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Planning shopping, learning how to preserve food, or reusing food are some simple and practical ways to avoid waste.
Become aware.
To say that almost 80 kilos of food are thrown away in each house a year generates quite a bit of surprise, even some disbelief. Most consumers are not aware of how much food we waste, as reflected in an exhaustive study by HISPACOOP, the Spanish Confederation of Consumer and User Cooperatives. According to the research, only 5% of the participants admitted to throwing food away. Knowing this data and others, such as that food is the time of day when more food is thrown away (no less than 35% of them) not only serves to have more information about our behavior as consumers, but to modify and improve it . Being aware of this behavior is the first step in changing it.
Plan your diet and shopping.
Being proactive and organized will not only help us to follow a healthier diet that suits our needs, but it will also improve the health of our pockets, because we will avoid buying too much, eating too much and throwing away more. A good and useful initiative is to plan our diet and that of our family. To do this, we must make an accurate forecast of the actual consumption that is made of food, especially perishables, which are the ones that first end up in the garbage can.
Get the most out of it.
There are few times that we throw away food in good condition because we are convinced that it cannot be eaten. There go the stems, the seeds and the leaves of the vegetables, the vegetables and the legumes, which are edible, although we do not know it. How many times have we thrown vegetables that have gone limp in the fridge and no longer look good to make a salad? If this is the case, we can take advantage of them by making vegetable juices. But also the skin of the fruits can be included in this list, since with them various preparations can be made: from smoothies and shakes to purees, compotes or whole roasted fruits, with their skin. Even the coarsest peels – like those of citrus fruits – are useful. For example, we can grate the lemon peel and use it to flavor sugars or flavor a sponge cake or decorate a mousse or ice cream.
Learn to make canning.
There are multiple techniques to preserve food, from the most current -with the cold of the freezer- to the oldest, such as pickles or brine. Preserving surplus food to take advantage of it in times of scarcity is an age-old human concern. Therefore, apart from the home freezer (which will have limited space), it is important to know different techniques to prolong the useful life of food. This can be done with sugar, with oil (for cheeses, meats and sausages), with vinegar, sous vide, with salt… Preparing some fruits in syrup, for example, will help us to take advantage of the surplus of fresh seasonal fruit.
Make new recipes with leftovers.
A very practical (and rich) way to control what we throw away is to give a second chance to food and leftovers that are usually thrown away. Bread is perhaps the food with the most possibilities: grated, on toast, as croutons, as bases for canapés, in garlic soups, to make Extremadura crumbs or even in desserts, such as torrijas or flan. But he’s not the only one. For example, if we have leftover roasted meat, poultry and fish, we can make a filling of peppers, a base for soups or a delicious croquettes ingredient with them. Seafood can be included in salads, or used as a base to make a very tasty broth with which, in turn, we can prepare rice. And if we have excess desserts or sweets, we can also reuse them: with the nougat and polvorones (which almost always remain at home after the holidays) we can make creams, ice cream or cupcakes. Even a fresh dessert, such as fruit salad, can be turned into a fruit smoothie or part of a fruit cake (like plum cake).
Source: Consumer.es