Don't throw away leftovers, warn 'food police'

[The Straight Story]

Don't throw away leftovers, warn 'food police'
Householders are to be visited by officials offering advice on cooking with leftovers, in a Government initiative to reduce the amount of food that gets thrown away.


By Jasper Copping
Last Updated: 10:22PM GMT 10 Jan 2009

Home cooks will also be told what size portions to prepare, taught to understand "best before" dates and urged to make more use of their freezers.

The door-to-door campaign, which starts tomorrow, will be funded by the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), a Government agency charged with reducing household waste.

The officials will be called "food champions". However, they were dismissed last night as "food police" by critics who called the scheme an example of "excessive government nannying".

In an initial seven-week trial, eight officials will call at 24,500 homes, dishing out advice and recipes. The officials, each of whom has received a day's training, will paid up to £8.49 an hour, with a bonus for working on Saturdays.

...

Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance said: "This is a prime example of excessive Government nannying, and a waste of public money and resources. In the grip of a recession, the last thing people need is someone bossing them about in their own kitchen.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/4214024/Dont-throw-away-leftovers-warn-food-police.html

[undeterred]

1. Its not the Onion, its England.

[BrklynLiberal]

3. Guess it could have been either one..

:crazy:

[elleng]

6. oops!!!

Well, THEY could use some advice!!!

[elleng]

2. Matthew Elliott is correct!

and my Mom would agree! She'd send me EVERY article she read about salmonella etc!!!

[Occam Bandage]

4. England: Always willing to discard that last scrap of self-respect

to squeeze one more drop of efficiency out of their society.

[villager]

5. It's the wrong approach to a real problem....

The oblivious waste of food by Westerners, who "super size" it, throw it away, etc...

[pipi_k]

42. This is one of my problems with

places like Burger King, where I only go maybe once a month or less, but still...

I like their grilled chicken sandwich

When ordering, I'm asked do I want to supersize anything...my answer is always "NO".

Even though I try to get the smallest size of everything, it's still WAY too big and I end up throwing away a part of it. Soda...I don't even fill the cup up all the way, either.

Maybe I'll have to start ordering from the Kids' menu....



At home, I do reuse leftovers the next day. Or else I freeze them for another time. Probably not so much from an economic standpoint as from the fact that I hate to cook, and leftovers are easy

:7

[philosophie_en_rose]

7. Public health consultants are cool; door to door nagging is not so much.

I like the idea of being able to call someone for health information or a consultation, but I would not invite door to door guilt trippers into my house.

[originalpckelly]

8. Good fucking God, what the fuck is wrong with the UK?

Talk about no freedom, if someone came to my door telling me something like that, I'd have to tell them to fuck off.

[ddeclue]

27. In the UK you'd have to tell them to sod off...

:rofl:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Sod%20Off

[LeftishBrit]

39. One of the main things wrong is our lying right-wing press.

Like the Torygraph.

[EmeraldCityGrl]

9. Translated...food shortages are coming.

[thunder rising]

12. That's the way I interpret it. The response is a little Republican-ish.

[CoffeeCat]

15. That's the first thing that I thought of...

...is there some food emergency...that the government feels it needs to travel
door to door, asking people about the meatloaf and fish that's in their refrigerator?

Since when does the UK government send anyone door to door?

I can see a national marketing campaign or a new Web site...but door to door?

Isn't that an inefficient way to spread a message?

Creepy.

[nadinbrzezinski]

16. Bingo, this sounds like oh the kind of rationing that came during WW II

though not as sudden

[depakid]

10. So trying to be thrifty, educate people and reduce waste is a bad idea?

:shrug:

[The Straight Story]

17. Not what but how (nt)

[Whoa_Nelly]

11. If that were to happen here, guess I'd have to add another line to my sign

Currently on display on Front porch

[Rosa Luxemburg]

13. I don't waste food so they'd have a hard time finding anything left here!

I know how people waste food. Supermarkets around here throw mounds of food away just because it's a bit squished or a whole crate of jars because one jar broke. I see children in restaurants take one bite of their food and then it's thrown away. Foo banks don't have the workers to collect it all.

I don't agree with people going door to door. I think they should wear armour as they are likely to get punched in the nose.

[csziggy]

23. The stuff I throw out, the possums and raccoons won't eat!

Well, that is not quite true - they will eat the raw chicken skins, and maybe the stewed bones. We just don't waste much food - and what vegetable scraps we have go out to the compost heap. The non-vegie scraps get thrown out in another spot so the wildlife gets a chance at them. Since we only haul garbage off every month or two, we do not throw any organic wastes in with the non-recyclables. That is about one big can every six weeks.

