No such thing as a free lunch?

FOOD campaigners have hit out over the millions of tons of fruit and vegetables dumped each year — because they are misshapen. Supermarkets insist that shoppers will not buy them.

Campaigners say nearly 50 per cent of UK carrots end up in the bin and they claim the scandalous waste helps keep prices artificially high.

Food industry analyst Tristram Stuart said stores must start letting shoppers decide whether to buy wonky produce.

He added: "We've got to stop this madness. We must tell shops we want to buy good-tasting fruit and veg regardless of how it looks."

On Friday 19^th Nov 2011, campaigners will highlight the scandal by cooking a meal for 5,000 in Trafalgar Square using discarded fruit and veg.

The event will feature guest speakers such as Tristram Stuart, and activities including apple pressing and wonky veg sorting. You can even visit the enclosure of real waste-eating pigs!

Feeding the 5000 will show how easy it is to reduce the unimaginable levels of food waste in the UK and internationally, and how governments, businesses and individuals can help.



Welcome to the Anthropocene Era

As the human population of the Earth hits 7 Billion, welcome to the Anthropocene era. Scientists are no longer classifying our timescale on geological criteria but instead using the long-term alteration of the natural world by humanity.

We now occupy or manipulate most of the land in nearly every continent except Antartica and are steadily killing off or emptying vast tracts of the oceans. We appropriate anywhere from 24 percent to nearly 40 percent of the photosynthetic output of the planet for our food and other purposes, and more than half of its accessible renewable freshwater runoff.

Space is not the problem, we could all fit into Greater London with room to move. It is because our population is so large and growing so fast that we must care, ever more with each generation, how much we as individuals are out of sync with environmental sustainability. Our diets, our acquisition of new technology, our means of transport, and our urge to keep interior temperatures close to 22C no matter what is happening outside, doesn’t make us bad people, but the collective effect on our planet is simply not sustainable.

Action means doing a lot of different things right now. We can't stop the growth of our numbers in any acceptable way immediately. But we can put in place conditions that will support an early end to growth, possibly making this year's the last billion-population day we ever mark.

Simultaneously, we need a swift transformation of energy, water, and materials consumption through conservation, efficiency, and green technologies. We shouldn't think of these as a sequence of efforts, dealing with consumption first, because population dynamics take time to turn around, but as simultaneous work on multiple fronts.



www.whatsinmycookbooks.com



When was the last time that you searched through all your recipe books? Most people will have a couple of books that they flip through for specific recipes but who has the time to check a number of books for inspiration of what to do with your leftovers?

Whatsinmycookbooks.com is a search engine that works with your own book collection. Simple to use, you click on the books that you own to personalise your own library. Then type in an ingredient and it comes up with all the relevant recipes with the book and the page numbers of where to find them. All for FREE.

It really is a useful tool to make the most of cook books that have been sitting on your shelves, untouched and unloved, for too long.

Bid for your supper





Hopefully you are all saving the left over portions from meals and if they are not incorporated in the next day’s menu then they are being frozen.

So what to do with a family to feed and lots of individual portions?

Well, if you serve them up to people’s choice you have the extra work of the individual servings. Extra dishes to wash up, etc..

Probably there will be certain dishes that are more popular than others. This could lead to arguments.

So how do you come out of the situation on top?

Why not auction off the dishes in exchange for chores?

Write out a list of the food available and then take bids for each. Someone might be happy to clear the dishes and wash up for their choice. Another might be happy to sort out the recycling, mow the lawn or clean the windows.

You might find a regular weekly evening for leftovers?

Five alternative toilet cleaners

Before you tip flat Cola down the sink, why not use it as a toilet cleaner? Pour into the bowl and leave overnight to remove lime scale. Even if you don’t have flat Cola, a fresh bottle of an economy brand is not only cheaper than bleach but also more environmentally friendly. Quite what it does to your insides is anybody’s guess.

Here are some more natural cleaning products without all the harmful chemicals you find in your typical toilet cleaners.

Sodium bicarbonate – helps control odor and prevents clogging. You’ll need roughly 100g a week to make a real difference. If you’re looking to buy in bulk try a  swimming pool equipment store or chemists.

