Daily bread
I went to a teaching session yesterday given by the Love Food Hate Waste group. While I didn't learn anything new for me to use, I did learn some facts that utterly appalled me. For instance:
24 million slices of bread are thrown away EVERY DAY in Britain alone. And the number of people who need to use foodbanks is growing. And how many starving children could Oxfam or Tearfund feed with that bread?
I realise that the total number of slices thrown out per head of population is small - 24 million slices thrown out by just under 65 million people. It is just that this happens every day and it is the sheer enormity of the total amount of bread.
How can we teach people what to do with bread if they have more than they can get through before it goes mouldy? It is not just the bread itself but also the work that goes into producing it and the fuel used for transport and carbon footprint. The wheat has to be grown by the farmer, harvested, taken to the mill, ground into flour, packaged, taken to factories to be made into bread, transported to shops, bought, carried home. Some of the flour is packaged into small bags to be sold to homebakers, but just think of how much work,money, time electicity, oil and gas etc etc gets used so that we can waste so much. There must be something we can do to get the message across to people.
ps The Love Food Hate Waste group say that the best way to store bread is sealed with a clip and put in the breadbin. Apparently it dries out SIX times faster if it is stored in a fridge...
24 million slices of bread are thrown away EVERY DAY in Britain alone. And the number of people who need to use foodbanks is growing. And how many starving children could Oxfam or Tearfund feed with that bread?
I realise that the total number of slices thrown out per head of population is small - 24 million slices thrown out by just under 65 million people. It is just that this happens every day and it is the sheer enormity of the total amount of bread.
How can we teach people what to do with bread if they have more than they can get through before it goes mouldy? It is not just the bread itself but also the work that goes into producing it and the fuel used for transport and carbon footprint. The wheat has to be grown by the farmer, harvested, taken to the mill, ground into flour, packaged, taken to factories to be made into bread, transported to shops, bought, carried home. Some of the flour is packaged into small bags to be sold to homebakers, but just think of how much work,money, time electicity, oil and gas etc etc gets used so that we can waste so much. There must be something we can do to get the message across to people.
ps The Love Food Hate Waste group say that the best way to store bread is sealed with a clip and put in the breadbin. Apparently it dries out SIX times faster if it is stored in a fridge...
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Labels: food
posted by Jo @ 6:41 AM
4 Comments:
At 10:28 AM,
Mum said…
I store my bread in a clipped plastic bag in a cotton bag. It's homemade so has no preservatives and we eat every slice. I freeze half loaves for me as I eat brown and whole loaves for DH. Many people just buy large loaves instead of small which leads them to not finishing the loaf before it gets mouldy. Portion size should be considered but quite a few people can't be ar**ed!
Sorry about the language but common sense seems to go out of the window for some.
xx
At 10:39 AM,
Jo said…
The problem is that we don't waste any and you don't either. The vast majority of people I know don't waste food so somebody somewhere is wasting a huge amount to make that appalling average of 24 million slices. Why can't people just freeze it?
At 2:28 AM,
Unknown said…
Wow that is a lot! I don't think I throw any bread away, I love toast so it never goes to waste :-)
Like Jo said, can just freeze it! xx
At 7:15 AM,
Fran said…
Such a terrible waste, especially with so many hungry/homeless people in this country :(. I freeze most of our bread and take it out before we use it. On the rare occasion I have bread leftover (usually at the weekend when we buy beautiful artisan bread from the bakers) I dry it out in the oven and turn it into breadcrumbs.
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