the challenge.
PHOTOGRAPHS KATE WHITAKER FOOD STYLING KATY MCCLELLAND
STYLING DAVINA PERKINS
What would you do with a spare £800? Maybe a weekend away, or how about a fancy new coffee machine? Or maybe you would rather spend it duplicating a bunch of ingredients that are already sitting in your cupboards? Right now in the UK, 9.5 million tonnes of food are wasted every year, with household food waste making up a staggering 70% of this figure. We bin nearly 20% of all the food we buy, resulting in the average household wasting £800 of edible food a year. According to Catherine David, director of collaboration and change at Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), this equates to the average UK household throwing away eight meals a week. No one likes a wagging finger and no one can be perfect all the time, but it’s obvious that little changes would make a big difference.
A study published in the Journal of Family and Consumer Sciences found nearly two thirds of our unused comestibles were bought for specific recipes that were never made. This points to a pattern of culinary over-optimism; our cupboards are bursting with mementos from abandoned cooking projects.
If you’re feeling a bit guilty at this point, you are not alone. A quick peek in my fridge reveals three opened jars of the same brand of harissa. (If you can relate, don’t miss The Project this month – you may never buy harissa again after you’ve made your own, and our recipes are just the inspiration you need to use it up.)
My cupboards are no better. In the spice rack alone, I’ve discovered two jars of star anise and three of caraway seeds – and that’s the tip of the iceberg. WRAP’s Chill Chain Report revealed that up to a third of us don’t check the contents of our fridges before a shop, leading to unnecessary duplications.
IT’S TIME TO RELAX ABOUT FOOD SAFETY – UP TO A POINT Professor Jessica Aschemann-Witzel of Aarhus University’s Centre for Research on Customer Relations in the Food Sector says consumers recognise that food waste is unethical. That, she says, is a good starting point for individuals to engage in sustainability – but the professor cites “misconceptions about food safety and exaggerated disgust” as major hurdles.
Food safety is an understandable concern. Many of us are unsure about which foods are safe to reheat, while 59% of us mistakenly believe food can only be frozen on the day of purchase, despite best practice advice deeming it safe to freeze up until the use-by date. Waitrose is the lastest supermarket to remove ‘best before’ from many items of fresh produce – see this month’s Appetisers for more details. It’s worth reiterating that ‘best before’ refers to quality, not safety, but ‘use by’ must be adhered to – even if food with this label looks and smells OK, it could be hiding hidden pathogens.
SHOCK STAT
The average UK household wastes the equivalent of about eight meals a week
WE DID WELL IN LOCKDOWN – BUT WE’RE LETTING IT SLIP In a recent study, WRAP reported that people’s behaviours around shopping and preparing food changed significantly during the pandemic. Self-reported food waste dropped substantially in the first lockdown and a lot of people changed their food-management habits by writing shopping lists, checking use-by dates, batch cooking and getting more creative with leftovers. So far so unsurprising, considering we were all trapped at home and many of us struggled with shortages – on the supermarket shelves and in our bank accounts. But the latest WRAP estimates paint a worrying reverse, with figures already back at 2018 levels. So how can we steer our food waste habits back in the right direction?
Just thinking about the potential payoff should help to inspire you. Eliminating all avoidable household food waste would have the equivalent environmental benefit of taking one in four cars off UK roads. Office of National Statistics figures show that “four in five people in the UK are concerned about climate change, but only 32% see a clear link between the climate crisis and food going to waste”.
ARE YOU READY FOR A CHALLENGE? Levels of food waste are higher among people who feel they’re always chasing their tails – leading to unplanned eating out or ordering of takeaways, which displace meals that would have been prepared at home. What seems clear is that it isn’t for want of caring but, rather, because of the juggling and exhaustion created by increasingly busy schedules. With work commitments, hungry children and online shop cut-offs all adding to the pressure, it can be hard to find time to check what we already have before we restock.
Food that was once edible makes up 60% of household food waste – we’re talking loaves of bread here, not eggshells. Each day, we chuck away 920,000 bananas that could be mashed into baked goods or sliced and frozen to use in smoothies. Salad leaves and herbs are needlessly tossed away because of minor wilting caused by dehydration, or because a single slimy straggler triggers our brain to reject the lot. Try bringing new life to your leaves before writing them off – in fact, most produce has more life in it than we give it credit for (see Save It! over the page).
If we seriously want to reduce our food waste, we need to reflect on our own prejudices and rethink our attitudes to good eating. Our taste buds and bank balances, not to mention the planet we call home, will thank us for it.
Not-quite-past-it vegetable, harissa and feta fritters with yogurt sauce
SHOCK STAT
Each day, we chuck away 920,000 bananas that could be mashed into baked goods or sliced and frozen to use in smoothies
Fridge-rescue herb and leaf quiche with mashed potato pastry
SAVE IT!
Most produce has more life in it than we give it credit for. Try these tips…
1 Don’t write off salad leaves and herbs because of wilting or the odd slimy strand. Chuck that strand and bring new life to the remainder with a 20-minute soak in cold water.