The Scale of our Everyday Food Waste Shocks Matt | Food Unwrapped
Вставка
- Опубліковано 10 вер 2024
- Matt Tebbutt wants to know how much of a leek is edible, and heads to a leek farm to find out. But the answer shocks him and leaves him shaken by how consumer habits and demands lead to an incredible amount of food waste.
Food Unwrapped Season 5
Subscribe for more #FoodUnwrapped ➡️ bit.ly/FoodUnwr...
FOOD UNWRAPPED explores how our food is really made and the industry secrets behind our favourite produce. Reporters Matt Tebbutt, Jimmy Doherty and Kate Quilton travel the globe to discover just how the food we love is mass-produced. The series contacts supermarkets and manufacturers with simple questions about the food we buy, then visits the factories to investigate! Taking the cameras behind the doors of factories worldwide, the inquisitive food lovers meet food technicians, scientists, factory owners, growers, and producers in order to reveal weird and wonderful facts we never knew about our food.
Watch full episodes on All4 👉bit.ly/FoodUnwr...
FACEBOOK 👉bit.ly/FoodUnwr...
TWITTER 👉bit.ly/FoodUnwr... - Розваги
In Norway they come washed, with roots and everything. Apparently that's what the consumer wants...
Same in Denmark, this was painful to look at. Especially when you make soup or stock that top is just SO good.
@@GreenLarsen - I think it's a huge issue when the shops get to determine what the "consumer wants", as they never really ask, do they? I bet in DK as in NO you have some weird stuff as well. Here it's said that the consumer doesn't want odd looking vegetables, or small onions. I call BS on that.
@@Qgal5kap123 ohh I agree. That is one of the main downsides of large shops/companyes. Anything that dont fit the norm/size etc is harder to price/transport etc and therefore not something that its worth to sell for them. Alot easyer if everyone just buy the same, that look the same, taste the same etc.
It is imo one of the huge benefits with buying localy and directly from the farmer/ficher/..
forgot to ad, downside is naturally that buying localy generally cost abit more
@@GreenLarsen - It actually has annoyed me to the point of buying my own small farm. So now I can pretend I'm Bonderøven and grow my own vegetables. Can't get any more local than that ;-)
That guy who said the top of the leek isn't edible should be sacked, what a waste of air.
I always find it the most useful for stews and soups. They fry up great too.
Wait there are people who don't eat the whole thing? :O
Whole damned thing is perfectly edible. Same as when people don't eat the broccoli stalks, it's confusing to waste all that.
A friend of mine I cooked with took the two outer layers out and all of the dark green. We bought 3 leeks and ended up with barely enough veg to feed us.
Yes, like carrots! The leafs are edible when it's fresh, and they are phenomenally tasty!!
The tough dark green part is great for being part of a vegetable stock, people may not want to eat it but that doesn't mean they need to waste it, yeesh.
Here in the netherlands you can buy whole leaks, with a small piece of the root and the dark green top. Never saw leaks so small in my supermarket as the ones in this video.
Consumers get what the supermarkets sell. They create the "ideal" product. The final cut before packing is purely for their convenience in shipping and display.
Correct. It's why I don't shop at supermarkets.
exactly, if stores and all the second bits for less cash but just as fresh I would buy it lots of people would but the grocers and farmers wouldn't make as much money, it's the supply and demand thing, the supply can't be too high or else the cost goes down
'The consumer' is doing exactly what the cookbooks and TV chefs are telling them to do
Not everyone. We buy our veg and fruits from a company that reclaims organic food and resells it.
@@roflstomps324 OK. I never said EVERYONE. That's a resource possibly unavailable to most. I'm sick of retail and popular media passing the buck and failing to acknowledge their contribution to rampant consumerism
@@cassieoz1702 These services are available online. I fully expect them to stutter produce departments soon enough. Five or six years and you will see the change. I get quality organic veg and fruit delivered twice a month for $70. I get over fifty pounds of incredibly expensive food - if I had bought it at the store. All because there's a tiny blemish on an apple. A pepper that isn't perfectly conical. It's great.
@@roflstomps324 i live in a rural area where delivery is unavailable, postage prohibitive and farmer's markets non-existant. I can get some imperfects at the supermarket when I go to town but my gripe with them is that they're barely discounted at all. More like virtue signalling than actually addressing the wastage issue
@@cassieoz1702 It will change in the next few years. I wasn't able to get this until recently. I don't know about virtue signaling. For me, it was about not paying $8.99 for a pound of organic pepper. What a joke. There are systems out there literally taking from the wastage (the company I subscribe to) and selling it for a tidy profit (because it was discarded at a wholesale inspection center) and then sorted and sold to me and delivered. It will come. I have been using it for a year now. As soon as it was available. It will come to you too. There is too much money in reselling free produce for it not to. I know it will because I live in a rural area too. I live in Amish country.
