Somerset Food Champions

LOVE FOOD HATE WASTE

Given my passion for food, and hating waste of any kind, it seemed logical for me to give up a free Saturday and accept the offer to attend a free training day entitled ‘Love Food Hate Waste’ run by Somerset Waste Partnership, in order to become a ‘Somerset Food Champion’.

What an eye opener it was! Living alone and eating out several times a week, my own food consumption is relatively little when compared with the average family.

As always at these kinds of events there are some astonishing facts 

that emerge. Current statistics show that in the UK we waste a whopping 7 million tonnes in household waste, of which 4.2 million tonnes is avoidable; by which I mean food that is thrown away because we have bought or prepared too much, or have not used it before it has gone off.

70,000 tonnes of breakfast cereal alone is wasted every year; the same weight as 160 Boeing 747s. Each and every day 5.8 million potatoes are thrown away, along with 24 million slices of bread; that’s an awful lot of chip butties! An average household throws away 260kg. of food and drink per year, at a cost of £470, which given the hard time many of us have juggling the family budget, could be enough for a sizeable treat for everyone at the end of the year.

When doing my own food shopping I try to avoid supermarkets as much as possible and I am an incurable nosy parker when it comes to taking a peek into other people’s shopping trolleys as I am always interested in what people eat. One of the key problems is the temptation posed by the abundance of multi-buy special offers and our inability to resist them. Such offers only save us money if we then actually eat the stuff we have bought.

During the training we considered every aspect of the way in which we lead our lives in relation to our eating and shopping habits, whether that be how much we cook, how we store our food or what we do with the leftovers.

One of the factors that I am well aware of that may surprise some people is the danger posed by cooked rice, one of the key sources of food poisoning.

As a long standing chef I like to think I know a thing or two about food but I really found the opportunity to explore food in this way with the other four delegates on the course invaluable.

One of the simple but key things to consider is the temperature of our fridges, so the free fridge thermometer will come in very handy.

Now that I have my official certificate, and am part of a select group of 11 Food Champions across the county, I am looking forward to spreading the word and through our local community groups help others put into practice some of the tips I learned, so that we can all waste less food, and into the bargain, save more money to spend life’s little luxuries.