Food wastage is an unconscionable act when you consider all the starving people in the world. Yet nearly all of us do it. Sometimes it’s because you bought more groceries than you needed. Other times it’s due to a storage snafu. Whatever the reason, you’re probably doing it way too much — especially when it comes to fruit and vegetables. We’re curious to hear which foods you throw away the most. Confess in the comments!
Tomato photo from Shutterstock
Yesterday, Samsung released the findings from its Australians@HOME study, which attempts to provide a snapshot of how we interact with our households. In addition to looking at the appliances and technology we are using and aspire to own, the report also explored our cooking habits.
As you’d probably expect, we’re not very economical when it comes to fresh produce, with a lot of purchases ending up in the bin at the end of the week:
The research revealed 24% of Australians admitted to throwing away fresh vegetables, despite also revealing a growing demand for buying fresh food.
Food wastage is also particularly higher in New South Wales, with households wasting an average of $1475 worth of food per year, almost twice that of Queensland households. Australians are also making up to three grocery shops per week, including one big shop and two smaller top-up shops.
I can attest to this in my own household — we seem to dispose of uneaten groceries each and every week. Usually, an unplanned takeaway dinner is the culprit, as it results in a surplus of unused food. (That, and I totally hate vegetables.)
This got me to wondering: which foodstuff is the most likely to spoil and get chucked? For me, it’s probably heads of lettuce — they’re stupidly huge and tend to go soggy very rapidly. Tomatoes and onions are also common bin items due to our tendency to buy in bulk.
Then there’s my wife, who has an alarming habit of burying meats in the back of the fridge while still wrapped in their shopping bags. On more than one occasion, we’ve entirely forgotten about them until the fetid smell of decaying flesh smacks one of us in the nose.
But anyway. We want to hear which types of food you throw out most. Let us know in the comments! Alternatively, if you’ve managed to get food wastage to a minimum, share your tips.
Comments
7 responses to “What Foodstuff Do You Throw Out Most?”
Probably bananas. Very minimal wastage for everything else.
same here, for some odd reason nobody eats the last banana in my house. everything else is gone…..
Hah, bananas are one of the only things that never get thrown out in our household, but only because overripe bananas are an excuse to make banana bread :D.
For us it’s often half-used containers, like sour cream and salsa leftover from tacos. I keep them rather than throwing them out when we have the original meal, because “I’ll find a use for it”, and then just end up throwing them out a week or two later when the green fuzz starts growing.
I’m quite lucky having a coles across the road, so the Coles is my pantry. I usually keep very little food at home.
I also cook with what I have, so the waste is very close to zero.
Always eggs. Even if I only buy a half dozen, I probably use about 1 egg a month on average, so they go to waste.
Most other fresh produce gets thrown in a cheap and dirty casserole once a week and is frozen.
You can keep lettuces a long time if you wrap them in paper towel and then store in the bag they came in.
Before we starting growing our own, it used to be fresh herbs. Supermarkets/grocers sell them in big bunches but most recipes only require a small amount. So the rest goes back in the fridge to become a mushy mess a few days later.