How Much Food Do You Throw Away?

April 10, 2008 · Filed Under · 8 Comments 

I stumbled across an article from the Daily Mail UK titled, ‘Families throw away around one third of all the food they buy (including 4.4 million apples every day)‘. How about them apples? WOW! According to the article, that comes out to 6.7 million tons of food that goes in the trash every year in the UK! This translates into approximately 6 billion U.S. dollars per year. Unfortunately, I could not find actual stats for the United States, but I would guess it is very similar.

food.jpg

The amount of food that is thrown away is such a HUGE waste of money and resources. Money that could be used to actually improve our lives, and the lives of our children. I’d say the percentage of food that goes wasted in our house is less than 5%. Not hard, I think you just have to do the following:

  • Only buy what you can conceivable use and eat. What a novel idea!! Also, don’t buy extra food just because it is on sale if you are not sure if you will get around to eating it.
  • Be Careful at Costco! Will you end up throwing way that huge tub of mayo?
  • Use your freezer. We put bread in the freezer to make sure it keeps longer.
  • Pack Your Lunch with Leftovers.
  • Have a “Best Of” night every 3rd night and eat leftovers for dinner. If we BBQ’d a tri-tip every Monday night and we had tri-tip sandwiches every Tuesday night I would be the happiest and fattest man alive!

What tips do you have on reducing food waste? I look forward to reading your comments!

Please Pass This Post Along and Comment Below!
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Furl
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati
  • YahooMyWeb
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Comments

8 Responses to “How Much Food Do You Throw Away?”

  1. Mrs. Micah on April 10th, 2008 4:46 pm

    I think we throw away less food but plenty of packaging.

    As a kid, we had “leftover nights” where it’d be all the stuff that wasn’t enough for a whole meal but could be combined to form one.

  2. jeannie on April 10th, 2008 8:35 pm

    We hardly ever have left overs. But if we do my DH always takes it to work the next day…
    I think my waste was when the kids didnt clean there plates..
    I learned to ask what they wanted and give a small portion then if they wanted more they got it…
    good post & tips

  3. jeannie on April 10th, 2008 8:35 pm

    sorry my grammar was just awful (lol)

  4. Jennifer on April 11th, 2008 11:39 am

    I never shop for food for lunches. We always eat leftovers for lunch. Sometimes there’s enough of a casserole or something for everyone to have the same lunch, other days it’s first come first served on who gets the “best” thing in the fridge. Sometimes we have a “good sport supper” and serve leftovers for dinner too.

    We throw away very little food, but I think it’s because I hate to cook, so if there are leftovers we eat those rather than making something new.

  5. Tracy on April 12th, 2008 11:20 am

    I think the hardest for me is using vegetables prior to their expiration.

    Along with your first tip, I’d say the shopping list is paramount. Planning meals (at least a general idea) has been really helpful at reducing my food bill. I buy what I need. Also, it makes that evening commute home less stressful; no more, “oh, god, what do I scrap together tonight?”

    Lately when I’ve had vegetables about to go bad, I google a simple recipe to incorporate them into. I’ve found that you can throw pretty much anything into spaghetti sauce and serve it over pasta.

  6. Melitsa on April 13th, 2008 8:09 pm

    Great post.
    I try to plan the meals for the week and have set nights for certain meals. Tomato based veggie recipe on Monday, Fish on tuesday etc I buy food based around those themes. I get to change up which recipes, so not too boring and use whatever veggies on sale.
    We buy sm amounts of fresh veg and bump it up with frozen.Use fresh first then move onto Frozen.
    We buy the well used things like bread, milk and eggs ( in our house) in bulk. We freeze the bread and milk. It helps us not go to the shops so frequently and get those impulse buys.

    We love our Freezer :)

  7. Jonathan from Wasted Food on April 14th, 2008 2:01 pm

    You’ve hit on some great points for reducing food waste. For those interested in more such tips, I blog about the topic on my site, Wasted Food.com.

  8. Joan J on April 17th, 2008 5:12 pm

    I always seem to have “just a bit” of vegetables leftover. I started keeping a freezer container marked for just this purpose, and add the few tablespoons of veg and it’s cooking water to the bag — then use the bag of “mixed vegetables” in a batch of homemade soup. Homemade soups are an excellent way to use up bits of meat, vegetables and starches.

Leave a Reply




Bad Behavior has blocked 377 access attempts in the last 7 days.