Borax and lemon juice – this is a good solution for getting rid of stubborn stains. Mix together 100g of borax and 2 fluid oz. of lemon juice until you have a paste. Leave it for an hour, then scrub clean with an old toothbrush. Be careful however with the borax though. Be sure to avoid contact with your eyes and be sure the room is well ventilated and wear rubber gloves.

Sodium bicarbonate and lemon juice – instead of using borax, you can also use sodium bicarbonate in the same way, although it may be slightly less effective.

Vinegar – pour vinegar into the toilet instead of bleach and leave it overnight, this will help remove limescale from hard water. To clean the bowl, use 3 parts water and 1 part vinegar.



Fareshare for a Fair Share

FareShare is a national UK charity supporting communities to relieve food poverty. FareShare is at the centre of two of the most urgent issues that face the UK: food poverty and food waste.

The charity addresses these issues in three ways:

Providing quality food - surplus ‘fit for purpose’ product from the food and drink industry – to organizations working with disadvantaged people in the community

Providing training and education around the essential life skills of safe food preparation and nutrition, and warehouse employability training through FareShare’s Eat Well Live Well programme

Promoting the message that ‘No Good Food Should Be Wasted’

New figures released by FareShare show a sharp rise in demand on charities for food as people all over Britain struggle to put dinner on the table. 42% of charities surveyed reported an increase in demand for food in the past year as food prices soar and the recession bites, putting additional strain on families and people on low incomes.

FareShare is helping to take some of this strain by providing surplus, good quality food from the food industry to a network of grassroots community organizations all over the UK, saving them almost £8 million a year in food and other costs.

Lindsay Boswell, Chief Executive of FareShare says: “At a time of unprecedented demand we want the food industry and the general public to increase their support.” Last year, the food industry redirected 3,600 tonnes of surplus food to FareShare enabling the charity to provide 8.6 million meals for vulnerable people. The food is distributed to community organizations providing not only food, but other essential support services.  Fareshare distributes daily to organizations such as homeless hostels, day centres, breakfast clubs, and women’s refuges.

FareShare’s survey found that 41% of respondents are unable to buy food on a regular basis, meaning that they are more reliant on charities for help. Boswell continues: “We’re asking anyone who works in the food industry in any capacity to look at what is happening to their surplus food and to ask themselves a simple question, ‘Could this food stop someone going hungry?”



Throwing Our Aspirations In The Bin

Celebrity Chefs have been accused of promoting exotic and novel ingredients that consumers buy on a whim and end up throwing all or part of them away as they either don’t know what to do with them, or only use them for one off recipes.

Sociologist Dr David Evans, of the University of Manchester, argues that families would be better off sticking to simple ingredients, eating the same meals several days a week, and using frozen vegetables.

He even suggested Delia Smith should be the model to follow with her cheat recommendations that include convenience foods such as tinned mince and frozen potatoes.

“The pressure to cook and eat in the ways celebrity chefs advise means a lot of food is already at risk of getting thrown out,” he said. “A lot of so-called proper food is perishable and needs to be eaten within a pretty narrow time frame.

“Our erratic working hours and leisure schedules make it hard to keep on top of the food that we have in our fridges and cupboards. “It is understandable that people might forget or be too tired to cook the food they have at home and so end up going for a takeaway and throwing out food they had already purchased.” Dr Evans, who studied cooking and eating habits in 19 households in Manchester for eight months, suggested a return to batch cooking, where dishes are created and frozen to be served as needed.

“The pressure to cook meals from scratch using fresh ingredients while enjoying a variety of dishes throughout the week can actually lead to waste,” he said. The current levels of food waste should be viewed as the fall-out of households negotiating the complex demands of modern living.
“People with influence - like celebrity chefs - should acknowledge these issues and think about ways of making it socially acceptable or even desirable for us to eat the same meal several nights in a row or use frozen vegetables,” he said.

Delia Smith was criticised when she launched her book and TV series How to Cheat at Cooking because her recipes relied heavily on ready-made items, but Dr Evans said this “is exactly the sort of thing that might help to reduce household food waste”.

He added: “It would be foolish to ignore nutritional considerations, but it is worth noting people will not reap the benefits of healthy food if they end up throwing it away.”