Food waste cafes

[wiggydiggy]

Not a cafe but I do use the App'Too Good To Go'. It's random what's on there and for some reason my favourite one (The Real Junk Food Project) has stopped doing their boxes - I used to buy a Vegetable box once a week or so and got a good amount of food.

 

[Reynard]

A lot of the problem is down to the fact that the food is packaged. I may know that I won't eat six apples and don't want to buy six apples but if that's the only option on the shelf then I either buy six apples and potentially waste some or don't buy any at all. I am fortunate that I have a greengrocer relatively close where I can buy a single apple if I wish but not everyone has the time, energy or opportunity to go anywhere except the supermarket.

I know that transport, pricing, etc.makes it preferable for the supermarket if everything is packaged in regularly sized packets but it doesn't help reduce waste.

That can be an issue with smaller households, but I think on average, it's a sensible number - I just used apples as an example, but the same is true of just about anything that's pre-packaged.

I don't mind buying larger packs of things (there are two of us here chez Casa Reynard - I typically go shopping once a fortnight), but if I then see something looking a bit tired, it tends to get turned into a pudding or a soup or a quick batch of jam...

 

[Reynard]

It's working out what is necessary and what isn't in terms of packaging too.

But long supply chains with multiple transfers are inevitably going to create more packaging.
And things like transport costs and storage and shelf space are a big factor for the multiples..

So food often ends up being grown for its ability to withstand all the transfers and storage, rather than being about taste or nutrition .

But still even in short transfers some packaging is required

If I cut salad leaves and don't wrap them in some way they're wilted by the afternoon, and no one wants them.

Then all the energy and resources that goes into growing and harvesting them is wasted.

There is some better packaging coming onto the market now, but not all of it is without its problems.

Mmmm yes, I know what you mean about taste. Or, with fruit, it's sold so under-ripe that it needs a fortnight in the fruit bowl before it's ready to eat. Mangoes are a good case-in-point here, as a ripe mango should be very soft, and the ones I bought last week could be sold to the Ukrainian military... But they're sat next to bananas in the bowl I keep specifically for bananas.

But I totally get why it's done, because there would be too much in the way of loss otherwise, as ripe mangoes bruise very easily. But people who don't know what a ripe mango should be like, would eat it as it is, and then complain that it's not very nice. And an under-ripe mango is not a very nice thing to eat. It's hard, fibrous and sour, when it really should be soft and juicy with a sweet-peppery flavour.

OT, but a useful tip - don't keep bananas alongside other fruit in a fruit bowl, as the gasses given off by bananas will ripen other fruit far too quickly and cause them to spoil. OTOH if you want stuff to ripen quickly...

Though in terms of taste, nutrition, shelf life and handleability (for the want of a better description) it is generally all about compromise. But I do agree that some things could definitely be improved.

 

[oldwheels]

My father was a head gardener so I was brought up to understand food production and storage from a very early age.
Apples were wrapped in tissue and stored in trays in a cool place making sure that there was no contact between them. Carrots were stored in dry sand and the main provision was to keep the store door shut to keep cats out.
My shopping even for fruit and veg has to be in reasonable bulk as I have no nearby reliable source of supply. I find apples keep well if stored in wire trays in a cool place with no contact between them and carrots are damp when I by them in bags but when opened and kept dry they also keep well. If they do tend to go soft I blanch them and freeze for making soup.
I also know what peaches, figs and melons should taste like as we also grew them.
No food waste comes from my kitchen as everything I buy has a use.
I cannot go yellow stickering as Reynard does due to the time lag between purchase and getting home.

 

[Reynard]

My father was a head gardener so I was brought up to understand food production and storage from a very early age.
Apples were wrapped in tissue and stored in trays in a cool place making sure that there was no contact between them. Carrots were stored in dry sand and the main provision was to keep the store door shut to keep cats out.
My shopping even for fruit and veg has to be in reasonable bulk as I have no nearby reliable source of supply. I find apples keep well if stored in wire trays in a cool place with no contact between them and carrots are damp when I by them in bags but when opened and kept dry they also keep well. If they do tend to go soft I blanch them and freeze for making soup.
I also know what peaches, figs and melons should taste like as we also grew them.
No food waste comes from my kitchen as everything I buy has a use.
I cannot go yellow stickering as Reynard does due to the time lag between purchase and getting home.

