« Don't bin it! 7 shocking facts about how we waste food »

Remember how your mother used that singsong voice to pretend the mushy stuff on the spoon was coming by plane/boat/helicopter?  We all get nagged not to waste food. As we grow up, we get revenge by doing exactly that. In November 2011, Friends of the Earth launched their Feeding of the 5000 campaign in Parliament, to demonstrate how much our society wastes and also, how little we consider the consequences. They fed their thousands by using scraps that might otherwise have been thrown away.

Part of the problem is an increasingly spoilt and pernickety attitude towards what we eat. We take for granted that there will always be plenty. In the 1940s, in a time of scarcity, a war generation ate their food ‘from nose to tail’. If a chicken was slaughtered for meat, the bones would be boiled for soup or for stock. Offal would never be just chucked away.

But how wasteful are we?

ONE

Annually, according to Friends of the Earth, Britain throws away 16 million tonnes of food. That equates to 16 times Wembley Stadium.

TWO

Most of us do a ‘big shop’ once a week and succumb to many of the BOGOF offers. This means we buy massive amounts, rather than shopping small, often and local.

THREE

Ridiculous rules often mean that food is thrown away before we even see it. Under EU legislation, apples under 50mm in diameter or 70g in weight have previously been banned. If they are too red, or not red enough, supermarkets may reject them. In 2008, one British wholesaler was forced to chuck 5,000 kiwis for being four grams lighter than the 62g cut-off. Absurd? It’s Kaftaesque.

FOUR

Don’t forget the ‘hidden’ or ‘embedded’ water that it took to grow this discarded food. We chuck twice as much hidden water per annum as we use for washing and drinking - according to the government's Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap) and the green campaigning group WWF. Water in this form often comes from countries where water is scarce, so it puts further stress on them.

FIVE

Confusion about food labeling means that perfectly OK food is binned thoughtlessly, some unopened. On the excellent Food Standards Agency Website - terms are clarified that make us food neurotics. For example, ‘Display until…’ is not relevant to shoppers and is only an instruction for staff.

SIX

Waste costs. WRAP estimates that UK householders across the UK throw away £10.2bn of avoidable food waste every year. Most commonly, potatoes and bread are the items most needlessly wasted. As one elderly (and financially-strapped) man told me recently: ‘Just cut out the green bits!’

SEVEN

By seeing waste as a negative, we are ignoring it as a potential resource. Food that is burnt or thrown into landfill could feed people or farm animals. There are also excellent alternatives with composting or anaerobic digestion – those precious food scraps then used to generate heat and gas.

Let’s feel ashamed, people. And thenlet's DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!