Let’s cut food waste

10:11am Tuesday 13th May 2008

Comments (6)   Have your say »

Many of us eat too much and waste too much, and this all starts with buying too much.

Whoever dreamed up the phrase "buy one, get one free" has a lot to answer for in wasted food. It is fine selling toiletries under that offer, or even clothes or other commodities, but food - no.

If supermarkets can afford to offer bargains to their customers, why don't they simply cut the cost of a single item, instead of tempting people to overfill their baskets?

That word "free" is a magnet for shoppers, and it does not seem to matter whether they really want the item or not. Some stores do provide bins at the entrance to the store, into which people could put extra food items to be given to hungry people, but how many of us use these? Controlling a laden trolley and seeing to children is enough to think about.

Also, some salad stuff, fruit and vegetables and even some meat are prepacked in huge quantities, far too much for small families to use, so the excess is thrown away. How I wish we were able to weigh out what we needed and pack it ourselves so we could get the amounts we could comfortably use.

I know that we can do this with some items, but it really should be possible with far more. To avoid the massive food wastage, I believe supermarkets could do a lot more than they do to help.

Heather Causnett, Escrick Park Gardens, Escrick, York.