Reducing Food Waste | Daylesford

It might surprise you to know that food waste is one of the most avoidable environmental problems we face today and this is particularly the case in the UK. With a horrifying 24 million slices of bread thrown away each day there’s no time like the present for us to take action and get inventive with our unloved leftovers.

Daylesford in particular have been working hard to come up with ways to help eradicate food waste. Daylesford’s sustainability expert Tim Field and his team have been working to push Daylesford towards their goal of being a fully sustainable company.

The aim is to ensure they tread as lightly as possible on this planet by using solar power or developments like their Zero Waste Pantry, giving you the right tools and opportunities to work towards combating food waste at home.

To help you on your journey to less waste here’s a few of Daylesford’s top tips:

Whizz up a refreshing smoothie

There’s no time like the present to jump start that health kick so why not whizz up some fruit, vegetables, leafy greens, milk, yoghurt and even leftover grains to create a nutritious breakfast or snack?

Store food correctly

Read the labels on packets and look up how fresh ingredients are best stored: leafy greens for example like to be stored upright with their stalks in water; potatoes prefer the dark; tomatoes hate the fridge (plus they give off a gas called ethylene which some other fruit and veg hate); fresh herbs like light and water; avocados believe it or not are happiest in a paper bag.

Freeze it

It’s something we all think about doing, then talk ourselves out of but freezing food really is the best way possible to preserve it. Even foods like milk, hard cheese, egg whites and veggies can be frozen. Blanching veggies first helps to preserve colour, flavour and texture – easy instructions here on how to blanch.

Soups and stews

It sounds like a faff, but if you have plenty of time on your hands right now why not whip up a healthy, tasty and inexpensive soup or stew? You can combine vegetables that are close to spoiling along with stock, grains, cheaper cuts of meat and even lentils to create wholesome meals the whole family will love.

Daylesford’s comforting chicken broth with pearl barley, ginger and watercress sounds amazing and will do just the trick to warm you up whilst using up fridge leftovers.

Composting

If like many of us, you are spending more time in your garden right now, create a compost bin. Any uncooked leftover or rotten food can go straight in your compost bin, which not only helps turn waste into something useful but helps the soil, insect life and the health of our planet. So it’s win win all round!

Ignore the ‘best-before’

Daylesford recommend keeping the ‘use-by’ in mind, especially for high risk foods like meat and shellfish, but the ‘best-before’ date is only actually a guide for retailers and relates to the quality of food which is best before a certain date. Don’t throw away food that could be perfectly edible and delicious… use your own judgement.

Love those uglies

There is absolutely nothing wrong with wonky fruit and veg. If a potato has a black mark, just peel or chop off the bit you don’t want – the rest is fine!

These small changes can really help towards reducing food waste and become more environmentally friendly through what we consume and how we shop.

Let’s make positive changes for the future together.

If you’d like to put some of these new food-reducing skills to good use, Daylesford has a wealth of mouth-wateringly good recipes to help you on your way.

Also, Daylesford has just launched a new range of organic tinned foods. With thirteen delicious products that do not contain any BPA and no additive apart from a very small amount of salt so you can rest assured that each product will nourish from the inside out. Each product in the new range has been grown according to the highest organic standards and is canned at the source to ensure its nutritional properties are kept intact – perfect for keeping your well-stocked pantry intact.

Images: Daylesford