COMMENT: Throwing our food away is not an option

8:05am Tuesday 8th July 2008

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GORDON Brown may not have done much right in recent months but he is correct to turn the spotlight on the amount of food wasted by the average family in Britain.

About a third of all food bought by people in the UK ends up in the bin – costing us an average of £420 in each household every year.

It is a remarkable figure and just goes to show how blasé we have become about throwing food away. The days of ‘waste not, want not’ seem to have been consigned to history. Delving into the figures reveals that much of what is wasted is never even taken out of its packaging. Some of this, undoubtedly, is due to supermarket offers like three items for the price of two on perishable goods.

These purchases seem like good value but all too often just end up being binned.

Some have criticised Mr Brown’s comments as another example of New Labour creating a nanny state. But what he says makes a lot of sense. It makes sense for families to realise the savings they can make by planning weekly menus and ensuring that the food they buy is eaten.

There are deeper issues behind this message and they relate to world food production and the way in which huge amounts of it are rejected by supermarket buyers because it is the wrong shape, colour or size. It is estimated that some farmers throw away a fifth of their crop as a result.

That cannot make sense when large parts of the world are starving.