No holds are barred in my war on food waste
Nobody wants to waste food. I don’t think I’m projecting here; I think it’s a raw human imperative not to let a delicious thing rot into oblivion, as it is to be loved, or to collect the same notebook in many different colours. Thanks to the campaign against food waste, we now generate £3.4bn less of it every year in the UK than we did in 2007. But progress is a mountain path, not a flight of stairs, as they say in primary school. The fieldwork required for comprehensive studies means there’s always a lag, so the most recent snapshot from the waste-reduction charity Wrap comes from four years ago; what it shows is that, between 2012 and 2014, waste went up slightly, then plateaued. Unbelievably, bottled water is in Wrap’s top 20 most wasted items, which on some important and elemental level shows that people are crazy.
Most wasted food is not used in time; after that, the main cause of waste is that it got to the table but there was too much of it. The main culprits, then, are clearly adults, and children. Adults have a problem getting things from the fridge to the table, but will generally eat them once they’re on a plate; children will turn their noses up at stuff that’s in front of them. It is a huge pain trying to prioritise frugality in a family, balancing it against fussiness. I would waste very little if I only gave my children frankfurters and sweetcorn, but I would also have children the colour of skimmed milk whom I couldn’t take on holiday.
Continue reading...from Lifestyle | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2J8KQrf