THE success of TV food programmes in recent times has been cited as a major reason why we throw away so much perfectly good grub.

From Nigella’s mud pies to the chef with chronic Tourette’s syndrome, we have indeed been inundated with virtual gluttony.

The trouble is – so we have been told – is that our own efforts to create the perfect dish results in vast amounts of waste. After all, not everyone has hungry cameramen around to gobble up the remains as they do on James Martin’s Saturday homage to all things culinary. But although I can understand the gist of the concern over wastage, I’m not so sure this is the worst example of our throwaway society.

I think we’ve been at it for years.

Take your keen gardener, for instance, the type who wants to exhibit at the village show. This is the universe where size is everything – but how can you eat a three-foot-long parsnip reared in a barrel that has become as woody as the staves that formed its prison over the summer months?

Or what about the football-sized onion that is in reality little more than a sphere of bloated and tasteless pulp? Try fitting that into the pickling jar, matey.

Then there are the humbler folk who never pick anything until it’s ‘ready’ – shorthand for past it in most cases – and then end up giving the produce away or composting it, which is a mortal sin in my book.

As far as I’m concerned, the whole point of vegetable gardening is to supply food for the table over the largest possible period. This invariably means crops will have to be picked ‘early’ but so what?

Apply that maxim to runner beans and you’ll see what I mean. If you want to avoid chewing on stringy bits, get them while they’re young.

It’s not hard to avoid wasting food. You just have to think the whole thing through, that’s all.