Wickhams World

Thursday, 02 September 2010 08:27

Written by Editor

What a scorcher...!    By Kym Wickham

Did anybody see the programme on the TV last week called “The Great British Waste Menu”? What an eye-opener. It followed roughly the lines of the sister programme The Great British Menu where top UK chefs put together a menu for a big banquet and they compete against each other through knock-out rounds.

Well, this time it was four chefs that had won the previous programmes and they had to go around bins at the backs of supermarkets and markets, go to farms that had the wrong shaped veg, restaurants that had overstocked etc etc. The amount of throw-away food they found that was either in date, on it’s sell-by date or just plainly the wrong shaped lettuce or whatever was criminal. In a world where people are starving this must be stopped.

Even the chefs themselves were horrified at what they were finding. The British throw literally tons of food away every single day. A big problem is the so-called “Bogoffs”. Just because you can buy one and get a second one either free or at half price doesn’t necessarily make it a bargain. Can you freeze the second one? Is it sealed in such a way that it won’t go off in two days? Buying something to throw away a couple of days down the road is not a bargain - it’s a downright waste.

If a tomato is the wrong shape, so what? Buy food by sight and smell and use it all up. Just because it’s sell-by date doesn’t mean you can’t eat it - it just racks up the supermarket profits. Buy well, eat well and save the plantes resources as well as money.