Editorial: We must take a hard look at our food habits

I should start with an admission.

I'm wasteful when it comes to food, or at least that's my assessment after reading information compiled by National Food Waste Prevention Project. According to one of its reports, I'm probably a "medium food waster". We account for 38 per cent of New Zealand households and waste about $8 worth of food each week.

I can console myself that at least I'm not a high food waster - they account for 27 per cent of New Zealand households and waste about $21 a week - but that probably misses the point.

The project has done some valuable work in surveying our food-waste habits and its findings come as a shock to many.

As the Bay of Plenty Times reported this week, the average household in Tauranga throws out $563 worth of food annually. The National Food Waste Prevention Project found the city discarded up to $25 million worth of food each year, enough to pay for 2.8 years of school lunches for all the city's school pupils.

The most common foods wasted were bread, leftovers, potatoes, apples and poultry. Food that had expired, was old or stale and partially eaten and forgotten foods made up most of the waste.

New Zealanders throw away 122,547 tonnes of food each year, enough to feed 262,917 people. We spend $872 million a year on food that will be thrown away uneaten.

It is clear that far too much food is being wasted in a world where many go without. In order to understand how waste on this scale happens, we need to take a hard look at our food habits. Unfortunately, it appears we are a deluded bunch when it comes to this task. Those surveyed thought they threw out about 5 per cent of their weekly food expenditure but the survey showed they wasted much more, and while more than 80 per cent of people believed food waste was a problem, it appears we are doing little to address it.

Not being put off by a best-before date is probably a good place to start because high to medium food wasters, like myself, are more likely to perceive food needs to be thrown away when it reaches its best-before date. Best-before dates indicate when a product will taste the best and shops can continue to sell products that have passed those dates. Use-by dates are a stricter indicator of expiry for things such as milk. Chances are if you throw away a carton of eggs or milk because it has just passed its best-before date then you are probably wasting food and money.

The British Food Standards Agency sparked controversy in 2013 when it advised consumers that it was safe to eat eggs two days after the best-before date had expired. An Otago University staff member went further, saying eggs would be safe to eat at least a fortnight after the date expired, which to a wary consumer like me seems like a long time.

Hopefully the findings of the survey will help reduce the amount of edible food ending up at landfills around the country. Perhaps, though, another survey should be carried out on food retailers, particularly supermarkets.

Supermarkets, through organisations such as Good Neighbour Food Rescue, which collects food that cannot be sold by businesses but is still safe to eat, are doing a better job of giving food away to people in need but a similar survey of retailers could further cut food waste, and that can only be a good thing.