Scientists reveal the four things you can do to limit your food waste - including APOLOGISING to binned items Japanese scientists provide tips to deter you from binning fridge food READ MORE: What's your food waste style? Households fit into three categories By Jonathan Chadwick For Mailonline Published: 16:39, 22 July 2024 | Updated: 16:45, 22 July 2024 e-mail 1 View comments With around 9.5 million tonnes of food wasted in the UK alone, there's no doubt we need to get better at eating up our leftovers. Letting good food rot is not only a tragic waste, but is a source of methane – a powerful greenhouse gas that causes global warming .
Now, scientists in Japan have come up with four tips to reduce the amount of food from your fridge that ends up in the bin. From storing leftovers in transparent containers to even apologizing to your food, here's how to save the edible remnants in your refrigerator. So, would you try them? Scientists in Japan have come up with four tips to reduce the amount of food from your fridge that ends up in the bin 1.
TOP TO BOTTOM Often when we open our fridge we're presented with a disorderly chaos of containers, foil wrappers and half-finished jars. Very few of us store items based on age, meaning the remains from last night's dinner are sat next to the veg from last weekend's roast. Kohei Watanabe and Tomoko Okayama, waste management scientists at Teikyo University in Tokyo, suggest a simple rule – putting the items that are closest to expiring on the very top shelf.
So when we open our fridge we should automatically pick something from the top – as these are the items that need eating up sooner. Fresher items, meanwhile, get stored at the bottom, although this system of course requires spending time continually moving items upwards as they get older. If your fridge is a disorderly mess like this, Japanese scientists suggest some tactics to restore order and reduce waste Read More What's YOUR food waste style? Scientists say all households fit into three categories - and claim young people are the sloppiest 2.
TRANSPARENT CONTAINERS As the old English proverb goes, 'out of sight, out of mind'. And this may be why food stored in opaque containers is so much more likely to be forgotten about, according to the researchers. They advise storing all fridge contents in transparent tubs, as these give us a constant reminder of what's still to be eaten every time we open the door.
'Quite often, the reason food goes bad and gets wasted is because you forget about it in the fridge and find it rotten later,' Watanabe told the BBC . Clear containers also help us quickly identify what needs to be moved up to the top shelf while accounting for foodstuffs that don't spoil quite as rapidly. 'Fermented foods are still alive, so they don't go bad that easily,' Watanabe added.
Always using transparent containers means food is less likely to be disregarded, left unnoticed or otherwise forgotten about (file photo) Read More I'm a food waste expert and here's how to freeze foods you didn't know you could - from crisps to hummus and even sandwiches 3. APOLOGISE! Have you ever felt guilty when you've thrown food into the bin? Well, it may not surprise you that there's a Japanese word for the sense of regret that we get when it comes to wasting resources – 'Mottainai'. Similar to the English saying 'Waste not, want not', the researchers hope Mottainai can play a part in the fight against food waste.
To heighten feelings of Mottainai, they suggest apologizing to our food just before we bin it. By pretending that our food has feelings or even a conscience, we may be less inclined to give it such a undignified end. Watanabe and Okayama gave out special stickers depicting two people with their hands clasped together with the message: 'I cannot eat you.
I'm so sorry.' The main applications of compostable plastics include food packaging, bags, cups, plates, cutlery and bio-waste bags (pictured) Read More The 10 most common freezable items thrown out by Britons - including herbs, cheese, and potatoes They encouraged participants to put one of these stickers on every food item they threw away and to take a moment to consider the sticker's message. 4.
RED STICKERS Colour-coding tubs in the fridge can also help us pritoritise fridge food that we should turn our attention to first. For example, a helpful traffic light system uses red stickers to denote food that should be eaten urgently, while green stickers are for food with a longer shelf life. Other factors that lead to food waste are poor meal planning and an obsessive tendency to cook new meals every night rather than eat up leftovers.
Another big one is impulse buying at the supermarket – in other words, purchasing food that we don't actually need. We should also be aware of the difference between 'best before' and 'use by' dates on food products – a very important distinction. Even when foods have passed their use by date, if they're low-risk items (such as condiments and cheese) they may still be good to eat, according to Watanabe.
'Smell it, look at it; most things are good for quite a long period after the expiry,' he says. It's worth bearing in mind the official advice from the Food Standards Agency (FSA), however: 'Eating foods past the use-by dates presents a significant risk of foodborne illnesses to consumers.' We have the luxury of choice, but do we have the luxury of security? Expert warns of a looming food crisis that could leave millions of people starving Because of high natural gas prices rising food prices could make the difference between life or death for millions of people around the world, according to one expert.
Maximo Torero Cullen is the chief economist at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). He thinks climate change, economic downturns and the war in Ukraine are all factors causing supply difficulties and driving up prices of food, fuel and fertilizers. 'I think we have a very serious food access problem,' he told the International Monetary Fund .
'If things get worse, and we have a food access and a food availability problem, then we will be in a very bad situation. 'The impact on food-importing countries is twofold - they face a steeper food import bill and a higher cost of fertilizers.' Organizations such as the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) are closely tracking the effects of price hikes on global food security.
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