Australia - a nation of tossers?

Australians are tossing out food like it?s going out of fashion. While obesity is an ever-present concern, apparently there?s plenty of food that doesn?t pass the lips, let alone settle on the hips. Instead, here in Australia, according to the latest figures, we are discarding 3,000,000 tonnes of food annually. That translates to a whopping 145kg for each one of us. And that has prompted Notebook magazine to launch a campaign to stop food wastage in Australia.

Some experts believe Australians are throwing out about 20 percent of the food they buy, environmentalist and Planet Ark founder Jon Dee writes in the latest issue of Notebook. Personally, I am a bit sceptical about that. Are we really chucking out one in five bags of food groceries? Is this all domestic wastage?

I decided to examine my own food wastage. It?s mostly the tail end of a loaf of bread, or fruit and vegetables that have got past their best because no one has been home for meals. While onions, potatoes, carrots and parsnips are all good keepers, tomatoes, lettuces and other salad vegetables are not, and they can?t be frozen. When I restock the fridge with fresh produce each week, inevitably there are odd pieces of broccoli and other greens that proved to be too much for one meal, not enough for two. Along with the slightly flaccid celery and bendy leeks, they can be made into soup ? in the winter. However, inevitably there are one or two casualties in the vegetable drawer cull.

I used to keep a bowl of fruit on the kitchen bench. It was frequently untouched, except by me. Then one of the sons suggested I leave it on the dining table so people could reach for a piece of fruit after a meal. That?s meant less wastage.

I?ve stopped buying more than four or five bananas at a time. No one eats the spotty ones and no one likes banana cake so there?s not much point in wasting eggs, butter, sugar and flour making one only to throw it out further down the month.

Bargain quantities of apples and oranges are a similar waste of time in our house. Who sits down and peels themselves an orange these days? No, it has to be a quick and easy mandarin to coax anyone in my family to eat citrus. Grapes also disappear quickly because there?s no prepping involved apart from a rinse ? and I usually do that.

This week?s discards included a persimmon I?d forgotten about, a bunch of Vietnamese mint and a bunch of basil. I normally buy basil that is still growing but there was only cut basil available when I needed it. I used half and the rest expired within two days as expected. A couple of mandarins looked dodgy. There was about 2cms of salami lost behind the yoghurt. One the whole, there wasn?t much wastage. The tail end of the pumpkin ended up in the weekend curry along with a couple of softening tomatoes. I certainly didn?t discard almost 2.8kg of produce or leftovers for each of us, and this was a fairly typical week, so someone else must be throwing out the rest of my share.

In other parts of the kitchen, however, it?s time to do the seasonal purge of the cereal no one has touched since winter began and to go through the freezer and check for meat that never made it to the barbecue last summer.

While we don?t often have genuine ?leftovers? unless someone has failed to arrive for a meal, there are occasions when I purposely cook too much so there will be something left over. I lovely recycling boiled potatoes next day by breaking them up, browning them in a frying pan and topping them with an egg. Also, I often buy a large enough lamb roast so I can make a shepherd?s pie the next day.

I don?t think I?ve ever really squandered food. However, I am also much more cautious about even slightly dodgy food and if I?m the least bit worried that something is past its best, out it goes. No regrets and no apologies. I don?t want a minute on the lips to end up as a night in the bathroom.

I think it's a good idea to focus on food wastage. Maybe Notebook should invite Gordon Ramsay to front the campaign...