Spot on article. If we can genuinely stop wasting food, we can use the spare agricultural capacity to grow much needed biofuel.

Minum, London,

To Matthew your comment is morally wrong when millions of people (particularly children) go to bed hungary night after night.

Paul R, Bedford,

in our household supermarket "buy -one -get -one-free" offers have long been known as " buy -one-throw-one-away"

J renner , london,

Don't want to eat out of date food? Put it on freecycle.org.uk. There are lots of people like me who will welcome it.

Gordon Cardew, Norwich, UK

My family tends to enjoy meals put together from leftovers and odds & ends more than the meals which have been carefully planned ahead! The response of "I'll invent something" to the cry of "What's for tea?" always brings forth grins of anticipation.

Sumocat, Cambridge, UK

I agree wholeheartedly with Libby and the majority of the comment posters. Over-consumption and waste make us miserable as human beings. As a teenager, I lived on the breadline, and was made to wait for everything I got, and I was just as happy as I am now that I am an affluent 30 something.
Now I put the effort into planning menus and preparing food from scratch in the time I would otherwise waste watching Coronation Street or some other pointless drivel on the box. Its not reactionary bandwaggon jumping, or a middle class notion of a lifestyle choice. Its just good sense and a route to greater contentment.

Jo, Edonburgh,

Anyone who believes that a £ in avoided cost is worth more than a £ earned (less tax) will enjoy The Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dacyczyn (you can buy it on Amazon for £10, worth every penny). It's basically an idea book for compulsive tightwads. The author is a graphic designer with six children and a husband on a military pension. Earning money and spending it takes up a lot of time , stunts creativity, and makes you dependent; an intelligent , creative person actually has more fun avoiding expenditure than spending. This Easter, I don't have the money for toys, but the kids will get papier-mache baskets filled with bulk-bought chocolate and "confetti eggs" - blown eggs decorated and filled with paper punch holes which explode on impact when hurled. I think they'll be quite happy. The book includes an article on what to do when you become so well off as a result of tightwaddery that you actually don't need to save money any more, but can't face giving up the tightwad lifestyle.

Delilah, Maryland, USA

When you say "we" one assumes you mean "we women"? I feel reasonably confident in proposing the theory that it is mostly women who are buying and wasting prepacked processed food, fancy shoes and throw away clothes. It would make for an interesting comparison of the sexes in any event.

john smith, manchester, UK

Dr John, as the daughter of a gastroenterologist who once ate cheese so old that a couple of maggots had just crawled out of it, I can vouch from personal experience that eating so-called 'out of date' food does not, on the whole lead to sickness. Sure you can be a bit wary - putting eggs in water to see if they float is a good one for avoiding potential salmonella, but use-by dates are largely a ploy by supermarket giants to encourage us to buy more. We have become a nation of white-livered 'health' freaks who seem to have forgotten that there is a need to toughen up our stomachs, or else we will fall prey to every passing bug, however small.

Lucy, London,

I am in the process of perfecting my supermarket shopping routine to condition myself to shop in a spartan manner and thus avoid the waste Libby talked about. So far, my "shopping routine" goes as follows:
(1) Eat a large meal before shopping - I find impromptu luxury purchases are much less appealing if I'm feeling sated
(2) Make a shopping list - By considering what we're going to eat in the coming week, I end up with just enough of everything, rather than 10 delicious looking main courses that are all out of date within 5 days
(3) Log on to my bank account - this always depresses me and makes me adamant to spend only what is necessary!

Any other help and ideas would be most welcome...

TommyC, Harpenden, UK

Never mind us flying around the world (dirtily or otherwise). Why is our food flown halfway around the world? A hothouse with a modern eco-friendly power supply (wind-power, perhaps) isn't more economical than flying in strawberries from South America or South Africa?

If any government (any shade of the political spectrum) wants to advertise its green credentials it doesn't have to look further than encouraging home-grown, eco-freindly production.

And just think - we could also save on all the flights the politicians need to take to other countries to negotiate trade agreements!