I've grown my own as well in the past, so yes, know where you're coming from. I've packed it in mostly, but I still do tomatoes and herbs, plus I have the orchard as well. It's just mum and me these days, so it's an effort vs return thing, and no one wants excess runner beans...

A while back I blagged a stack of the cardboard fruit and veg crates from a mate who works in the fresh produce section in Tesco. They're great for storing apples, pears, tomatoes, citrus fruit etc on a layer of newspaper. I will buy citrus fruit (oranges / tangerines) in bulk when they're on offer, because I know they keep well*

Over Christmas I bought 7.5 kg of absolutely delicious clementines - they all got eaten bar the one that went irretrievably mouldy. And given how I see people treating the fresh produce in Tesco, it's easy enough for fruit to get damaged. I really do wish people would handle food with respect - that would cut down on waste as well, given how much damaged stuff gets pulled off the shelves by my mate and his colleagues.

Storing stuff correctly cuts a lot of waste too. Simple things like keeping bananas away from other fruit, not putting potatoes and onions close together, and keeping potatoes away from the light.

*I've currently got close to 7kg of Lane Late oranges...

 

[presta]

A lot of the problem is down to the fact that the food is packaged.

This problem has got a lot worse since Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall got on his ugly veg bandwagon, they've turned to multipacks as a means of preventing people from cherry-picking the pretty stuff. As you point out, it's a PITA for people who live alone and already have difficulty buying food in the quantities they need.

Anyone who thinks we can solve the food waste problem by eating it, as HFW appears to with his smoothies made from over-ripe fruit, and donations to charity, hasn't given much thought to the problem, or done even the most basic arithmetic.

In the UK we waste 25% of total food production, a quarter of it, so if we have 66m people eating three quarters of the food supply, then clearly we would need another 22m starving people to consume the rest. That would have Nigel Farage and his merry men reaching for the smelling salts.

Alternatively, we could have the existing population eat it, how would that work out? Well, assuming a typical diet of around 2400kcal/day for the sake of round numbers, it would entail everyone eating an additional 800kcal/day. Is that a lot? Well, the calorific value of bodyfat is 7800kcal/kg, so eating an excess of 800kcal every day would cause people to gain weight at about 100g/day, or 700g/week, or 37kg a year. So everybody in the country would put on 2800kg over a typical lifespan, nearly three tonnes! Even if we attempted to eat just 10% of the waste, everyone would end up a quarter of a tonne overweight. I won't bother calculating what would happen if just the poor and homeless were expected to eat it all by themselves.

What about burning all that fat off? Fine if you can get the entire population to do 2-3 hours of exercise every day of their lives. Good luck with that one.

Biofuel is another one I've heard, what about that? Well, yes you can make biofuel from waste food, and they already do a little, but that's made from food that's already been wasted, ie: the owner has already written it off, and incurred the loss. The mean cost per unit of energy of food fit for human consumption is nine times that of biofuel, so as a business model, you're not going to get very far if your raw material costs nine times as much as your finished product. Another non-starter.

So if we can't actually use the excess food in any meaningful way, all that's left is to stop the overproduction.

The economic growth that makes society richer derives from using automation and machinery to produce more goods using the same amount of manpower, but the problem is that food is a unique sector of the economy in that people can't eat more just because the industry produces more, as I've illustrated above. This means that as agricultural productivity increases, the consumption remains relatively constant, and the workforce has to shrink. Over the last 500 years, the agricultural workforce has gone from 58% of the population to 1%:

This means that as long as productivity continues to improve there will always be a surplus of food and agricultural labour that's driving prices down to rock bottom, and forcing people out of business. That's not the fault of the supermarkets.

'They should pay the farmers more' people cry, but what then? By the time the supermarket buyers have placed orders for all the food they need, there will be some farmers left with no customer. What are they going to do, throw in the towel and give up, or ring the buyer and try to win an order by offering a discount? And if they win the business, what will the farmers who just lost it do if not offer a bigger discount to try to win it back again? Eventually the prices ratchet back down to where they were in the first place, with people going out of business, whilst in the mean time the higher prices will have been increasing supply and reducing demand, thus exacerbating the surplus. The farmer's enemy is not the supermarket, it's the other farmers that he's competing with.

