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Post by auntieannie on Nov 27, 2009 18:43:28 GMT
lagatta, is there any charity for the homeless/poor near where you live? they might be grateful for a tinned food that is not to your taste. could be to theirs?
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Post by Deleted on Nov 27, 2009 18:49:56 GMT
The next two days in France are devoted to the Banque Alimentaire (Food Bank). Unfortunately, this does not permit you to get rid of your unwanted and leftover food items, but it is a very nice initiative that allows you to buy extra non-perishables at the supermarket and give them to the volunteers waiting after the checkout areas (or else put them in special bins if there are no volunteers present). Most people buy pasta, rice, chocolate and canned goods, but I think that I will try to go for some of the superfluous things tomorrow, such as mustard, mayonnaise, pickles and gumdrops. People get tired of pasta and rice and canned tuna.
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Post by lagatta on Nov 27, 2009 19:13:34 GMT
auntie, there are several, including a food bank very close by where I volunteer sometimes. I just wouldn't want to give anything disgusting to a person just because he or she is homeless or destitute.
Yes, I always try to give some nice things in food baskets too. I belong to a community centre nearby and I take them a bottle of wine or two as well. Needy people have the right to enjoy themselves too, and they aren't all addicts any more than more prosperous people are. (I wouldn't put anything like that in the supermarket box though as it would simply disappear).
There was an SDF (homeless person) who always slept outside the métro station nearby, and I don't live in a neighbourhood where that is very typical - it is a central neighbourhood, but not really "downtown" or an area where homeless people congregate. He never drank or took drugs, and took pains to eat reasonably healthy food (fruit, yoghourt) with the money he begged. He must have had some kind of mental illness. Don't know what became of him, haven't seen him recently.
Most of the food baskets don't go to homeless people, just to needy people and families.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 28, 2024 20:12:59 GMT
There was an article in today's paper about food waste with some surprising statistics. Portugal is the country that wastes the most food! 124 kg a year per person.
Followed by Italy (107) and Malta (92). Way down the list are Germany (78) and the UK (76). Belgium at 71.
France is at 61 and the country with the least waste in Eurooe is Slovenia (38).
I see no rhyme nor reason for these differences because it is not a question of rich vs poor. Maybe there are some countries with too much of something (tomatoes?) and some of it goes to waste, but that doesn't explain Malta, which grows nothing.
The article points out that the UK is one of the countries that has made the most progress, reducing wastage by 23% in recent years.
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 29, 2024 2:37:26 GMT
That is surprising, & it's hard not to be disapproving. Profligate Portugal & prodigal Italy should be ashamed.
Any idea how the wastage per person is determined?
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 29, 2024 5:25:42 GMT
The study was piloted by the British NGO Wrap. It mentions that it does include non-edible food products (bones, eggshells, guts...) but those are just a very small percentage of the totals.
The real difference among developed countries comes more from government policies than what people are doing at home. For example, it has been illegal in France since 2016 for stores to destroy unsold food products and since 2020 for wholesalers to do it. They must be given to charity or transformed. I imagine that the top wasteful countries are not applying such policies.
As for home waste, it was mentioned that a lot of it is due to overabundance of everything. We have so much choice now that we jump on fresh items before we have finished what we bought yesterday or the day before. Back when you had to wait for tomatoes or strawberries for 8 months, people did not do this.
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Post by mickthecactus on Mar 29, 2024 8:24:43 GMT
Very little gets wasted in the Cactus house. It’s too bloody expensive!
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Mar 29, 2024 13:35:24 GMT
I threw away a few slices of a wholemeal loaf that had gone mouldy, a black banana and a mouldy pear that was hiding at the bottom of the fruit bowl this morning.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 29, 2024 14:41:35 GMT
Actually, as I recall, households only represent about 20% of food wastage. Most of it happens before it even gets to us and of course in restaurants.
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Post by fumobici on Mar 30, 2024 3:54:15 GMT
That sounds right, I discard very little food uneaten. I assume the grocery stores throw it out by the tons.
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Post by whatagain on Mar 30, 2024 11:38:39 GMT
As for Portugal I would venture that they eat much more seafood than us Belgians for example and seafood is more difficult to keep for more than a few days.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 30, 2024 14:08:12 GMT
That's why they salt and dry the cod.
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