KR, Stockport,

Matthew is right to say we have too much food - but at what cost! Turkeys and other animals are fed on grain that could help to alleviate dire hunger elsewhere in the world. Much food is produced with alarming levels of expensive artificial fertilizer and of pesticides, poisoning the soil.
Libby is right but she does not go far enough. We should reduce our consumption not for own benefit but for the benefit of the less well off. "Live simply" and give your savings to charitable causes serving the Third World in relieving hunger, disease and in supporting education and human rights.

laurie clegg, Tunbridge Wells,

All very well but why can the supermarkets squeeze farmers? Because there is massive overproduction. Why? The EU, the insane CAP and the ludicrous tariffs for farm goods from poorer countries. If we pay more, then there will be more farms and more ineffeciencies and more waste. An open market, free trade and globalisation reduce waste by ensuring the most effecient use of resources. You want real waste? Look at Government spending over 40% of our income and what we get for it, and then looka t what we get for the other 60% tha we spend. That's where the real wste of resrources is, not a bit of food here and there.

Tim, London,

No one who has dogs throws away that much food!

Carole Jones, Hertfordshire, England

I am married ( and currently off on maternity leave with an 8 month old baby) . I buy food in bulk and do a ever other week large shop and then add to it from local shops in between. I freeze what I don't need immediately. I cook fresh food for both my baby (large batches which I then freeze) and each night for my husband (having taken out meat/fish etc from freezer first thing). I make a dish from what else is in the fridge. If we need an additional ingredient, I get it from my local shop. I rarely throw food away and hate doing so. To cook fresh food and to cook up what is in your fridge takes a bit of organisation but it really is better for you and for your purse. Even when I was working full time (professional job - long hours) I would cook fresh food each night and still hardly ever threw items away.

Why are people so lazy and wasteful these days ? It really doesn't take much to grill a piece of chicken, whilst cooking some rice and veggies and use up what you have....

Kay, Edinburgh, UK

I think that the daft woman Libby quoted in her article is in the minority. Most people will freeze or refrigerate left-overs, at least with the intention of using them. In our household I have developed Garfield's First Law, to whit "Everything stops in the fridge on the way to the dustbin." However were I to live alone I would exist on supermarket packaged meals, and therein lies the waste. It is rare to find decent oven-ready food packaged for one consumer. So I would either eat too much or throw away half of what I buy (you can't refreeze the stuff, that is dangerous). So over packaging, BOGOF deals and oven-ready meals that benefit only couples are amongst the biggest culprits of waste here in the UK. In my opinion, of course.

David Garfield, London, UK

Why would anyone think the United States wastes more food that other places? I recall a study that showed even MEXICO wastes more food than the United States, primarily because of a lack of packaging and modern equipment for handling food. Modern conveniences like packaging and refrigeration actually reduce food waste.

Of course, if people are so ill-disciplined that they can't plan their meals a couple of days in advance, refrigeration won't help them. A freezer might, but people who pride themselves on being spontaneous might not have the forethough needed to defrost things. Does anyone think someone as lazy as that will go to the trouble of shopping daily for fresh food and using it up right away?

Simply buying too much is another problem. Nobody seems to learn basic budgeting and home economics anymore, but these are useful skills. It doesn't have to be extreme -- having lentils some nights in order to afford steak on other nights is fine.

Marie, Washington DC, USA

"One newspaper with an enviable gift for finding unself-aware punters willing to write public diaries..." - This was the Daily Mail (I was slumming it that day - No Times!) The rest of this report from WRAP was reported in detail by the Mail and my, weren't there some howlers in it.

"A major increase in the food waste (as a proportion of total refuse) from 17.5% to almost a fifth" - Big Deal!

Later it listed the following:
Just over 50% of food waste was peelings, chicken carcases, bones & preparation waste.
Almost 50% was good edible food (Mainly supermarket waste)
A further 50% was food that had gone off.

150% - You couldn't make it up.

Brian Vallance, LEFKIMMI, Greece

We waste more food than the Americans? Maybe because they "waist" more food than us?

I thought the woman who wasted all the food was a fairly bad example since she is obviously an idiot - it's those of us who though well meaning still find a depressing amount of unused vegetables in our food bins that need to change - the idiots never will.

James, Taunton, UK

this is all very well in principle, but if you arent careful, the possibility of eating out of date food which could lead to sickness, or worse, salmonella, means one has to be sensible.Sure, buy less; if you have time to go to the local store every evening to buy your fresh produce, even better, but most people dont.Therefore, buying too much carelessly will continue, as should throwing out stuff that may pose a risk to family and friends who eat food that may be dangerous

dr john, london,

I enjoyed the article and totally agree with Libby, sometimes we eat for days on scraps and leftovers! Where oh where is the joined up meat. My husband can make a meal out of half an onion and three scraps of bacon. Even when we do not seem to have anything in the larer/fridge we seem to go on eating it.

