Blog: Climate is changing. Food and agriculture must too...

The topic for this year’s World Food Day is ‘Climate is changing. Food and agriculture must too’. This has got us thinking about the things we can do at home to contribute – food waste is a huge problem across the world, and within the UK. Whether you already do a little or a lot, we can all take steps to reduce food waste even further. Here are our top tips for reducing your food waste:

1. Use a shopping list & plan meals in advance to prevent you buying extra items when you shop
2. Check the fridge, freezer and cupboards before you go shopping so you don’t have to rely on memory
3. Plan meals around leftovers/ what’s in your fridge
4. Keep store cupboard ingredients on hand for when you’re getting creative with your leftovers
5. Buy wonky vegetables when you shop to help reduce the amount of vegetables that are rejected just because of their looks (helps the farmers too!)
6. Practice managing portion sizes – use everyday objects to measure out ingredients (e.g. 1 small mug of pasta per person)
7. Donate any food that you can’t eat in time to food banks
8. Know what foods you can freeze, and make sure to label them

Food waste is something that we always try and cover on our Nutrition courses, and RSPH qualifications, and we love hearing the creative methods people use at home. Here are a few of our favourite tips from recent courses: Participant - “Use ice cube trays to freeze leftover stock, chopped herbs, chillies and garlic. These can then be used straight from frozen and are the perfect size to add to a dish’ Participant - “Have a Ready Steady cook meal each week, using only items that are leftover in your fridge, freezer and cupboards. Get creative and get competitive. We do it on a Monday night before the Tuesday night shop, which works well!’ Participant – “Use the entire ingredient when cooking, for example using the broccoli stems, as well as the florets. They not only taste good, but often the stems and skins of food that gets thrown away contain additional nutrients! Also makes a bigger portion of food, so you can fridge or freeze for leftovers.” Health and Wellbeing Services is a hub of excellence and innovation in the field of community and workplace health. For more information on our services, please visit our website or contact us on 020 8240 4070 or email health@stmarys.ac.uk