I started gardening last year and learned you can eat pretty much the entire plant of most vegetables and in many cases different unconventional parts of the plant are actually quite good. I discovered pea shoots. Pea shoots taste even better than snap peas in my opinion.
I grew up in a mountain city, every veg we eat, we also eat the shoots.its a delightful treat specially after a rain they are very plump, best way to eat it is sauteed with a bit of butter salt and pepper
@@nyawja agreed. Best thing to eat are just harvested vegetables. They are super sweet.
it's not probably what consumer want, it's what supermarkets think consumer wants.
A mix of both I'd say.
What utter waste. I never buy those perfect cut leeks. The green parts are great. Cook the whole leek.
Bit of butter salt and pepper great in fish pie 😋
If they're being put back in the field it's not really "waste" it's fertilizer.
its' waste .... it consumed water to grow .... which could have been used for something else
@@Manish_Kumar_Singh bot.
@@ksc1406
what ?
true but it also requires N to break down, and release methane. It would be more efficiently fed to livestock.
Or people
What about all the leaves around the cauliflower and broccoli that are perfectly edible and full of goodness. They also don't make it to the store
You can always buy whole leeks trim them freeze what u dont want at that moment and use them with scraps from other vegetables to make a stock. Then you can compost them or feed your chickens at least thats what i do.
Matt : need good quality program, with occasional celebrity chef (as in, him) thrown in the mix to show people what to do
Guy : is Jamie (Oliver) available ?
classic brit banter
love that!
Tilling it back.into the soil puts the nutrients back in meaning they have to use less fertalizer
I often feel leeks are way too heavily trimmed but as the farmer says, it's what the consumer wants... or at least it's what the supermarkets want. To think people aren't using the whole of what is left though... nuts. It's all edible, the green bits are the best bits.
TFS!! I love love love your videos! Only 2 comments??? What the heck??? I learn a lot from your channel! I also like to cook AND eat!!!! 👍👍👍👍👍✌️❤️🇺🇸
Should be sold as seconds or pieces. We cannot afford to waste food. Taste is the same if you know how to prepare it. Love this show
When you use leeks, keep the top and use it for soup broths or gravy if you don't want to eat it because it is too tough.
Here in Brazil find whole leaks. With all the leaves and with the roots cutted.
I use the entire leek when I make leek and potato soup.
sounds good ,,,
Good lord, that farmer could also reprocess most of that in frozen precut ready cook. But we are soooo wasteful just the tiniest spot and we leave them in the shop
It always confused me when I see leek in the store that has been this drastically cut down.
I'll try to only buy the whole ones
Then I only ever chop off the very end that's a bit dry and the roots, perhaps one of the outer leaves if they are a bit mushy or brown from transport damage.
Well I now want to go the farm with a basket for stocks.
now....I really have to take a LEEK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Underrated😂
price point as well, my closest grocery store has beautiful tropical fruit that sits on the shelf and rots with mold because the price point is so high nobody buys it, they rather it rot on the shelf
It isn't wasted...it's an organic fertilizer for fields. Just compare leek field with a maize field and tell me that it's wasted if it keeps all the good brown compost organic matter that acts like sponge for minerals and water.
How it is not wasted?
When you buy a ice cream do throw half on the ground and call it fertilizer?
@@krikukiks It may be wasted as far as consumption, but it isn't wasted like most food, little of it goes to the trash, or landfill. We waste far to much food in general, but at least its going back to nature.
@@krikukiks the ice cream would actually fertilize the ground via the potassium and phosphorus in the milk fron the ice cream. No food is wasted, its either turned to slop/feed or used to mineralize fields or plants
It's wasted because it requires more land to produce a certain amount of leek if two thirds are wasted. Also more man-hours, more diesel etc.
@@krikukiks You obviously do not understand farming/gardening...you can't keep growing things and not replenish the soil with organic matter....that is why farmers use manure/compost or chemical fertilizers (although that does not return organic matter to the soil). Eventually you end up with sterile, dry, hard soil if you do not add organic matter back to the soil...
This should be donated to the public.
It's not a waste if it's all recycled back into the soil. Less fertilizer.
It's not what the public want, it's what the super markets present us with for their convenience, packaging etc
No food is ever actually wasted
People don't know that the rest of the veg is edible because this is what we are sold in supermarkets. It is not what the consumer wants its what the market has conditioned the consumer to think is good, edible and what they want.
If it goes back in the soil to compost it's technically not being wasted...
Well it does cost a lot of space, machine fuel and intensive labour, this could for instance be invested in renewable energy. If for 100% of the leak would be used, there would be 50% of this space available for biofuel production. :)
@@wietseras9305 what?
Imagine if all this waste that’s thrown away was diverted to school / hospital and charity kitchens where professionals make really good, healthy food to feed our children, our sick and those who need help right now. Instead of just paying some chefs and paying for food transport we pay billions each year to private companies who make awful meals that are not healthy. It’s so easy to fix it the right people get in power.
I use 2 work at a grocery store it pissd me off how much good food they throw away jus cuz it isnt the perfect shape
Hi Mat, Indeed it is shocking to see perfectly edible part of leek is wasted because customers have no knowledge that 95% of the leek is edible. What customers wants is not true but these are decisions are made for pretty displays. I am not aware of a how consumers had communicated this, I am a Food Scientist and Nutritionist and I eat all greens to 90% of it because in my village (India ) thats how food was eaten.
It isn't almost criminal.
It's plain criminal.
Nice awareness
In fairness the soil is 50% more fertile for having half the leek put back
it is not the public who dictate the qualities they want with a leek. It is the super market who set the specifications.. Have you ever seen various quality leeks offered at different prices, no you haven't because the supermarket then loses control
Please stop telling crap!!!!
damn I am so thankful I don't have to pick leeks for a living.
Also, couldn't they sell the leftover leek as animal food or something like that?
It may not be good for animals, for example onions and garlic are bad for dogs...leeks being in the same family/genus or whatever the term is. It gets left in the field so I assume they plow it back into the soil to decompose so it is not really a waste. Farmers grow green manure crops to improve the soil as well.
They plough it back into the field to reduce the need for fertilisers
@@modestoca25 Onions are terrible for dogs, I just recently learned that, garlic is in the same family but it good for dogs and people unless something changed in the research recently. 🤓🍻
Mmmm, bacon with onion type flavor already built in. 🤓🍻👍
@@alsaunders7805 garlic is bad for dogs too but not as bad as onions, same plant family. They used to use it in dog food for fleas but I don't see it anymore.
It's horrific. I almost never through away food. Examples: Wook the leafs of a cauliflower, don't peel (only wash) root vegetables, apples etc. Make maringues out of chickpea water. Throw food into the freezer if you cant eat it before it goes bad. Save EVERY leftover...
And why don't they send the scraps to soup producers e.g? Is it really cheaper to just throw it back in the soil?
through/throw? What is "wook" and "maringues"?
@@modestoca25 Sorry for my spelling, i should have made a bigger effort writing youtube comments 😏. I speak Swedish, English, Spanish and am now focusing on Hindi, but maybe I should study more and one day reach your level of language skills. Nu har jag någon att se upp till, tack! 😙
I can understand ones that have gone bad or will dry out and go bad to be ejected to be used as fertilizer; but perfectly fine ones that are slightly misshapen too? that is sad. Those could be processed into leek soup or other products that the end user could care less about looks of a single leek.
True
That is enough leek waste to run a biofuel plant...
I am surprised that humans are in the field harvesting leeks in a traditional back breaking manner. . Why is there not a machine that will pull them and load them to be taken to the processing building where trimming can be done.
idk but that would mean more lost jobs....
Not our food waste. Some of us don't buy from grocery stores.
Why not make a leek paste from the offcuts and sell it in jars? Convenient. You could pickle it too maybe. I think that would be lovely.
Do they not use the waste in the UK?
It always amazes me that the people on the phone lines don’t ever seem to know their products at all. The dark green parts of the leek is inedible? That’s rubbish!
Omg. Such waste. Are there charities like Second Bite that can rehome these leeks. In Australia, thankfully we have charities that collect from growers and from most major grocery chains and donate the foid to poverty stricken families and members if the community
If you pay for food, you have the right to eat it or toss it. If government wants to feed the hungry, then government needs to pay for the food.
It's absolute nonsense to say "It's what the consumer wants". Can he elaborate on what that means? As far as I can tell, he has the power as a producer to set up deals to use the excess good food. Not to mention that vegetarianism and veganism are trendier than ever, and these people who would be consuming more vegetable products than the average omnivore, plus they tend also to be ecologically conscious.
They are the consumer, and wouldn't want leaks to be wasted.