As for the waste- the sell by dates and the packaging could fund a hospital

catherine, portsmouth, hants

Dear Libby,
I think you have tapped into a growing mood of disgust with our current frantic consumerist lifestyle. You are right too. Frugality empowers you to live your life as you want to live it and frees you from the clutches of the management types who tell you that globalisation means there is no alternative to working twelve hour days. There is an alternative. Shop and cook healthily and frugally, ride a bike, holiday at home. Enjoy the time and money you save. If we are to tackle climate change we are going to have to live like this anyway. How did we get into our current stress ridden mess? Ah yes. We voted new Labour. The answer to how we get out of it is therefore blindingly obvious.....

Sheila Berridge, LEICESTER,

Well Libby, some of us have been doing it for years. I suggest you look at this http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/ and this http://boards.fool.co.uk/Messages.asp?bid=50074 to get all the best tips. And if you want to save unencumbered by IFA fees, unit trust fees, and the fees of various other underperforming financial muppets you should be looking at this as the place to generate the optimum (almost) tax free pension or retirement income http://boards.fool.co.uk/Messages.asp?mid=10458384&bid=51166&days=3 .
It beats me why most people are so careless with money. You don't have to be a skinflint to Live Below Your Means, just canny and critical. Micawber said it all......

Al, South Oxon, UK

In the 1990's I was unemployed for 2 years , the 2 happiest years of my life. The pay was lousy but the hours were good. We gave up the car ,cycled everywhere and ate well.
We were never more contented or fitter. We had cycle camping holidays , lots of them . Now I work , but have learned the lesson that overtime is a waste of my life ,if what I do with the money is throw it away on junk. Moral ? a day spent on the moors walking in the free , fresh air is better spent than a day at work paying taxes and craving plasma screen televisions.

mark devereux, bolton,

My wife is obsessive about chucking anything past the sell /consume by date. Pickles with a 2 year life suddenly become toxic on the stroke of midnight. Stilton is ok moud and bacteria included before the sell by date, but cheddar with a tinge of mould (easily cut off!) is poisonous one day after. Luckily for our family finances I eat the lot - assuming its not already in the bin - and as you may tell I'm alive to tell the tale. I think its a food company con, to make us buy more food than we need.

Jason white, paris,

Perhaps if this individual had wasted less of her weekly food shop she could have afforded the freezer she obviously does not have.

Alasdair, Oxford, UK

Come on Libby you can do better than this. Spare us the ubiquitous metropolitan,middle-class,lefty nonsense and write about something that will be of interest to us, the rural peasants scrubbing a living in the sticks.

Phil Batten, Christchurch, Dorset

Very well written and shows the state of some households in this day and age. Seduced by the supermarket shelves to buy what you fancy rather than what you actually need. I like the idea of hitting the Chancellor in the pocket but why stop at food, Just think of the idea of no one buying alcohol, the cash cow motorists refusing to use their cars - no road fuel revenue, and the subsequent breakdown due to demand of the public tranport system. We do make it too easy for them to rule our lives by our desire for the easy life. State control achieved via commercialism and cheap and easy food. Nothing sharpens the mind quite like hunger, and in the Goverments case empty treasury coffers.

Cooper, Doncaster. UK,

Without trying I seem to live the life you think we should. We eat food in the fridge so that what goes off first gets eaten first, I find it strange that people dont. I have also done the maths on waste - simply cutting back on waste funds your childs education, fills your ISA and funds your old age. The fact that someone would throw out soup and a roll or sausages because they didnt fancy it for dinner is mystifying. There is something quite sad about a large section of todays middle class - its all about 'keeping up appearances' and not about enjoying life. How sad.

Al, Newcastle,

We pay farmers to grow less food. That is because we have more of it than we need. Now we're getting in a pickle about wasting it. Libby, please jump off the reactionary bandwaggon and think for second how daft it is to worry about wasting something we have too much of.

Matthew, Ringwood, UK

The profligacy and wanton extravagance in some parts of the West is truly shocking.That England, as Libby Purves, states in her, as usual enlightening column, beats America where food wastage is concerned, can perhaps be ascribed to its history (Perfidious Albion!) where its people have been led to believe that they have a God-given right to everything on this planet -- on the back of others. From its colonies in the past and the nanny state in the present. This has moulded the mindset that they would be provided for from womb to tomb, so there is no need for restraint or living within one's means in these affluent times. India is a good example of a place where the poor have not fallen prey to the politics of envy and conspicuous consumption. They stoically accept their hardships and are able to survive on the bare minimum, not least because they have very little choice here. Turkey curry for lunch or dinner would be a luxury beyond their wildest dreams!

