You are what you eat - Part 3: Food waste 🛒🚮🗑

Did you know that 40% of the food we produce, we then throw away? Just think about that for a minute... As an undergrad, I was spending £15-25 per week on food, so if I bin 40% of that, then I'll be wasting about £450 every year on food that I just transfer straight to the bin.... What would be the point?! Now a lot of this is the food that supermarkets deem unsellable because it's a wonky shape or has been on the shelf too long, which is sometimes necessary but I suspect most of us would still eat it and not notice! The stuff that we buy which then goes in the bin however, that's entirely our fault... So here's my two top tips for avoiding food wastage:

1) Plan ahead - go to the shops with a meal plan, and yeah there might be the odd thing that you see and think would make a nice treat, but generally try to stick to your list. That way you don't end up with excess food that you have to either binge eat when you don't want it, or throw away. We have of course just had a very different Christmas than some of us were expecting, so this may not have been possible in many cases, but generally I'd say treat every week like Christmas. We plan every meal at Christmas to the last sprout and then plan for eating leftovers.

2) Buy a smaller fridge! Seems counterintuitive huh? The fridge keeps things fresh, so surely a big fridge is a good thing because I can keep stuff longer? No. A large fridge encourages us to buy more to fill it, and then things end up shoved in the back where they either go off, or the veg get frozen against the back of the fridge and oh look you've got another disgusting cucumber that has to be thrown away... If anyone is interested, this is one of my favourite TED talks of all time, discussing product design for a sustainable future (spoiler alert - she hates a big fridge!): www.ted.com/talks/leyla_acaroglu_paper_beats_plastic_how_to_rethink_environmental_folklore.

Now please don't read that and go binning your fridge... Just maybe have a think about it next time you need a new one anyway. Freezers however, I'm all for! My boyfriend thinks I'm a nutter because I freeze EVERYTHING that I don't have a plan for when I'm going to eat it, or if I don't think I'll eat all of something, then I freeze portions. I'd definitely end up chucking a lot more food if I didn't have a freezer.

My final thought for the day on this, is remember that some foods are by-products. I never buy meat for myself, and I only eat actual meat four times a year (New Year, Easter Sunday, Birthday and Christmas Day), but gravy? That's another deal! No one is killing a cow for gravy, or a chicken to make a stock cube, or probably even a pig to make black pudding. These are by-products of the meat industry and yes they require an animal to die for you to eat them, but these are animals that would be slaughtered anyway for other people to eat them. So, why not use all of it? Suggestion: if you find vegetarian food boring, add meat gravy! If it means that for one extra meal per week you can resist the draw of steak or sausages, because you can still get some of the meat flavour from the sauce, then personally I say that's a win!

Until next time, I wish you all a very Happy New Year and a safe 2021 ❤️

I don't have a picture to fit this post, so here's a photo of my recent attempt to make a cake of an elephant crop raiding a field of bread roll corn 😁

P.S. Please also remember to use the pumpkin innards at Halloween!