The Throw Away Society

The usual fate of a “buy one, get one free” offer is that the one you pay for gets eaten and the “free” one sits in the fridge until the sell by date passes, when it gets thrown in the bin.  Fridges are essentially cupboards for perishable items and most of the good food which gets thrown away has been sitting in the fridge.  This is a surprisingly modern trend – when the Queen was crowned in 1952 fridges were very rare – in fact only 2% of households had them. ​

Fridge-freezers only became popular 25 years later. Food snobs like me take a lot of pleasure in pouring scorn on the “bogof” generation and their shockingly wasteful habits, but in truth most of us are just as bad, at least I am.  The only difference is that my waste food isn’t in the fridge, its in the garden.  It was a mortifying experience for me to walk round the kitchen garden today and see just how much of the summer produce hadn’t been picked or had gone to seed. Red currants, runner beans, lettuces, all going to waste, because I haven’t had the time or the energy to harvest them at the correct time. My waste will end up on the compost heap; theirs in the bin – that’s the only difference.