Food waste

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nephilim

Settler
Jul 24, 2014
871
0
Bedfordshire
My food waste is minimal. I buy one slab of meat from my local butcher once a week. Half will go to a roast midweek, and the rest is either hung, minced, cured or eaten as thin slices quickly cooked. I also go fishing and if I don't catch anything that day, then I wont have anything other than fresh veg either grown in my garden or from the greengrocer. I also trap for squirrels, hunt for rabbits (at night with a high powered air gun) and trap crayfish when I can get to the river which has them.

I tend to eat meat/fish maybe 3 or 4 times a week. Any kitchen waste (carrot peels, parsnip peels, any leftover veg), gets a thorough clean, boiled up, and blended into a soup which I will take to work with minced and fried up beef or chorizo. I find my food waste is incredibly slim, generally being things like banana peels, apple cores or things of that nature, and even then, if not meaty, it will go to the compost bin.
 

cranmere

Settler
Mar 7, 2014
992
2
Somerset, England
We waste very little, partly because I can't be doing with wasting money either. I was born in the early 1950s and learned to cook from my Mum who was well skilled in wartime cookery. We rarely use pre-prepared food and I take no notice of use-by dates unless I'm buying from the supermarket, in which case I buy the reduced price stuff since it's always still fine.
 

John Fenna

Lifetime Member & Maker
Oct 7, 2006
23,136
2,874
66
Pembrokeshire
No food waste here!
My wife is a 40s girl I am a 50s boy - all parents taught us to be careful with money, food and all things really!
We were both taught to clear our plates, not to over fill the plates in the first place and to make "left-overs" into future meals :)
Anything genuinely non edible (never known in meat things!) is composted and used to raise our own veg.
Waste appals me and in my travels I have seen genuine poverty where what is seen as "food waste" here would be the difference between hunger and starvation!
I earn little money but it goes a long way as I avoid waste everywhere I can ...
I see paying tax as a personal waste of money - so deliberately earn less than the tax threshold :)
 

Macaroon

A bemused & bewildered
Jan 5, 2013
7,211
364
73
SE Wales
Whatever way you dice it and shuffle it, any waste of edible food is a moral abomination and should be avoided by everybody; all that's required is a healthy conscience and a little effort.
 

Tengu

Full Member
Jan 10, 2006
12,806
1,533
51
Wiltshire
A microbiologist friend told me that bugs that make old food icky are often harmless...The ones that can kill you are hard to detect.

they ate all sorts of stuff we would discard, with no ill effect, but then, they knew what they were doing.
 
Jul 12, 2012
1,309
0
38
Liverpool
I wish I could find the story now but in about 2010 there was a group of people in Liverpool who raided all the super market bins etc and cooked meals for people using food banks, homeless people, old people who wanted some company etc they had to stop for two reasons one of the Big 3 started pouring cleaning chemicals over the waist food (it was never named) and the place they used as the kitchen was bought up an bulldozed, but it provided a valuable and needed service to the community. I wish the super markets actively tried to encourage this kind of thing as it stops waist and gives back to the community that they rely on.
 

British Red

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Dec 30, 2005
26,715
1,962
Mercia
I'm sure if we made a law that said people made ill by spoiled food could not sue the retailer, there would be far less food waste.

We either want totally safe food or we want to minimise waste - we just need to agree which is the priority - they are, to some extent at least, mutually exclusive.
 

Nalsheen

Forager
Apr 17, 2010
105
0
North West England
A microbiologist friend told me that bugs that make old food icky are often harmless...The ones that can kill you are hard to detect.

they ate all sorts of stuff we would discard, with no ill effect, but then, they knew what they were doing.

My mum works as a microbiologist and does most of the cooking at home. Some of the fruit and veg she makes into meals would get me sacked if I tried to sell them at work. Never had any problems!
 

joejoe

On a new journey
Jan 18, 2007
600
1
71
washington
nothing new my sister worked for curtiss shoes 3o years ago ,one of her jobs was to take a stanley knife to a skip full of childrenns schol shoes
 
Jul 12, 2012
1,309
0
38
Liverpool
I'm sure if we made a law that said people made ill by spoiled food could not sue the retailer, there would be far less food waste.

We either want totally safe food or we want to minimise waste - we just need to agree which is the priority - they are, to some extent at least, mutually exclusive.