If people stop buying food they can't eat, supermarkets will stop buying food they can't sell, and then in due course supply will match demand after about 25% of the farmers have gone out of business. People like the parsnip farmer on HFW's program weeping as their business goes to the wall is not a good look though, it doesn't make good PR, and it's not likely to win many votes either, so instead of making themselves pariahs by telling people this, the supermarkets just humour HFW with his policies that don't address the problem.

But cafes and community groups putting what would otherwise be food waste to good use aren't pulling 'stunts'.

So in short, yes they are. Not in terms of helping those in need, but it's definitely just a stunt in terms of solving the food waste problem.

 

[mudsticks]

This problem has got a lot worse since Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall got on his ugly veg bandwagon, they've turned to multipacks as a means of preventing people from cherry-picking the pretty stuff. As you point out, it's a PITA for people who live alone and already have difficulty buying food in the quantities they need.

Anyone who thinks we can solve the food waste problem by eating it, as HFW appears to with his smoothies made from over-ripe fruit, and donations to charity, hasn't given much thought to the problem, or done even the most basic arithmetic.

In the UK we waste 25% of total food production, a quarter of it, so if we have 66m people eating three quarters of the food supply, then clearly we would need another 22m starving people to consume the rest. That would have Nigel Farage and his merry men reaching for the smelling salts.

Alternatively, we could have the existing population eat it, how would that work out? Well, assuming a typical diet of around 2400kcal/day for the sake of round numbers, it would entail everyone eating an additional 800kcal/day. Is that a lot? Well, the calorific value of bodyfat is 7800kcal/kg, so eating an excess of 800kcal every day would cause people to gain weight at about 100g/day, or 700g/week, or 37kg a year. So everybody in the country would put on 2800kg over a typical lifespan, nearly three tonnes! Even if we attempted to eat just 10% of the waste, everyone would end up a quarter of a tonne overweight. I won't bother calculating what would happen if just the poor and homeless were expected to eat it all by themselves.

What about burning all that fat off? Fine if you can get the entire population to do 2-3 hours of exercise every day of their lives. Good luck with that one.

Biofuel is another one I've heard, what about that? Well, yes you can make biofuel from waste food, and they already do a little, but that's made from food that's already been wasted, ie: the owner has already written it off, and incurred the loss. The mean cost per unit of energy of food fit for human consumption is nine times that of biofuel, so as a business model, you're not going to get very far if your raw material costs nine times as much as your finished product. Another non-starter.

So if we can't actually use the excess food in any meaningful way, all that's left is to stop the overproduction.

The economic growth that makes society richer derives from using automation and machinery to produce more goods using the same amount of manpower, but the problem is that food is a unique sector of the economy in that people can't eat more just because the industry produces more, as I've illustrated above. This means that as agricultural productivity increases, the consumption remains relatively constant, and the workforce has to shrink. Over the last 500 years, the agricultural workforce has gone from 58% of the population to 1%:
View attachment 638367
This means that as long as productivity continues to improve there will always be a surplus of food and agricultural labour that's driving prices down to rock bottom, and forcing people out of business. That's not the fault of the supermarkets.

'They should pay the farmers more' people cry, but what then? By the time the supermarket buyers have placed orders for all the food they need, there will be some farmers left with no customer. What are they going to do, throw in the towel and give up, or ring the buyer and try to win an order by offering a discount? And if they win the business, what will the farmers who just lost it do if not offer a bigger discount to try to win it back again? Eventually the prices ratchet back down to where they were in the first place, with people going out of business, whilst in the mean time the higher prices will have been increasing supply and reducing demand, thus exacerbating the surplus. The farmer's enemy is not the supermarket, it's the other farmers that he's competing with.

