuinely shocked. He couldn’t understand it, plain and simple. Being a ‘child of the War’, I guess he sees food in a whole different way. He tells his Grandchildren of the first orange he tasted after the War, how he had never seen a banana and just how many sweets he was rationed with. My two can’t believe it!
And then there are the starving millions, who could live for a month on the stuff we chuck out every day.
It’s all gone wrong somewhere!
