Love food, hate waste

Recent research from Love Food Hate Waste shows that, on average, UK householders believe they can survive for 11 days eating just from their freezers.

This is a pretty high statistic, but it proves a point. There’s a lot of food out there that just goes to waste – whether it’s sitting in our fridge, freezer or fruit bowl, it’s about time we started to take count of what we have before going out to do our weekly shop.

Taking a few minutes to look at what we have at home can save us time and money in the supermarket. Cheese is a great love of mine. Number 2 only to my other half. When you think about cheese there’s a lot that goes in to our tasty snack – feeding and milking the cows, cooling and transporting the milk, processing it in to cheese, packing it, getting it to the shops, keeping it at the right temperature all the time. If it then gets thrown away it will most likely end up in a landfill site, where, rather than harmlessly decomposing as many people think, it rots and actually releases methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. No good eh?

So what can we do?

1. Make sure you have a good hunt in your fridge/freezer/cupboards before you go shopping
2. Have some fun making things with what you already have – could make for an interesting Valentine’s Day activity!
3. Check out the portion calculator from Love Food, Hate Waste
4. If you can’t use it, compost it – peelings, egg shells etc…