The Great British Waste Menu

Before I watched this programme this evening, today's post was going to be about how I'd spent most of today listening to Radio 4 (and rather enjoying it!) Instead, this programme really caught my attention - save for the endless repetition which I suspect may be in part because it was initially designed to be several separate shows.
Despite this, it was a really enlightening programme highlighting the waste generated by our food culture.

No matter how good we might be about not wasting the food that we buy, we are all, in part, contributing to the waste at the beginning of the food chain. The imperfect fruits and vegetables that don't even get the chance to make it onto the shelves for our consideration and the products with imperfect packaging that go to waste. At the worst, the supermarkets could sell this produce at a reduced rate - not all fresh produce has to be first class if you are prepared to make a small sacrifice on the price. If it is destined for the bin anyway then surely something is better than nothing. I'm sure you wont hear many people complaining that vegetables are too large!

I will admit to trying to choose the nicest looking vegetables when I go shopping but that flies straight out of my head when I pick up a bag of the basic range carrots for example. These are full of imperfections - hell, most of them aren't even whole - but I am willing to sacrifice the appearance for a small cut in cost. A lot of the time this isn't even that significant, maybe less than 20p but I don't mind because there is nothing wrong with them. I'm not saying we should exclusively sell these products but certainly the effort should be made to include a wider range on the shelves so that at least we can make that decision.

The other thing that struck me was that some of the supermarkets declined to turn up to the banquet. As I see it, my simply agreeing to send a representative, they get a wonderful meal cooked by some of the country's finest chefs and the company gets some free advertising. By not turning up, they miss out on all of this and often, their public image can take a bashing by not bothering to show their faces. If someone asked me to go to a banquet like this, I'd jump at the chance and wouldn't even mind doing it for free!

I'm still not sure I'll be buying offal though even if ox tongue is very tasty, I wouldn't have a clue what to do with it. Perhaps that could be Delia's next challenge, get the country excited by offal?