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Press release: Food hygiene training experts reveal 10 top tips to help you reduce food waste at home.

Food waste has serious impacts on the environment, as it wastes resources, generates greenhouse gases and leads to land degradation. In fact, despite 8.4 million people living in food poverty in the UK, around 9.5 million tonnes of food is wasted each year.

Food hygiene experts High Speed Training share how to make a few small tweaks at home to drastically reduce your food waste and help protect the planet.

Examples of food waste in households include:
• Plate waste – Leftover food on plates that is either not in a fit state to be saved for later or is unwanted
• Expired or spoiled food – Expired or spoiled food due to poor storage and/or handling.
• Trimmed or peeling waste – Vegetable peels, fruit skins and fat trimmings all contribute to food waste if they are not composted or used, where possible, in other recipes.
• ‘Ugly’ or ‘wonky’ produce – There are certain aesthetic requirements that many consumers have for their food, irrespective of whether it reflects the quality or suitability of the food itself.
• Leftovers – Improper storage or a lack of inspiration often leads to leftover food being thrown away.
• The most wasted foods in the UK are bread, potatoes, milk, bananas, salad & vegetables.

Dr. Richard Anderson, Head of Learning & Development at High Speed Training said:
“It can be hard to quantify 9.5 million tonnes of annual food waste and this often leads people to think that their own food wasting habits aren’t contributing to the larger problem. However, wasting food is often easier than you may think and households in the UK throw away, on average, 1.96kg of food per day, roughly equivalent to eight meals per week.”

One reason for this can be due to date labels and confusion around shelf-life. A misinterpretation of ‘best before’ can lead people to discard food that is still safe to eat as they gauge these date labels as indicators of food safety, rather than quality. Consumers can also be quick to throw away, or simply not buy, perfectly edible fruit and vegetables simply because it does not meet cosmetic standards.”

High Speed Trainings 10 top tips to reduce food waste at home:
• Plan ahead – This can save you both time and money and helps to ensure you aren’t buying more food than you can eat. Consider meal prepping or planning your weekly shop.
• Make your freezer your friend – This can preserve freshness and prevent food waste. Freeze your leftovers for quick and easy meals later. Freezing trimmed or peeling waste can come in handy when making soups or smoothies, but make sure you know how long to freeze certain foods to ensure you aren’t just delaying your waste.
• Compost – Composting at home stops food from rotting in landfills and provides you with great compost that benefits your garden.
• Preserve your food – There are various different food preservation methods such as freezing, canning, sugaring, salting and even vacuum packing, all of which help to maintain food quality and extend its shelf life.
• Organise your kitchen – Implement habits such as a food audit before shopping or stock rotation where you move older items to the front and new items to the back, this can help manage your kitchen and have a better idea of the food you have in your house and what needs to be used first.
• Buy loose – Buying fruit and vegetables loose enables you to buy solely what you need. Love Food, Hate Waste, an initiative launched by WRAP, estimates that if all apples, bananas and potatoes were sold loose instead of in bags sold by weight, 60,000 tonnes of food waste would be saved each year.
• Donate any surplus – Donating surplus food helps to ensure that your excess food is put to good use and benefits those in need rather than wasting away in a landfill.
• Give it a sniff – Date labels can be confusing and cause people to throw away perfectly edible food. The sniff test is an appropriate method for foods with a ‘best before’ date as this date denotes food quality not safety. If you’re unsure about the ‘best before’ foods in your fridge, give them a sniff and use sensory cues such as signs of visible mould or smell to determine if the food is still okay to eat.
• Love your leftovers – Get creative with your leftovers and adapt simple dishes or side dishes into something new, quick and tasty.
• Embrace the ‘wonky’ – Cosmetic imperfections are not necessarily reflective of the food’s safety or quality. Buying ‘wonky veg’ from supermarkets is often cheaper than the more aesthetically pleasing options and helps to stop those wobbly carrots ending up in a landfill.

OK, now have you all understood that?