Surprisingly the best way to prevent food waste is planning before you shop.
Stop Food Waste recommend the following Five Ways to Reduce Food Waste:
- Make a Meal Plan
Getting into the habit of planning your meals is a sure-fire way to avoid unintended food waste and save on your food bills. It takes a little bit of time to organise but makes life a whole lot easier
2. Check your stocks before you go shopping
Take an extra minute to double-check what you already have in the kitchen before heading to the shops. This will help to avoid accidental double-ups and might give you ideas for what you could buy to help use existing ingredients up.
3. Write a Shopping List
Simple but definitely effective. A less simple step is sticking to the list!
4. Store and freeze!
The A-Z of Foods is a useful resource outlining everything you need to know about how to best manage food at home such as storing food correctly, using the freezer and how to reuse leftovers. If plans change or you cook too much, the freezer is brilliant tool to help save your food. You can freeze food right up to its use-by date.
5. Loosen up in the kitchen
If you’re someone who follows recipes strictly or only ever uses certain ingredients for certain dishes, we encourage you to loosen up a bit! Let down your lockdown locks and experiment. Everyday meals don’t always have to be perfect and you might surprise yourself. Take a few chances with additions or substitutions and see what happens.
Visit Stop Food Waste for more resources such as weekly planners, Stop Food Waste recipes and much more