Did you know that as much as 25 percent of the food we bring to our homes is wasted? How would you react to the fact that the cost of food will be reduced by a quarter?
Although food spoils on the farm, during transportation and on store shelves, research shows that 40 percent of food waste is produced at home. Our personal efforts play an important role in reducing the amount of food waste and all related costs.
Here are a few simple ways to reduce the amount of waste and save your money.
1. Plan ahead
One of the best ways to reduce the amount of food waste at home is to plan food. Making a list of meals for a week allows you to plan meals effectively to use the ingredients that you have on hand, and ensure that leftovers can be used next time.
Planning meals in advance also makes purchases more simple and effective, since you do not buy ingredients that will not eventually be used, spoiled and will be in the trash can. About 15% of food that is not used at home includes products that have not expired. And your carefully planned shopping list will keep you from buying from memory, which usually leads to a shortage of some things and buying excess.
2. Change the time-sensitive products in the refrigerator
Clutter in the refrigerator can lead to waste, because fresh food can be on the back shelves and drawers, and will be forgotten when preparing the dishes. The opened packages of cheese begin to become covered with mold, fresh, but forgotten food eventually spoils.
Check your refrigerator and cabinets regularly and eat foods that expire in the near future. Use as ingredients in the following dishes that you cook. Organize your refrigerator with sections for fresh foods, fruits, dairy products and meat to quickly navigate what and where. Bright stickers, on which you will additionally indicate the expiration date, will help you even more.
Make sure that the temperature of your refrigerator is adjusted as needed for its contents. If the temperature is too low in your freezer, the products can be defrosted and spoiled.
3. Freeze excess vegetables
Garden crops are often uneven. Excess harvest, for example, tomatoes or corn, in the absence of time for their correct processing, you need to put in the refrigerator for storage. You can buy products at discount prices for future use and at wholesale depots.
But stored products have a short shelf life, which inevitably leads to spoilage. A great way to save the product is to freeze it.
In order to optimally use the limited space of the freezer, vegetables can be cut, divided into portions and put in bags. Then they can be used for cooking soup and preparing many other tasty and healthy dishes.
4. Preserve
products A lot of food stays in the gardens, agricultural products often turn out to be not sold or thrown away. In late summer and fall in the markets you can buy fruits and vegetables, begin to spoil, with good discounts. The main task is to save this food from the final spoilage before it is served on the table.
If you have a pressure cooker or multivarker, then you can quite easily save the products and use them during the winter months. The easiest way to deal with excess apples is to cook jam out of them for long-term storage. Apples can also be preserved if they are cut into slices and dried.
Salt cucumbers, roll tomatoes, cook jam and keep a variety of fruits and vegetables for the winter. Also do not forget to make a piece of meat - stew.
Currently, food prices are growing faster than average income, so spending money on food wasted, creating unnecessary food waste, is unreasonable.