As a child born before food rationing ended in the U.K., I remember being drilled to ‘waste not, want not,’ especially when it comes to food.
So it was something of a shock to discover that the U.K. occupies the dubious pleasure of standing at no.7 in the world rankings for total food wasted each year. According to a Forbes report, each year, every British person throws away the equivalent of 77kg (170lb) of food. That’s 18kg (39lb 11oz) MORE than the per capita waste in the U.S. and about the same as the level of food waste in Spain. It got me thinking about my own food wastage. But before getting to the nut of that topic, here is some background.
When we returned to the U.K. from living in San Diego, CA, I was hideously overweight. I blamed the American diet but that was only one factor. Portion control was not on my radar and neither was the thought of any meaningful diet designed to keep weight under control. As my brother reminded me, ‘diet’ includes the word ‘die.’ But I quickly discovered that unless I did something about my weight then I was on the road to an early heart attack induced death at worst and type 2 diabetes at best.
Once that hideous realisation made its way into my brain I set about finding a way to eat with which I could live but which would also help with weight loss. I ended up on a ketogenic diet and shed about 29kg (64lb) over a two year period. As part of that diet, I learned a lot about foodstuffs and food groups. I also learned that measuring quantities of ingredients help achieve good portion control while having the added benefit of ensuring consistently repeatable meals we enjoy.
In the U.S., I’d become accustomed to cup measures in recipes but in the U.K. we use metric with the odd teaspoon or tablespoon thrown in. Today I tend to avoid recipes that call for (say) ‘an onion’ because it’s meaningless when thought of in measurement terms. I also split recipes when I know that the finished meal won’t keep for another day or cannot be reformulated into something different.
Even so, and despite being relatively thrifty I still find myself clearing down the fridge each week, especially vegetables that are past their best. That fact earns me continued disapproval from my partner who is far more socially aware than I. How can I fix this?
I could be super lazy and get a week’s pre-built meals from a service like Gousto. That would be relatively expensive and while I admire their commitment to zero waste, I like to know the provenance of the food I eat. It’s one reason I support sustainable meat and fish suppliers. Yes, it is relatively expensive to go this route. But it helps me feel better about supporting those who are working hard towards building a sustainable future. It also means we get a broader variety of produce than is usually available in our supermarkets.
So far so good. But that doesn’t solve my personal waste problem. The answer seems to come from better meal planning and that will be the next step. At a time when partial lockdown looks to be back as part of our daily lives, it makes sense to be more thoughtful about what we consume on a week to week basis and avoid the convenience of the near daily 5 minute walk to our local supermarket for one or more ingredients.
Does this make better sense and will it work? We shall see. I’ll let you know. In the meantime, here’s a pic of the Italian meatballs I made the other day. This was a two person recipe which ended up providing three rich and flavoursome meals without requiring pasta.
Waste not want not
Looks like the UK is realistically even worse - on the data from the graph we are 4th equal in the world for per-capita wastage, which I would argue is the more important metric (otherwise China & India are always going to look bad...).
At home we are in the early stages of experimenting with lacto-fermenting vegetables. A first attempt at sauerkraut using red cabbage, carrots and some spices yielded amazingly delicious results so we bought a bunch of mason jars and one-way-valve lids and next up is spicy green tomatoes (using the results of a semi-successful attempt to grow tomatoes in a grow-bag). I have a book on the topic, but pretty much everything you need to know is in a 20-minute YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZghX4Mrg7kw (TL;DR - make sure the veggies are submerged in liquid, and add 2.5% of the total liquid+veg weight in salt, then leave for a few days or weeks, move to fridge when you like the taste).
Fermentation like this develops loads of friendly gut bacteria and also helps avoid food waste.