About a third of all food in the world is thrown away. And while the responsibility for this lies not only with end consumers but also with food suppliers, retailers, and various food services – each of us can contribute to reducing food waste.
Why you should reduce the amount of food wasted?
The foods we buy, do not eat, and throw away are also wasted resources of soil, water, human labor, and so on. It is also an economic problem because food thrown away is money thrown away. When we make money, we don’t just give part of our work, we give part of our life. Foods are thrown in the trash = the time of our lives thrown away.
Why do we throw away food?
All food waste can be divided into:
- What we bought, cleaned, and disposed of leftovers is the normal use of foods.
- What we bought was not used in time and thrown away – non-ecological and uneconomical consumption.
We need to understand exactly where we lose food that becomes waste.
There are three categories:
1. Foods that spoil in supermarkets
This can happen due to the expiration date or an unattractive appearance. We as consumers are a little spoiled, we want carrots to be in each other, apples are beautiful, without a single speck. To solve this problem, supermarkets can encourage people to buy foods that seem unattractive. A great example is a campaign in which buyers were asked to buy lone bananas. Also, European supermarkets often offer discounts on foods that have an expiration date, but there is still enough time to consume it.
2. Extra foods that we bought but did not use for various reasons
Shopping planning will help solve this problem. Depending on whether you live alone, with a partner or family, you need to count how many foods you use in a week. To do this, pay attention to how quickly those or others that you do not have time to eat run out. All this is worth writing down and then take into account when making a shopping list for the week.
3. The food we cooked but didn’t eat
If it so happens that you have cooked more than you need at a time, these foods can then be used in another form, for example, fried chicken can be stewed with vegetables, added to salads or pizzas. This is often done in the culinary departments of supermarkets for reasons of economy.
But the most important thing is to be honest with yourself and analyze your lifestyle and diet. If you have lunch at work and like to order food delivery or eat in the evenings, you do not need to buy a lot of food on the weekends and cook for the week for the whole family for the sake of cooking.
A separate topic – children and foods. Parents think they know better what food their children need, and this often causes it to spoil and be thrown away.
Lifehacks
When the greens in the refrigerator start to spoil, you can cook vegetable broth from it. Add the carrot pieces that are usually cut, dill stalks, parsley, and stalks of any greens you might throw away. Then you can cook soup or porridge in this vegetable broth.
To reduce the number of foods thrown in the trash, you should analyze why you throw it away: you did not like the taste, expired or you bought too many foods of one category. This will help in the future to consciously approach the choice of foods in the store and save a significant part of the budget.
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