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Should we all try to waste less food?

This coming from a man who clearly eats at least 1000 calories a day too many. I wonder what the fat buggers are gonna do once they've eaten us into needing to ration again. It really annoys me that he targets people who 'waste' £400 worth of food a year when there are many many families clearly eating thousands of pounds worth of food too much per year, which is just as bad as wasting it.

Reply 21

blahbloo

15

Who gave me a neg for my post in this thread? :s-smilie:

Got it, Thanks RyanT. Much appreciated.

Reply 22

Nu Ordah!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gordon Brown can **** off. Especially after what New-Labour have wasted

Reply 23

wizard710

16

Respect for the animal is using all of it, I know that it is more expensive but how much more expensive is it buying meat from the butcher who uses all the meat on the animal compared to the supermarkets that strip the animal down?

Reply 24

alexa123

1

i must admit we too sometimes waste food purely because we forgot to check what is in the fridge at home and let things go off. i think sometimes supermarkets are ridiculous because they chuck away food that isnt 100% perfect because customers want for example potatoes that are rounded and even and therefore anything less isnt worth selling according to them- which is just stupid.

Reply 25

quizster

I think he is right in theory, but how many people actually waste food? I would of thought many people in the working classes don't waste food, I know we don't, not as much as I am sure the government do. I mean, how many cucumber sandwiches does the government waste at various lunches and conferences etc, I would love to know, well I wouldn't really.

Reply 26

Straggler

13

Should we all try to waste less food?

That's like asking: "should we all try not to carry knifes around with us?"
The answer is pretty obvious. Kinda ironic it is coming from a man who recently just sat down to a seven-course meal at the G8 summit. Still, I guess, looking at him one would think he didn't waste any of the food given to him!

My family is awful for wasting food. Since coming home from Uni I have really been quite shocked at how poor my parents are at planning their shopping (they don't) and how they don't think twice about chucking something that isn't "fresh". We are not affluent at all - the folks are in dire debt - yet they think it is acceptable to waste so much. They'll buy a couple of loaves of bread, and end up chucking at least half of one. Yoghurts are regularly binned because too many were bought in BOGOF offers. They often come back from the supermarket with tons of stuff they don't really need. I try my best to be frugal. I'm vegetarian and the rest of my family are carnivores through and through, so I tend to cook my own meals. However, instead of chucking what I don't eat I freeze it. Perfectly good meal/snack any other time. Especially useful when you can't be bothered preparing anything. I'm sure my family isn't unique to this problem.

It is not just households that need to cut back though, as it has been rightly covered in the media, supermarkets are the biggest culprits when it comes to wastage. I have a friend who works for a large supermarket, and he isn't allowed to take home the food they throw out. Perfectly edible food with days left before it truly is out of date, yet they'd rather chuck it or force their workers to pay a reduced price. Such food would be better in the mouths of the needy and homeless.

Restaurants and other eateries should stop serving ridiculous portions. Often when I'm out eating people are given portions that they will never eat, and half the food on the plate is wasted. And if said customers do manage to eat the whole dish, they're most likely to be fat bastards. A culmination of greed, ignorance and laziness has caused this problem of wastage.

Reply 27

Aldebaran

Someone needs to tell the restaurants. I ate out a few days ago and though I turned up absolutely starving, I couldn't finish my meal. It seemed such a waste of food, and after Gordon Brown's orders, I felt so guilty..

Reply 28

wizard710

16

Aldebaran

Someone needs to tell the restaurants. I ate out a few days ago and though I turned up absolutely starving, I couldn't finish my meal. It seemed such a waste of food, and after Gordon Brown's orders, I felt so guilty..

Or they need to have more boxes so that you could take your food home with you

Reply 29

Aldebaran

wizard710

Or they need to have more boxes so that you could take your food home with you

I did do that, yes! But think of the people who don't. Really, they should just downsize the portions so that it is only one meal's worth.

Reply 30

Danielle89

14

I really dont think my family wastes much food at all. Cant think of anything we throw out at all. Saying that, Mum has to feed a family of 5 (4 when Im at uni) and the household income is around £15K - they have a mortgage to pay as well as the usual bills and petrol. They don't have the money to buy excess food. If we have a BBQ and cook too much for it then it gets put in the fridge and eaten the next day as a meal.

At uni i probably wasted a lot of food last year, but this year Im going to strictly only buy what I need and stop going shopping for food when I'm hungry lol

Yes We Should

Obviously yes.

Not really, why cant people just be allowed to eat without restriction. Food should be as good as it can be, no need to fanny about with the environmental or health aspects just ****ing eat

Reply 34

v1oXx-

12

The AQA GCSE English exam was about this...

Yeah we can stop wasting food, but will we? Nope.

Reply 35

abc101

17

What a stupid question. No, we should all try to waste as much food as we can! Let's just chuck it on the floor and stamp on it!

Reply 36

ch0c0h01ic

18

RyanT

This just shocked me into silence. Perhaps this is applicable for well off people in London or something but he doesn't get it - many of us don't have the money to waste food to begin with.

How out of touch is this dick? Does he seriously think people have that much money in places such as the westcountry?!!!