That I will concide to, some food is just too far gone but tinned food, bread at the end of the day or at the throw out time and microwave meals with ugly box's are perfectly fine to pass on to places like food banks, homeless shelters etc and should be used as such.

nothing new my sister worked for curtiss shoes 3o years ago ,one of her jobs was to take a stanley knife to a skip full of childrenns schol shoes

That's quite messed up, there are kid's all over the world even in the US an UK who would kill for a new pair of shoes unless they had somthing so wrong with them they could not be worn (a tack or somthing in the shoe that would harm some one for example) they should have given them to some place that would use them.
 

British Red

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Dec 30, 2005
26,715
1,962
Mercia
That I will concide to, some food is just too far gone but tinned food, bread at the end of the day or at the throw out time and microwave meals with ugly box's are perfectly fine to pass on to places like food banks, homeless shelters etc and should be used as such.

I agree, but the law says they are liable if they sell it, or even give it away. Change the law and you change the behaviour. Why should they not be able to sell it, but at the consumer's risk?
 

woodstock

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Apr 7, 2007
3,568
68
67
off grid somewhere else
No food waste here!
My wife is a 40s girl I am a 50s boy - all parents taught us to be careful with money, food and all things really!
We were both taught to clear our plates, not to over fill the plates in the first place and to make "left-overs" into future meals :)
Anything genuinely non edible (never known in meat things!) is composted and used to raise our own veg.
Waste appals me and in my travels I have seen genuine poverty where what is seen as "food waste" here would be the difference between hunger and starvation!
I earn little money but it goes a long way as I avoid waste everywhere I can ...
I see paying tax as a personal waste of money - so deliberately earn less than the tax threshold :)

We should all be singing from the same song sheet.
 

woodstock

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Apr 7, 2007
3,568
68
67
off grid somewhere else
I wish I could find the story now but in about 2010 there was a group of people in Liverpool who raided all the super market bins etc and cooked meals for people using food banks, homeless people, old people who wanted some company etc they had to stop for two reasons one of the Big 3 started pouring cleaning chemicals over the waist food (it was never named) and the place they used as the kitchen was bought up an bulldozed, but it provided a valuable and needed service to the community. I wish the super markets actively tried to encourage this kind of thing as it stops waist and gives back to the community that they rely on.

I can publicly name one M&S we approached them for food for the homeless, what did they do, soil the food they had discarded making it unfit for humans, sick or what.
 

santaman2000

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Jan 15, 2011
16,909
1,114
67
Florida
Must say on the meat front here that meat approaching it's sell by date in the supermarket is probably only just reaching maturity of properly aged beef. (That's why if forced to buy in the supermarket I usually look in the clearance section first unless I'm after a specific cut. Remember on lassie on the counter saying would I like a different packet as the "meat's awfy dark" she was used to young unhung beef that's still bright red. Nowhere near enough taste yet. You tend to eat your meat less aged than we do in the States don't you Santaman? Good beef here (generally)starts with stuff hung for about four to five weeks.

To be honest I'm not sure if we age meat at all at the commercial processers. Generally the fresher the better here. When I kill my own game I sometimes freeze it but generally I try to eat at least one meal from it the same day it's killed.
 

gixer

Member
Dec 16, 2012
40
0
Midlands
You might ...
If you had seen folk literally starving then you might understand more.

I have, and I find it more morally repugnant that folks keep having serval kids knowing full well they can't even feed one.
Than folks that work hard, look after their finances, live responably and throw away food that they cooked when their eyes were bigger than their belly.

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk
 

Tengu

Full Member
Jan 10, 2006
12,806
1,533
51
Wiltshire
That too, of course.

yes there are people starving, its generaly due to politics rather than us throwing away food.

you could argue the amount of perfectly edible food we waste by feeding to animals is wrong too

or growing barley to turn into beer.

Food, at least, is a renewable resource.
 

cbr6fs

Native
Mar 30, 2011
1,620
0
Athens, Greece
That too, of course.

yes there are people starving, its generaly due to politics rather than us throwing away food.

you could argue the amount of perfectly edible food we waste by feeding to animals is wrong too

or growing barley to turn into beer.

Food, at least, is a renewable resource.


I'd wager that the folks complaining the most about out of date (or close to) food being thrown away would be complaining even louder if their local store didn't have the bread, fruit or vegetables in stock that they wanted, when they wanted it.

It doesn't really make the slightest difference the amount of food we throw away, as shoppers we in general insist that supermarkets and shops have the products in stock that we want and when we want them, by changes in demand this inevitably means that some stuff isn't sold.

Thus produce must then by law be thrown away.
If a store sold say a packet of chicken that was 2 days over the best before date and the buyer got seriously ill then the store would take the flak for that, so why would they take the risk?
 

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