SD GOH, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia

it saddens me that this lady threw away food valued much higher than our family (of 2 + toddler) can afford to spend on food each week

pbhj, Newport,

Frankly, I could not possibly *afford* to waste food in anything like these quantities - £46 would feed my whole family for more than half the week. How the other minority live, eh?

rufus, Herts,

Our predecessors who lived through wars and times of hardship are probably turning in their graves. Society nowadays is disgustingly wasteful. My neighbours complain about wheelie bins being too full to be emptied only fortnightly. If they spent a few seconds rinsing out plastic milk containers and putting these into their recycling wheelie bin, this would cut down waste. If they were to cook proper meals and avoid all the take-aways they consume, there would be much less packaging in their refuse. By planning ahead and shopping sensibly. I am convinced the whole nation could cut down on waste! Whatever happened to good old-fashioned "home economics" which used to be taught in our schools? Is it no longer politically correct to be thrifty and make use of our resources? We seem to be a nation intent on keeping up with the Joneses, even if that means running up credit card bills and becoming insolvent in the process! We need to get back to basic household management skills.

Mary, Hamilton, Scotland

Why buy all this surplus food in the first place?

Budget to spend X pounds per week per person/child on food and stick to it. Most people have to do this through necessity.

The trouble is we are all too busy looking at what other(more affluent) people are eating, wearing etc., to notice that we should be more content with what we have.

Counting your blessings is not necessarily a lack of ambition. Neither should being content stifle economic progress. For most people on this planet it is their lot, and they accept it happily as the basis of their lives and religion.

Alan Surtees, Washington, Tyne and Wear, UK

You are sounding like a politician or a BBC commentator, in proposing another extreme as a means of excusing an existing problem. Surely the answer is just to get it right. Take that bit of extra trouble to buy the right amount of food and make any necessary adaptations, or exert the minimal discipline, to keep to your original idea. Your hypothetical consumer will be necessarily taking this approach at work - or they would get fired - so why not do it at home?

Henry Percy, London, UK

We in the countryside do that already. We waste nowt. Farmers markets and food on land is in local stores. Routine is all. The bartering system of LETS is active in a way of survival. A pensioner could have had that food, or a family. It is my ethos to give food I do not want. You just have to listen. Who needs it most is not the dustbin. Make it and share it. But gluttony is the act of destructive deprivement of what others have not, and you do not want.

P Badger, Grasmere, UK

The British abandoned its colonial policies and India has had self rule for over 60 years.
In 60 years what have Indians done to change their country, to change their caste system of society, the poor of India are poor due to the economic and social policies of their leaders.
Dont blame some dizty professional housewife wasteful culinary approach for problems that haven't been solved by leaders of third world countries.
They never seem to be short of cash to spend on lavish lifestyles for themselves or to buy the latest gun to shoot their rivals with.

Mark Carter, Perth, Australia

continuation.....
When times are hard or if anyone wants to live frugally, a curry would be just the kind of economical meal to come in handy.
(Canned fish eg. sardines is another option as a cheap ingredient to add to curries and is delicious too.)
Another instructive example from India is yoga, where if it is introduced into schools might provide just the antidote to the problem of obesity in the West.

SD GOH, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia

Eat it and get fat. Maybe throwing it away will be your salvation.

C VernonJarvis, Whistler, BC Canada

Absolutely right. I like many of the things money can buy, and I would much rather be rich than poor, but I would hate to be psychologically dependent on consumer spending. Like the Greek philosopher, I like to think "what a lot of things I can do without". The first step to this freedom would be for us all to learn to hate and despise advertising (except in the Times, of course).

Frank Upton, Solihull,

Yes! I absolutely agree with Libby Purves! I am ahead of the curve on defiant frugality, and support her all the way on this - being myself a defiant practitioner. Where's the membership list, and I will sign up immediately! Believe it or not, you CAN get your life back this way (if you've even realised yet that you've lost it in the first place) because you CAN make your own decisions (not simply knee-jerk react to the advertisers) AND it's character-building - something the British used to be famous for - (is this included in "Citizenship" classes in schools these days, by the way?) A true democracy is being able to say Thanks, But No Thanks.

Leandra, Brightwell-cum-Sotwell, England