[pipi_k]

43. That's pretty much how we handle stuff at my house too

living as rural as we do...

There's a certain place in the back where I throw food scraps. We have a garbage disposal, but I prefer to "recycle" the scraps by providing food for whatever wildlife will eat it, plus all that stuff doesn't end up in the septic tank.

About two weeks ago we finally got rid of the last of the Christmas cookies (and unwanted mixed nuts) by leaving them out for the squirrels and birds, who are looking quite chubby these days... :)

[csziggy]

47. Yep - there are some advantages in living in the country and scrap disposal is one

Though my aunt and uncle who lived in town kept a small compost heap under their fig tree and never threw organic waste in the garbage can.

[Quantess]

30. punched in the nose, or, bitten by dogs.

My dog goes nuts when a solicitor knocks on the door, that's bad enough.
But, a solicitor coming in and heading to where all the food is would make most dogs very upset!

[Critters2]

14. Yet another reason to be grateful my ancestors left Scotland and Ulster. nt

[RaleighNCDUer]

18. There's no such thing as 'leftovers'.

There's just food I haven't finished eating yet.

[chucktaylor]

20. Just like spare change...

money I don't need any longer?

[Veritas_et_Aequitas]

19. Wouldn't it just be simpler not to cook so damn much? nt

[chucktaylor]

21. We cook large meals and have ready made food for several meals.

Mch more inexpensive food, energy and time wise.

[Occam Bandage]

25. If I'm cooking something that keeps, I like to cook three times more than I'm going to eat.

Means I don't have to worry about lunch for two days afterwards, for no more work.

[gollygee]

32. I cook from scratch for my family, and it's a lot of work

Leftovers make my life easier. I cook a big chicken and we have leftovers to make other things out of for a couple more days, and I don't have to do much work or dirty a lot of dishes those nights. Yay!

[csziggy]

48. I have a big freezer and store meal sized packets of leftovers.

Tonight I cooked two quiches. We ate part of one and the other is in the freezer. I've got probably two to three weeks of "heat & serve" main dishes in there right now - turkey, pork, chicken pie, the quiche. In addition, I buy stuff on sale and freeze it. I've got packs of precooked potatoes, squash and other vegetables that I can either reheat for a side dish or throw into a stew.

I can spend two or three days a month doing intensive cooking from scratch and then have quick meals for the days I have no time.

[valerief]

22. Yes, there aren't enough telemarketers phoning homes already. nt

[petronius]

24. I just finished a whole bag of apples - was I supposed to eat more than one bite

per apple? :shrug: Gee, I sure wish some govenment agent would stop by and help me figure this out...

[ddeclue]

28. Don't worry - you're in California so you'll be next after the Canadians

get finished copying the British...

:rofl:

[ddeclue]

26. I was just over in Cambridge England in November...

nice place with a lot of good governmental ideas that we could certainly use here but they've really gotten ridiculous about law and order over there - it really is big brother.

And the political correctness police have carried things to a ridiculous extreme over there. The OP's story is just one more example.

What happened to England in the last decade or two? Any English DU'ers care to explain it to us Yanks?

Doug D.

[LeftishBrit]

41. Thatcher and Blair happened in the last decade or two.

With constant initiative-itis (as in government 'initiatives', not people having too much initiative!); excessive demands for 'accountability'; and a lack of respect for civil liberties.

These are REAL problems here- sometimes it's like having NCLB for bloody everything, not just schools. But we also have a very right-wing press, that distorts the issues. They will bring up every silly or restrictive proposal by the current government, while ignoring Thatcher's authoritarian 'sus laws'; everything that could like 'politically correct pandering to minorities' while ignoring the long general British tradition of excessive fussing over etiquette; express outrage over every law that restricts behaviour that harms the enviroment, while shrieking for 'locking up!' everyone who damages or steals private property; complain about 'censorship' of racist opinions, while howling for more censorship of anti-religious material, or material that seems to promote the 'homosexual agenda'. Etc.

It can become really difficult to campaign properly about the real restrictions on civil liberties, without it getting distorted by the right-wingers. Most of our press is pretty much equivalent to your RW talkshows.

[kristopher]

29. Seems like a pretty cool group to me.

http://www.water-waste-environment-marketplace.com/details.asp?cid=11673

And speaking as someone who has been a census taker and done a fair amount of door to door survey and public outreach/education, I don't think the hostile reactions here are an indication of the feelings of the largest majority of people the WRAP folks will encounter.

