Making Food Savings

The EU estimates that up to 40% of the food we buy ends up in the bin.* But what does that actually mean when I translate it to my kitchen?

If I buy a bag of 5 apples for €1, then throw two of those apples out (40%) that’s the equivalent of throwing away 40c that could be spent elsewhere. On an average shop spend of €100 per week that translates to €40 of money literally going into the bin.

€40 per week binned.

Just think about it for a second. That’s €40 a week being thrown away in the form of food that hasn’t been used or eaten in time. Then if I multiply that by 52 weeks in the year….that’s €2,080 of my money that I could have spent elsewhere. And believe me I could definitely use that money somewhere else.

€2,080 per year binned.

I’d rather use my food savings and have the money to spend on stuff like school books/bills/maybe even a haircut here and there.

The term food waste has oodles of negative connotations that come with it . Why not champion food savings? Why not champion making the most of what you’ve got?

I know that I can do better so if you’ve got a tip for saving food please do let me know!

I’m passionate about saving food and reusing leftovers. It’s why many of my recipes are based around getting as much value for money from the food that I buy that I possibly can.

What am I personally doing?

• While many of my recipes make sure that you get value for money from food, I also recognise that can do better. I can still decrease further the amount of food that I put into the brown bin.
• I’m committing to coming up with more recipes to share which are aimed at upcycling leftovers, along with more tips to save you money. As always, recipes on the blog are for free, and they always will be.
• You might have seen me mention that I’ve teamed up with FoodCloud to share my money saving recipes with their charity network. I strongly believe in what FoodCloud do and how they help put businesses with surplus food and charities together to save money. I’ve volunteered to work with them and I’m delighted to do so.

Let’s make food saving a priority, we all could do with a couple of extra Euros in our wallets, couldn’t we?

With this in mind, KeepCup recently sent me one of their cups to help me reduce the amount of take away drinks cups I use. It’s really rather pretty and certainly meets with my aims in the long term, and not just for ‘Reuse October/National ReUse Month’. The great news is that quite a number of coffee shops will give you a discount if you bring your own drinks container and my friend Melanie May has a very helpful list which you can find on her blog.

*Stop Food Waste, EU Website