Food waste

There is a lot of food waste going on at the moment and a lot of talk about it too. Everyday when I cycle the school run I ride past fruit and nuts falling off trees. Firstly it was cherries, then apples and now hazelnuts, elderberries, blackberries and crab apples. If I wasn't quite so over-run with my own supplies of fruit and vegetables I would see about picking this lot. I'm just surprised that nobody else does.

I pondered the reason that hedgerows don't get stripped of their crops these days and I imaged it was mainly due to our familiarity with buying our fruit and vegetables conveniently washed and packaged in supermarkets. But then a couple of things made me wonder if there was more to it than that.

Firstly, whilst flicking through an old-fashioned preserving book I came across recipes using both rowan berries and hawes from hawthorns. I had to admit that I hadn't previously know they were edible, instead stirring clear of these red berries. And then, earlier this week, my daughter found a small, lemon-shaped fruit on a tree in a park and brought it to me for identification. I would guess that this fruit is a mirabelle - a member of the prunus family and related to plums, gages, cherries and apricots. It can be made into a lovely fragrant jam but I wasn't sure that my identification was correct so I left them be. So it was then that I wondered whether it is because we are taught as children to regard all hedgerow fruit and berries with suspicion and not to eat them that we are reluctant to harvest anything from them in case we get it wrong. We just don't seem to have a strong foraging culture anymore so we are not taught what we can and can't safely pick. Instead, we leave well alone and buy our clearly identifiable and well-labelled produce in the supermarkets.

So that is one form of food waste but of course there are huge issues with food waste all over the place in this country and I was heartened to hear this week that the government are considering simplifying food labeling to help reduce the amount of edible food being thrown away (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14925046). The plan is to remove "sell by" and "display until" dates from the food. These labels are there to help shops with their stock rotation but should be meaningless to the customer. Instead, the customer often throws out food which has gone past these dates, despite the food still being OK to eat. I agree that scrapping these labels would be a good thing.

It is also the case, of course, that food is also thrown out when it goes beyond its "best before" date. Best before dates are put there as an indication that the food may not taste so good after this date. Foods with best before dates are not dangerous foods and any deterioration in the food will be one of spoilage rather than of any health issues. Really, the consumer needs to use their judgement to decide if the food is still pleasant to eat and only throw it away if it has "gone off".

"Use by" dates are a different matter and need to be taken seriously. These are put on foods that could potentially cause food poisoning. It is advisable to throw away food that has gone past its use by date.

Currently, the situation is rather confusing and its hardly surprising that people choose to err on the side of caution but hopefully new food labelling can go some way to resolving these issues. Of course, food poisoning is no joke and both off food and inedible berries can kill people but I feel that somewhere along the way we lost our collective common sense and the necessary skills to be identify safe and poisonous food correctly.