Apparently a third of Britons throw away food!!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4443111.stm

Do you eat anything beyond the sell by date?

We often eat stuff having used the tried and tested method of inspecting it first. The sell by date is a guaranteed date, so it is conservative.

We throw loads out at the moment too. It's so difficult to plan your shopping when one of you keeps getting sent to meetings in distant towns with only an afternoon's notice :(

I think I need to re-stock the freezer. That should cure it :thumbsup: Not the same as fresh though :(

I find that cooking for one leads to a lot of food wastage. I always end up buying loads of food and it goes off before I eat it.

I managed to figure that one out when it was constant, but it's the not knowing who will be home that causes the problem here.

Still, the stuff that get's thrown out isn't costing us anything really. If Mr Strix is away, the company are feeding him on expenses and I'm just binning what he would have eaten if he were here :(

Hmmm I hate having to throw food away!

But, usually end up doing that more and more these days. Buy fresh food but it just doesn't seem to last long at all :suspect:

I'd love to grow my own, then pick it fresh whenever it's needed - yummy

I will eat stuff after sell by & best before dates :roll:
All biodegradable (veg matter) food waste goes into any one of my 5 compost bins & the birds get the rest.
I have 2 bird tables at different heights to attract different types of feeders.

The starlings usually woof the lot anyway :D

Only bones go into the bin.

Unless we've had a BBQ then the bones are burned off in the embers of the cokes & the ash is sprinkled into the compost bins when cool.

Instant calcium compound with potash!

We compost anything that will rot down but otherwise if its past its date it goes in the bin (dairy products etc).. did anyone else get that compost bin offer from the council? were going to get another couple (I love making stew, all that lovely veggy waste to go on the pile!!)

I constanty buy food at the weekend only to throw it all away and repeat the process the following week. I would love to recycle this waste but unfortunately my family always subscribed to the 80's maxim 'let someone else deal with that ****' its hard to change how you were raised!:(

Unfortunately I have to agree, I do throw away food but I try not to, I guess my mother was right - my eyes are bigger than my stomach.

Not to mention what supermarkets dispose of.

Where I work, the baguettes are thrown out after 3 hours of being on the counter. It's a terrible waste but their policy is to provide the customer with the freshest baguette around.

Really annoys me when I see people wasting food. Never mind the starving kids in Ethiopia - I could have eaten it :P

I tend to buy what I need, will eat stuff at or slightly after sell-by (but am careful with pork, seafood and chicken) and really try and get the most out of what's around.

Several menu favourites at The Towers originated in a session of 'What can you do with an onion, two fish fingers and a half bottle of wine'.

Joe

Originally posted by JoeP
Several menu favourites at The Towers originated in a session of 'What can you do with an onion, two fish fingers and a half bottle of wine'.

Joe
Did you contribute to the 'stoodent food' thread, Joe?

Originally posted by JoeP
Several menu favourites at The Towers originated in a session of 'What can you do with an onion, two fish fingers and a half bottle of wine'.

That sounds like a fun game Joe! Throw in a twister mat for a party to be remembered.... ;)

Originally posted by Strix
Did you contribute to the 'stoodent food' thread, Joe?

Not that I can remember, though it's possible!

Actually, even if I say so myself, I'm a pretty good cook. The real 'challenge' to my culinary skills came when The Towers was collectively placed on the Natwest Plan Diet in the mid to late 1990s. This is when your bank won't let you have any money with which to buy food...:)

I now keep a few things in the back of the store cupboard - tinned mince, tinned tuna, some tinned veg, yorkshire pudding mixes, jars of curry paste, lots of pasta and rice. If all else fails we can usually knock out a vegetarian curry, 'savoury mince and yorkshire puds', tuna bake or the last bastion 'vegetable casserole with pasta'. :)

Joe

I never throw anything away just based on the "eat by" date and I cannot understand people who do.

Our noses have evolved over countless thousands of years to tell us when something is edible.

People are so seperated from the natural world that a good proportion of people seem scared when they are not seperated from it - in the case of food by packaging.

We're the same Joe - the long running joke in our student house is the one can of corned beef and half pack of green lentils. As in

"mate, they won't increase my overdraft, will you lend me a tenner"

"no, I'm skint too, but I will make some lentil and corned beef pie and we can eat that til payday!"

It would be funny, except we're all a strange shade of green...

Originally posted by Yodameister
I never throw anything away just based on the "eat by" date and I cannot understand people who do.

Our noses have evolved over countless thousands of years to tell us when something is edible.

People are so seperated from the natural world that a good proportion of people seem scared when they are not seperated from it - in the case of food by packaging.

I had an interesting 'yoghurt' moment with some milk the other day - semi-skinned milk, didn't smell, but was literally semi-solid. At first I thought that it had frozen in the carton; it was only when after shaking I noticed it had separated out that I realised it had turned.

It then struck me that with milk the origin of the really 'off' smell is the long chain fats breaking down, and these are misisng in semi-skimmed and skimmed milk.

The more we process, the less warning we get of stuff going off.

Joe

Good point Joe.

I do tend to take the view, though, that as long as you don't take it to extremes, the worst you are likely to get from something a few days past its best is a mild stomach ache and it will probably toughen you up a bit in the long run.

And you'll probably feel better for not constantly fretting about whether something is going to hurt you or not.

Ingesting a bit of mould is no worse than the traffic fumes we all inhale when we step out of our front door.

I was under the understanding that shops have a "sell by" date that is alway a few days before the "eat by" date comes. Shops have to sell the freshest food and know that people will always take it home and possibly not eat it immeadiately. So if you buy on the day of expiration you should have a few days leeway before it really expires.

I was always told "when in doubt, throw it out" Having said that I often have science projects going on in my fridge . I could have made a fortune cultivating penicillin with some of the mold I have found on stuff shoved at the back. :gag:

If it says "sell by" or "best before" (usually found on eggs, fruit etc) then generally it's thought to be a guide to freshness. If it has a "use by" date (fresh meats) your supposed to bin it immediately after this date passes.
If it looks ok and it smells ok I eat it. I think I have a strong stomach though. I follow the "when in doubt, throw it out" rule for the rest of the family though. Would rather bin it than spend the night cleaning up puke :gag: