Food waste Friday

Filed in Blog by on April 23, 2010 14 Comments
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separated yogurt food waste this week

separated yogurt food waste this week

It’s food waste Friday and this week we’ve not passed with flying colours.

One item, in the words that only the British can speak is, “not my fault”.

I bought my usual yogurt, took off the top and was confronted with something unexpected.

Usually my yogurt is a rich creamy colour and smooth in texture.  This, however, was bright white, solid and full of holes.

I’m not really a yogurt making expert but I guessed it had had some thickener added or maybe cooked for too long.

I scooped some out into a dish and it tasted totally weird. Then I realised the whole pot had separated. Not nice.

Ok if you’ve made it yourself and you know it’s ‘ok but separated yogurt’ but not ok if you’ve bought yogurt and it’s like this.

I called the manufacturer who promised to look into it. I asked if I should return the pot to them, but they told me to ‘throw it away’.

Eeek! Food waste!

The conclusion reached by the manufacturer was that it had been stored incorrectly in the store I bought it from. Personally I thought that sounded like a load of c***, but there we go. My food waste for the week consisted of a pot of inedible yogurt, through no fault of my own m’Lord.

What about you – any food waste to report this week? Remember to check out Kristen’s Frugal Girl blog for details of her readers food waste too.

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About the Author ()

I am a long time supporter of the Green and Sustainable lifestyle. After being caught in the Boscastle floods in 2004, our family begun a journey to respect and promote the importance of Earth's fragile ecosystem, that focussed on reducing waste. Inspired by the beauty and resourcefulness of this wonderful planet, I have published numerous magazine articles on green issues and the author of four books.

Comments (14)

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  1. greenlady42 says:

    Return the pot to the manufacturers anyway, never mind about what they told you about throwing it away ! Mind you, they could be sort of right, that sounds like a yoghurt partway to being cheese – whether the extra heat was at point of manufacture or somewhere along the distribution and sales chain, would be difficult to tell without analysis. Might be worth checking with the local Environmental Health team.

    Food waste, and food related packaging waste, I will confess to it being terrible the last few months but in my defence that is due to prolonged illness. First off it was that I would buy food then be terribly ill and not be able to cook & eat it, then after I came out of hospital I couldn’t face eating much at all and what I could manage generated more food packaging waste than the actual comestibles inside. Am trying again now though ! and do have a funny story involving a one step forward, two steps backward food waste incident, if you want to hear it 😛

  2. Julie Day says:

    Ugh, sounds horrible. Food waste this week, from what we’ve had this week I can remember is a few bits of onion in the pasta sauce in the pasta bake we had on Wednesday. I can’t eat too much onion in one go as it gives me IBS symptoms. We haven’t got a kobashi bin system.

  3. I don’t know what happened to that! If it didn’t smell or taste rotten (sour is usually safe, though), I’d probably have blended it up and used it for baking purposes. Usually dairy products just go kind of sour, and they’re fine for muffins and breads and the like.

    But yes, definitely not your fault!

  4. Take it back to the store and aske for a refund.

    They sold it to you in an idedible state and should refund and/or replace.

  5. Sarah says:

    I’m with Maisie, take the whole thing back and demand replacement/refund.

  6. Mrs Green says:

    @greenlady42: GreenLady – it’s so lovely to see you again, Would you believe me if I told you I had been thinking about you this week? Sorry to hear you have been so unwell. I hope you can look forward to the rest of the spring in full health. I know that in our own home, illness (of anyone) is a number 1 cause of food waste.
    Do please share your story when you feel up to it!
    Great to have you back on the site 🙂

    @Julie Day: Ahhh, onions, I can’t eat too many of those either; they seem to leak out of every pore of my body and smell really weird!

    @Kristen@TheFrugalGirl: Good point; maybe I could have used it up in baking – soda bread might have been a good idea.

    @maisie dalziel: @Sarah: Thanks Maisie and Sarah; I could have done that – I didn’t think to as I contacted the manufacturer straight away.

  7. sandy says:

    I agree, take it back to the shop. we had a little cooked pastry left, I made root veg pasty’s and they were hugh, so most of the outside pasty got left, the dog and chickens had a very good meal.

  8. Magdalena says:

    I had a wicked food waste week (see blog) but most of it was post-disaster from – get this – last year! We had to clean out a storage space three provinces away (18 hour drive) and I threw out all the old flour, beans and rice. It couldn’t be helped, but there you are, I still feel guilty.

  9. LJayne says:

    It could definitely have been the fault of the shop. They could have had a faulty fridge backstage or it may not have been rotated properly. It might even have been stacked so that the display fridge was blocked. They have a series of air holes at the top under the canopy and at the bottom just below the bottom shelf and the idea is that a stream of cold air flow & rotates between the two so that the stuff at the front of the shelves is kept as cold as those at the back nearest the refridgeration unit.

    If those holes are blocked – often by stuff that has been pulled out for marking down, or just incorrect stacking, then that flow is interrupted and the stuff at the front can suffer. As an ex-supermarket manager I always pick my chilled stuff from as far back off the shelf as I possibly can. :-0 Although I do also always check the date when I do this because some shops have staff who just stick the new date stuff at the front and so the stuff at the back can be approaching out of code.

  10. Mrs Green says:

    @sandy: Sounds like your dog and chickens would have been satisfied with that. Pastry doesn’t get wasted here – LMG will eat it until it comes out of her ears! I’ll send her to yours next time you’re batch baking.

    @Magdalena: Aewww, don’t feel guilty – these things happen. I have a stash of out of date food here too. Hopefully someone from Freecycle will help me eat it.

    @LJayne: Oh wow, thanks for sharing that knowledge. I didn’t know that about the fridges. I do tend to rummage for the longest dates as well. This was only a small store that holds just a case of 6 pots of yogurt. So I’ll speak to her as she may not be aware of it.

  11. Ben says:

    I’ve had a little food waste this week, but it’s a difficult one. Used sunflower oil. Fortunately I don’t deep fry often, and for many things like poppadums I use the oil once or twice then it goes in to home made bread to use it up. However, sometimes I make deep fried camembert which wrecks the oil for any reuse in other foods.

    Cooking oils, even liquid ones are bad to pour down the drain as they block pipes and are damaging to the environment, so I’ve been pouring them in old plastic bottles and throwing them away in the dustbin. Not an ideal solution for the environment, but much better than down the drain.

    So, I can’t pour it down the sink, I can’t compost it, and getting it in to a recycling scheme currently looks unlikely. The nearest collection I could find is miles away outside the city in some small town, so I doubt I’ll ever go there. In fact, I’ve never even seen my own allegedly local council recycling facility, they built it somewhere way out where only people with cars can get to it. I think the best option is somehow to reuse the old oil at home, but how? I originally thought of fat balls for birds, but solid fats seem to be essential to making these.

  12. Mrs Green says:

    @Ben: Wow, deep fried camembert – I am so coming over for dinner! Great question about the oil; if you can’t get it to a recycling centre then I have no idea. I wonder if someone on Freecycle would take it from you to convert to biodiesel?

  13. Poppy says:

    @Ben: @Mrs Green:

    Hi, naughty composter here. We also use very little oil, but on the rare occasion that we have some to dispose of, we add it to the depths of the compost bin. We’ve not had any sign of scavenging vermin; well neither the 2 cats or the dog have noticed if there are, and the worms haven’t complained! I’m sure the purists wouldn’t recommend it, but it works just fine for us 😀

  14. Mrs Green says:

    @Poppy: I don’t mind putting a tiny bit in either – if I’ve fried something I wipe around the pan with kitchen towel and put the whole lot in. I think Ben, however has a whole bottle of the stuff – I probably wouldn’t mess with that 😀

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