This leak producer is refusing to take responsibility for how he wastes his own product out of convenience, so yeah it's his fault, not "the consumer".
Wasting food and that includes leaks, is 100% unethical, and this guy is doing it out of convenience and in bad faith.
He could absolutely sell the excess leek parts to some other form of production but I would guess there are two reasons he doesn't. Any company who uses leeks in production of ready meals or similar want the whole thing as the brighter part of the leek generally has a more intense flavour and the prices they are offered are probably low enough that it is more profitable to just use it as compost for future growing.
As someone who works in supermarkets (specifically mostly in produce) I can tell you that we throw away insane amounts of leek regularly as many customers (less than most but still many) actually twist off the green part of the leek and leave it in the store. This happens a lot more when it is sold by weight than when priced individually but it still happens even when priced individually (probably due to habit or just laziness).
Now there is an entirely separate discussion around the source of the general public's ignorance, but in general it is things like this that inform companies about what the "people" want. You vote what you want by purchasing it. Selling broccoli with a much smaller stem would stop if people bought the one with the stem, but they don't, so no the farmers cut off most of the stem before shipping because it is what sells.
There's probably a need for enhancing the gene in that case!
@@dall3n88 I think this is also has some cultural / ethnical background ties, coming from eastern europe you could never waste food and leeks (or idk broccoli, cauliflower) were always used to their maximum output since we never had enough food in general. It's true consumers vote with their wallet, and most firms are solely profit seeking despite what is taught in business management courses, but we can't blame the guy solely when there's clear data that people want perfectly shaped easy to use clean veggies.
There's many stories of Chinese people moving to Japan for example and being amazed at how easy it is to cook since you don't have to wash dried dirt from your carrots, meat is packed and already cut etc.
Lmao
That means people will not buy it for the same price when compare to another leek with those stuff cut. That's what "it is what the consumer wants" means.
Have these people heard of google
Jamie Oliver is the king of leeks. Jacques Pepin never waste food, he would make veggies stocks out of the trimming
This is total waste. We should refuse to buy perfectly packeged veggies! 😤
He can invite us to his field anytime!! We should serve our selves directly 👍 to take care of the left over, and not packaged veggies
@@saraouguerd8018 Definitely 😅 Everyday veggie dish
almost?
Consumer decides? Dont shops do that?
The shops have seen how people will choose the less bruised apples, unsplit tomatoes, and more uniform veggies almost everytime over the ones imperfections. They've watched it for decades. So yes it is consumer driven. Vast majority of people will chose an unbruised banana over a bruised one everytime.
Think outside the box man sell as animal feel or something. Darn I could make your profits grow by 20%.
All of that becomes compost or food for livestock. Calling it foodwaste is like saying the water I flush my stinky log down with is wasted.
It is wasted water!
A lot of energy/fuel was used to purify that water!
Toilets could use brown water ( ie water used to wash food) instead of drinkable water!
It is wasted food,
Compost is not for feeding livestock.....it will make the animals sick....
compost is for soil......and you don’t throw away perfectly edible vegetables for compost....
it takes huge amounts of energy/fuel to mine or chemically synthesize fertilizers for our farms..
@@jimliu2560 what doesn't become compost, becomes slop which is fed to pigs or to pellet which are fed to all different animals
@@mikeyvesperlick6982
No. Food for pigs for example, the veggies need to be fresh and then cooked. You CanNot feed animals rotten, spoiled veggies!
Food waste is a very serious problem. leeks are just the tip of the iceberg, do you know that an average european wastes around 172kg of perfectly edible food per year?
Europeans don't admit that they just like to point fingers at Americans and judge...
This guy doesn’t seem to understand the farmer when he keeps saying they give the consumer what the consumer wants
I get my leeks in an organic veggies box. I probably pay twice what I pay at the supermarket.
The “consumer” isn’t the housewife it’s the supermarkets! I’m a good enough home cook to know that the dark green leaves are packed with taste.
Korean use the whole thing for cooking.
well that's only happen in first world country anyway
LOL it's not the consumer, it's the companies that set the standards. CHANGE YOUR STANDARDS!
Ill have all the rejects for free ids be rich. whats wrong with leak & potato soup all year round Mmmmm
these guys are making video on food waste. Each and every start bit of the video on this channel wastes food which can go for a couple of days. What an irony!
ha...that's only happen in 1st world country...u r too arrogant to eat whatever not please u. we in 3rd world country don't have much option. at least we respect the food that nature gave to us
Vegetables are actually not food for people so there is no waste you can give it to the animals they love it