Miss Tea's Blog

Food waste is something that I passionately detest. I have an A4 sheet of paper on the fridge door with everything inside listed in Use By date order. That was my husband's idea and it works amazingly well. I'm no longer chucking a load of food in the bin every week, because not only do I know exactly what's in there - it also gets used up in date order.

We are not angels!

Some nights we really don't fancy whatever was next up and decide that we'd rather have a cheeky take away - or something we just bought because we were craving it...that is absolutely fine!  We haven't achieved perfection, that was never the goal. And we still might generate a bit of waste now and then but it's not every week and it's nowhere near the scale of what was being wasted previously.

There's no more of that 'what are we going to have for dinner tonight' thing either. Whatever's next in date order is what we're having. The fact that the decision is predetermined simplifies mealtimes. What do you do to reduce or avoid food waste? Please share your tips with us - we'd love to hear them.

It's also worth remembering that it's not just the food that's being wasted - you've also wasted whatever hard-earned money you spent on it. It's kind of like taking your cash and throwing it in the dustbin, when you think about it.

Another thing I do is to write dates on the tops of all the cans with a black marker pen. Drives me nuts that they make the dates so small and put them in obscure places at times. By making the dates more 'in your face' you'll be more likely to eat the contents before the Use By date and avoid throwing them in the bin. I threw a load away recently and vowed 'never again!'

I felt really bad that they couldn't even go to the food bank. Throwing food away is not only wasteful, it's an environmental nightmare - one-third of all food produced in the world ends up as waste. 

When you consider how many of our brothers and sisters went hungry today....that's pretty unforgivable.