Throw away food and our caring society

[Malcolm_Stewart]

Our throw away society and food waste is in the news again. Having "looked after" my ageing aunt from a distance, I know what went on in her case.

My totally housebound aunt ordered a week's food by phone and Tesco delivered to her door. Much of it went into her freezer. A few weeks later, she retrieved food from freezer, and placed it in her 'fridge. This was OK initially. However, when she was deemed to "need more help" a carer went through her 'fridge on a daily basis, and threw out anything passed its "eat by" date. This resulted in food waste, a phone call to me, 150 miles away, that my aunt was now out of food, and sometimes a journey to sort matters out. Of course, the carers were merely responding to the modern "tick-box" culture, and couldn't be faulted as whilst there was an "Check for out of date food" tick box, there didn't seem to be one to ensure that my aunt had enough food to last her until the next delivery.

[LargeFormat]

One thing that might help is to make the "sell/use by date" more sensible. To have such dates on things like salt is absurd.

[Overread]

I don't think that will ever go away - its the company covering themselves against and accidental poisoning.
As for the throw away food - well I think part of the problem is planning - people just don't know today how to plan food to last or for effiency as we know that if we run out we can just hop in the car and get more.
Thinking for tomorrow is not there. Supermarkets are also crafty things - 2 for 1 sounds good if you can eat 2 and lower budget prices make people get things that they otherwise would not have.

[Garry McNamara]

I can honestly say that the only sell by date I have ever really studied is the one on film - and this can safey be ignored too.

I was very friendly with a lady in her 90s who was 'in service' a lot of her life and she never threw away a thing and even knew how to make soup out of pea pods. My mother was the same and so now am I as she taught me, through osmosis I think, to actually tell when something was fresh or not without looking for some numbers.

I pretty much only buy raw ingredients and I think this helps, obviously not if you can't cook for yourself as the case you mention, but they keep a good long time and of course don't have a sell by dates on them. Except eggs and milk and you can pretty soon tell if they are off. I have seen people throw away cheese that has passed it's sell by date - don't they realise it is off when you buy it? The green bits can be trimmed I find.

Do they put sell by dates on dates? Actually I don't give a fig if they do.

[Benchmark]

I don't think that will ever go away - its the company covering themselves against and accidental poisoning.

I may be wrong on this, but IIRC it is required by EU law for all pre-packed foodstuffs. It is not reqired on loose foods (such as fruit and veg).

[Hotblack]

Some of the excuses one woman gave for throwing away (or more accurately buying too much) food were just unbelievable. Don't people have brains to make decisions with any more.

I'd better stop now before I get too wound up by this society of Numpties we seem to have spawned.

[Benchista]

With our new recycling arrangements, we've become very aware of exactly how much food we're chucking away. Virtually none, actually - we're rather surprised it's not more.

[beejaybee]

Our throw away society and food waste is in the news again.

In my case, yes I do throw stuff out, but mostly because I'm forced to buy things in bigger portions than I need. I reckon the same applies to everyone else who lives alone. I also tend to buy more fruit than I'll actually eat on the principle that I should probably be eating more. But massive waste - no, certainly less than 10%, not one third as mentioned in the TV news report.

Having "looked after" my ageing aunt from a distance, I know what went on in her case.

Your story is incredible, except that I don't doubt it for a second. The "carer" has to cover her own back I suppose, but probably wouldn't be so keen to do the same if she'd bought it with her own money.

[Malcolm_Stewart]

... The "carer" has to cover her own back I suppose...

Yes, they certainly did, and having left industry when all this box ticking was being introduced, I recognised what was going on.

After she had died, looking through my aunt's papers, I came across another instance of "back covering". My aunt had fallen out of bed in the middle of the night, and the emergency services had been called, and they were insisting that she should go into her local A&E hospital for a check-up. My aunt refused, so they had to do a formal assessment of her ability to refuse their request. She was checked for the Glasgow Coma Score, and asked a series of questions which included what day it was. She got the answers correct and so was allowed to make her own decision, and stay at home. They also left with her a copy of their incident report which also included the date & time of the incident - which was a day out. It does make you wonder whether the questions had been tried out before going into formal use.

[Hotblack]

With our new recycling arrangements, we've become very aware of exactly how much food we're chucking away. Virtually none, actually - we're rather surprised it's not more.

Same here. Any scraps go on the compost heap, everything gets eaten and we try not to buy stuff with lods of packaging. We throw away no food and a tiny amount of packaging a week.

[PhilW]

Throw away food? I think our dogs would take a pretty dim view if I tried that!!!

[zx9]

With our new recycling arrangements, we've become very aware of exactly how much food we're chucking away. Virtually none, actually - we're rather surprised it's not more.

Same here. Any scraps go on the compost heap, everything gets eaten and we try not to buy stuff with lods of packaging. We throw away no food and a tiny amount of packaging a week.

I'm with you there David, recycle box and compost bin in where most of our 'waste' goes. In a week we have 1.5 of the small recycling boxes of paper, glass, plastic bottles and cans. One bag for the compost bin equivalent to a carrier bag of veg trimmings, peal etc. which goes in to the garden compost to rot down. And about 6inch or a foot deep in the wheelie bin. We have two children, our next door neighbours also have two children and every week have a full wheelie bin and more, but no recycling bins!
And people have a go about by my 'polluting' 1976 2Dr. Rangie V8, which does less than a thousand miles a year. They forget their Freelander, used for the school runs, and all the stuff they throw out. Rant over normal calm resumed.