RyanT

The point is he is using it as a base to deflect criticism of rising living costs by blaming the public for being "wasteful". The point you're missing is that the sections of society who are complaining loudest about rising living costs are those who live on the margin - and they do not have money to waste in the first place, not just students either - both of my parents have similar disposable incomes to me (a student).

Seriously, go out and smell the roses. I know, students and people on low incomes don't have the money to waste, but that isn't to say that they don't and that isn't to say that huge swathes of society waste food, whether on low or high incomes.

As a student, sure, i work my utmost to conserve food, then again i share a house with other, less well off students who immediately throw away food that reaches it's best before, even if it is perfectly fine for eating (many a time have i feasted on out on date/out of date beef, chicken and even smoothies that has been intercepted by me, it tasted perfectly fine and i wasn't ill). These same people were HORRIFIED when i watched the programme on tv about the bloke who ate progressively older and out of date food for 2 weeks, they still didn't get the message that it was perfectly fine to eat on date, or even out of date food.

On the other side of the argument i've heard stories from friends of friends how their parents bought x amount of food in for a homecoming meal, only to end up binning it all when they couldn't get home and the food went out of date. That is not an isolated case among the people that i know, so it is going to be a pretty prevalent occurrence across the whole country. And no, they weren't stinking rich, simply working class people trying to survive.

shootbangfire

I think it's a greater problem in terms of supermarkets dumping food. Although I think what they do is a bit gross, "freegans" live on thrown out food which is thrown out for minor faults and is usually fine. That's where Brown should be targeting, not kids who leave a bit of pasta on the side of their plate.

Yes, supermarkets waste food, does that mean we have a responsibility to do so as well? No. Plus, even though supermarkets throw out x amount of food per day, they shift huge amounts of food at the checkout. In reality this HUGE amount of food that freegans comment and capitalise on is pretty insignificant compared to the vast amounts sold (i think someone put it as 10-15% as the amount wasted by supermarkets).

10-15% is a much smaller amount that the 40% wasted by the public, i think we can easily see that the public is a much greater cause of concern, not the supermarkets. Plus it is easier for us to buy less of a week, and waste less, compared to the changes the supermarket has to make, which, lets be honest, is extremely difficult to offer a huge range of fresh food, day in day out. It isn't as simple as ordering less when demands change daily with the weather, what recipes are in the magazines, what it is fashionable to eat, what is in season, etc.

timwaters2007

Just this minute I have thrown away 3/4 of a 4 quid cheesecake because nobody bothered to finish it off, and it all went soggy.

Now that is a waste.

wizard710

Respect for the animal is using all of it, I know that it is more expensive but how much more expensive is it buying meat from the butcher who uses all the meat on the animal compared to the supermarkets that strip the animal down?

Well actually the butcher and your local supermarket, get their food from the same place (ie; the abattoirs, who then gets their food from the livestock markets and/or direct from the farmers). At the abattoirs, the animals get killed, and separated into the different parts/cuts that the butchers or supermarkets buy.

In effect you get the same amount of wastage both at the butcher and the supermarket. Butchers do not use all of the animal organs/products, nor do the supermarkets. I have yet to find a butcher who offers offal (that is normally retained at the abattoir to be disposed of, or further processed).

If we were talking about nomadic hunters and supermarkets, then yes, respect for the animal may come into it. However, in our society respect for the animal has no place.

Reply 37

shootbangfire

ch0c0h01ic

Yes, supermarkets waste food, does that mean we have a responsibility to do so as well? No. Plus, even though supermarkets throw out x amount of food per day, they shift huge amounts of food at the checkout. In reality this HUGE amount of food that freegans comment and capitalise on is pretty insignificant compared to the vast amounts sold (i think someone put it as 10-15% as the amount wasted by supermarkets).

10-15% is a much smaller amount that the 40% wasted by the public, i think we can easily see that the public is a much greater cause of concern, not the supermarkets. Plus it is easier for us to buy less of a week, and waste less, compared to the changes the supermarket has to make, which, lets be honest, is extremely difficult to offer a huge range of fresh food, day in day out. It isn't as simple as ordering less when demands change daily with the weather, what recipes are in the magazines, what it is fashionable to eat, what is in season, etc.

Sorry, I never said that we have a responsibility to waste food, where on earth did you get that from? If the public is wasting overall 34-36 percent of food in supermarkets then 10-15% wasted by supermarkets is also significant.

Reply 38

ch0c0h01ic

18

shootbangfire

Sorry, I never said that we have a responsibility to waste food, where on earth did you get that from? If the public is wasting overall 34-36 percent of food in supermarkets then 10-15% wasted by supermarkets is also significant.

To me it simply seemed like an excuse/reason to shift responsibility along the lines of, 'Well the supermarkets waste loads of food, therefore it doesn't matter if i waste a bit at home.' Sorry if i caused any offence.

40% is far more significant than 10-15% (or less, i can't remember the exact figure, but it was certainly very close to 10%). Plus, as i've said already, it is very difficult for the supermarkets to reduce their waste when their customers expect them to stock a very broad range of fresh, perishable food, if they don't the customers go elsewhere. For them it isn't as simple as buying less so that everything gets eaten up rather than thrown away (which is extremely easy for us to do). Food demand changes daily, as said already, with tv food programmes, magazine recipes, etc.

Should we all try to waste less food?

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