These 5 Very Simple Techniques Will Help You To Reduce Food Waste
According to Waste Managed, the UK wastes approximately 9.5 million tonnes of food each year, with an estimated value of £14 billion.
This can happen within our homes for a variety of reasons, from busy lifestyles to depression making preparing food impossible. In restaurants and fast food places, there are now apps like TooGoodToGo but clearly, the UK still has a long way to go in tackling food waste.
However, while it may sound mammoth, there are small changes you can make to your routine that will prevent food waste and the guilt that comes with it.
How to tackle food waste at home
Use your leftover ingredients to create a new recipe
It can be hard to put together a recipe from the leftover ingredients of your last meal but thankfully, websites like SuperCook do the hard work for you. Simply type in three ingredients you’d like to reuse and the website will generate a brand-new recipe for you.
Use stale bread to make delicious new foods
As long as the bread isn’t mouldy, leftover bread can be ideal for a range of recipes. BBC Good Food created a list of their top 10 ways to use up leftover bread, including croutons, bread and butter pudding and burgers.
Use overripe bananas to make banana bread
If you were on the banana bread bandwagon during the 2020 lockdown, you’ll be familiar with this tip. Ripe bananas make for extra delicious, gooey banana bread and the recipe is really very simple.
Buy frozen vegetables
Back in January, we spoke with NHS surgeon Dr Karan Rajan who said: “We need to stop being afraid of frozen tinned or canned fruits and vegetables,
“They’re cheap and often retain their nutritional value a lot more than fresh items – because as soon as something is harvested, it begins to lose its nutritional value.”
Frozen vegetables are often much cheaper and of course, last a lot longer than their fresh counterparts.
Make a meal plan
The experts at MoneySavingExpert said in a 2018 blog post: “You can avoid a lot of food waste simply by buying only the ingredients you need for your meals each week.
“To help, thrifty MoneySaving Old-Stylers on our forum share their meal plans, and even have challenges to help you use up what you’ve already got. See the Vegan store cupboard challenge and the What are you making for dinner? threads.”
Seems simple enough!