If people stop buying food they can't eat, supermarkets will stop buying food they can't sell, and then in due course supply will match demand after about 25% of the farmers have gone out of business. People like the parsnip farmer on HFW's program weeping as their business goes to the wall is not a good look though, it doesn't make good PR, and it's not likely to win many votes either, so instead of making themselves pariahs by telling people this, the supermarkets just humour HFW with his policies that don't address the problem.


So in short, yes they are. Not in terms of helping those in need, but it's definitely just a stunt in terms of solving the food waste problem.

The wasted food in terms of crops doesn't tend to be high calorie food though.
The food were wasting is not the hyper processed stuff that lasts forever, but has low nutrition.
We certainly don't over produce fruit and veg we import the bulk of it

We could be growing more and having better and fresher foods making up more of our diets.

There is already a gov body called the Grocery Code adjudicator which is supposed to see fair dealing between the multiple s and farmers
They are very ineffective
They're also part funded by those same large retailers.

There are increasing numbers of producers of veg meat milk bread etc bypassing the extractive multiples and selling direct at a fair price to consumers, via online cooperative market places, as well as the traditional box schemes

Needs to be a lot more of those opportunities for direct sales though..
Things are changing slowly.

 

[Reynard]

I buy a certain portion of my veg from a retired chap in the village who grows them as a hobby and has a stall by the roadside. Some of the stuff he has knocks the socks off anything you can buy in a shop, but it's very pot luck and very seasonal.

Just by my own observation of the fresh produce in Tesco, about 2/3 of it is imported.

The wonky apples I buy are British, but the mid-range and finest lines tend to be the varieties that do not do well in the UK because we are too far north.

 

[mudsticks]

I buy a certain portion of my veg from a retired chap in the village who grows them as a hobby and has a stall by the roadside. Some of the stuff he has knocks the socks off anything you can buy in a shop, but it's very pot luck and very seasonal.

Just by my own observation of the fresh produce in Tesco, about 2/3 of it is imported.

The wonky apples I buy are British, but the mid-range and finest lines tend to be the varieties that do not do well in the UK because we are too far north.

Yup that would be about right we import 70% of our fruit and veg..

We can grow excellent apples in this country.
They're just not all the standardised fare we've grown used to .

We've lost large amounts of productive apple orchards over the last few decades.

Although there have been moves to replant.

And there are also issues around harvesting and distribution.

Veg grown here in this country will of course be seasonal, and we might have to get used to eating a bit more that way again .

I have a delicious veg diet all year round.
But I don't expect green beans In March or fresh tomatoes in December.

 

[Reynard]

Yup that would be about right we import 70% of our fruit and veg.

Ah, I wasn't that far off, then.

We can grow excellent apples in this country.
They're just not all the standardised fare we've grown used to .

We've lost large amounts of productive apple orchards over the last few decades.

Yes, we do. Trouble is, the marketing people have pushed the varieties that don't do so well in the UK, like Granny Smith or Pink Lady. It's too cool here, too damp and the growing season is too short. Much of what's for sale comes from a really small group of varieties, the exception being the wonky apples. Some of the varieties are familiar, others I've never even heard of!

I've actually got my own small orchard. My best cropper is actually a Bramley, the other varieties tend to be a bit hit and miss, as some of the trees are getting a bit long in the tooth. I do have a Granny Smith, but the apples aren't good for eating. They do make fantastic additions to jams and jellies, however as they are ridiculously rich in pectin. I've also got James Grieve, Egremont Russett, Jonagold and Lane Prince Albert.

There's also a community orchard just up the road, which cultivates local varieties. Most people don't pick the keeping apples, but I do. They've a lovely dual purpose called Green Harvey, which I'm of a mind to get one for myself.

Veg grown here in this country will of course be seasonal, and we might have to get used to eating a bit more that way again .

I have a delicious veg diet all year round.
But I don't expect green beans In March or fresh tomatoes in December.

I do try and buy as seasonal as I can, with as few food miles on as possible. OK, when I yellow sticker, all bets are off, but when paying full price, I am much more careful about what I buy.

Also, things taste much better when properly in season. Last summer I had some banging Scottish soft fruit - strawberries, raspberries and blueberries. And this winter I had some fabulous kale, leeks, celeriacs and savoy cabbages that were grown less than a mile away from my front door...