Looking at their website I suspect the idea has more to do with recycling organics so they can be turned into fuels than the idea of a famine.

[slackmaster]

31. I knew it was the UK from just the subject line

Food cops.

[Lucian]

33. I don't see a problem alerting people on the benefits of eating leftovers...

but surely there has to be a better way than sending people door to door.

:shrug:

I'm wondering if there are food shortages coming our way? :scared:

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

34. There's something wrong with the numbers in this article.

In an initial seven-week trial, eight officials will call at 24,500 homes, dishing out advice and recipes. The officials, each of whom has received a day's training, will paid up to £8.49 an hour, with a bonus for working on Saturdays.

Even assuming a six day work week, this translates to each official visiting roughly 500 homes per day, or something like one home per minute.

[RaleighNCDUer]

36. Nothing wrong with those numbers

if the door is slammed in their face 9 out of 10 times. One in ten they get to do their spiel, and 9 in ten they leave a doorhanger. And homes in Britain are much closer together than most US homes, so covering 20 homes in 10 minutes is not inconceivable.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

44. That assumes you never stop to speak to anyone for any length of time.

It also assumes that you ring the doorbell and wait a few seconds at most before moving on to the next house.

[Art_from_Ark]

51. There is something wrong with your calculations

It is initially a "seven-week trial", meaning it lasts for 7 weeks. If every worker visited 500 homes per day, for 6 days each week for 7 weeks, then one worker alone would visit 21,000 of the 24,500 homes during the 7-week trial period. You forgot to divide by 7.

[juno jones]

35. All they need is a good home ec program in the schools, duh

And we need one here too. Too many people in this country don't know a thing about cooking from scratch. Believe me, if you know how to cook, you can eat very well on a small budget.

[dixiegrrrrl]

37. Gov't officials entering your home ...

gee, what's the problem?
Why would they need people to enter a home to speard the message?
Why not hadnouts...tv...newspapers...conducting classes?
Grossly inefficient way to get the purported message across.

And will the be doing that to the homes of the Peerage????

Did you know there is now a camera the size of a large bee that can be stuck anywhere?
No sound, I have been told.
Visuals, tho.

[stuntcat]

38. I'm all over this :)

They'd approve of this household, I've learned not to waste ANYTHING. Anything I do have to get rid of goes in the compost. What we save on food has really added up.

[LeftishBrit]

40. This is one of the Torygraph's typical misleading articles

The subtext is 'any welfare state means an interfering nanny state taking away our freedoms! Let's go back to the days of Good Queen Victoria, when capitalism reigned supreme!'

If you look at what's actually being proposed - it isn't 'police' 'bossing' us everywhere, but a small-scale trial of an education project in one place. I tend to agree that it will probably prove ineffective and a waste of money; but the Torygraph's hysteria is misplaced.

It is true that basic knowledge of cooking is not wonderful in Britain (I would certainly include myself in this, though at least I do know how to look for 'use-by dates' - and the Torygraph is well past ITS use-by date!) But I think that TV would be a much better instruction medium than door-to-door advisors - who probably *will* be told to sod off, if the residents are even in. Jamie Oliver, Ready Steady Cook, etc. have probably already done more for British cooking literacy than any government campaign.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

46. I'm glad you bring up the Jamie Oliver thing.

It seemed to have some positive results. On the other hand, it must've been damned expensive, what with the venues and materials needed.

[pipi_k]

45. What's next...specific Food Police Departments?

Knock knock...

"Good day, madam...I'm Constable Brown from the Bubble and Squeak Division"



God, I just love the name of that dish...

:7

[TheKentuckian]

49. I do not like authoritarians, Sam I am

Not to make sure I don't waste my Spam. Not to help me to cease to smoke. Not to choose my pets.

[csziggy]

50. At first I thought this was absurd but I've been watching a couple of shows on BBC America

That makes me wonder. One is 'How Clean Is Your House?' and the other is 'You Are What You Eat.' The first has a couple of ladies help clean out disturbingly filthy houses often of hoarders. Almost every house has a fridge full of rotting food in take out containers. The second show has a nutritionist help (usually obese) people adjust their diet and again, much of the time their cupboards and fridges are full or take out, though usually theirs are not rotting since the people seem to eat everything in sight.

While I know these shows are a small, specially selected sample of British people, the people on the 'Eat' shows are totally clueless about basic nutrition or food preparation. One show, the woman had no idea how to peel, chop and cook a potato. Another show, the couple worked in a health food store and ate no green stuff at all - and were deficit in several essential vitamins.

Just saying, maybe basic education is needed.