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My mother would serve up pate so old it was covered in fur. So why do I chuck perfectly OK cabbage on the compost heap?

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Waste not want not: A true representative of the wartime generation, Tom Utley's mum believed that wasting expensive food was an unthinkable crime

Only once, as far as I am aware, did any article of mine cause real distress to my dear old mother, who died seven weeks ago today. This was a column I wrote many years ago, attributing my robust health in adulthood (I’ve had only three days off sick in four decades) to a childhood diet festering with bacteria.

In it, I acknowledged that Mum was an inspired cook who could conjure gastronomic miracles out of the least promising ingredients. 

But I also recorded that she was never much of a stickler for food hygiene, and was always the last to accept that the fur-covered pot of pate in the fridge might be past its best.

In the days before sell-by and use-by dates, I wrote, most people would judge whether or not a lump of cheese or a piece of meat had gone off by the smell. But Mum preferred to be guided by its sound — and only if she could hear it buzzing from the next room would she begin to consider chucking it out.

All right, that may have been a very slight exaggeration. But what was entirely true was my recollection of a lunch party she threw in Northern Ireland, at which she planned to serve an enormous cold ham she’d cooked many days earlier in London, before we set off on holiday.

The 20 or so guests were about to arrive — mostly young Army officers from the local barracks whom she had invited, with typical thoughtfulness, because she thought they might be missing home cooking — when I noticed that the meat seemed to be alive. 

We turned it over and, sure enough, its underside was crawling with maggots, three layers deep. 

Even I, brought up on a diet that would have thrown the Food Standards Agency into paroxysms of horror (had it existed at the time), felt that perhaps this was the moment to make a dash to the local village for emergency supplies of fish fingers or beefburgers to feed a party of 20.

But not my mum. A true representative of the wartime generation, she believed that wasting expensive food was an unthinkable crime.

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So she told me not make such a fuss, calmly scraped off the maggots and served up the ham to our unsuspecting guests. They pronounced it exquisite and — as I faithfully recorded years later — every one of them asked for more, while none, so far as I know, suffered any ill-effects.

But, oh dear. When my fond memories of the incident appeared in print, for once my mother failed to see the funny side. She rang me up, in a torrent of tears, saying that she had people coming to dinner that night, and they’d all think she was a poisoner. 

As I stammered my abject apologies, I told her that at least she had to admit the story was true.

Between sobs, she answered with that old adage (never, I think, officially enshrined in the law, though far too many judges seem to believe it is): ‘The greater the truth, the greater the libel!’

Oh, well, at least she had no quarrel with my central thesis: that we shouldn’t be too fastidious about the freshness of the food we eat, while a bacteria-ridden diet in childhood probably works wonders for the immune system in later life.

A wasteful nation: On average, says the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, households waste £480 a year on groceries they never eat - or £24,000 over the course of a lifetime

I hasten to stress that I’m not a medical man, and I would hate to be held responsible for any unfortunate consequences if readers feel inspired to start serving up rancid food to their young.

But I cannot think of any other explanation as to why I never seem to get seriously ill (touch wood).

I’m a heavy drinker and smoker, after all, and I never take any exercise I can avoid. Yet I seem able to shake off germs that knock my non-smoking, carrot-juice-guzzling, gym-going friends for six.

What is certain is that my dear old mum’s generation will have been even more horrified than the rest of us by this week’s news that, as a nation, we throw away between a third and half our food each year, consigning seven million tons worth £10 billion to the bin.

On average, says the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (don’t ask me why it takes a special interest, though I bet there’s a good reason), households waste £480 a year on groceries they never eat — or £24,000 over the course of a lifetime.

Meanwhile, three-quarters of the vegetables grown in the UK never get eaten, with perfectly edible crops often left to rot in the fields simply because they don’t come up to the aesthetic standards demanded by supermarkets. 

Hard to resist: Where the Institution of Mechanical Engineers is surely right is in blaming this monumental waste on buy-one-get-one-free offers (BOGOFs) and consumers' anxiety over sell-by dates

Leave aside that somebody’s maths seems to have gone wonky here, if we’re being asked to believe that £480 — or less than £10 a week — represents up to 50 per cent of the average family’s annual food bill. Either that, or my lot spend vastly more than most — even after subtracting the small fortune we spend on booze.

Where the Institution of Mechanical Engineers is surely right is in blaming this monumental waste on buy-one-get-one-free offers (BOGOFs) and consumers’ anxiety over sell-by dates. 

And now, I suppose, the moment has come to admit that I’m among the worst offenders. For the truth is that I don’t practise what my mother preached about ‘wasting not, wanting not’. On the contrary, I’m as nervous about best-before dates as the most timid valetudinarian. 

Even when my nose and ears tell me the pork pie I bought at the weekend is still as fresh as a spring morning, I’ll bin it if the packet tells me it’s had its day.

As for BOGOFs, I find them literally impossible to resist (and, yes, I am the one who usually does the family’s weekly supermarket shop). 

I’ve lost count of the times I’ve told myself it would be downright immoral to take that free extra bag of spring greens, when I know for sure it’ll end up in the compost bin. Yet every single time, I’ve popped it into the trolley — sometimes even going all the way back from the bread counter to pick it up when my resolve has cracked.

Tom's guess is that supermarkets offer 'free' vegetables when they find they need to shift surplus supplies before they reach their sell-by dates

I tell myself it’s because our wretched sons never say whether or not they’ll be home for supper (another common cause of food waste, not mentioned in this week’s report). But as the supermarkets know very well, the truth is that it simply goes against the grain of human nature to turn down the chance of free grub.

In the same way, they know that given the choice, customers will almost always plump for the perfectly formed carrot, leaving the gnarled old monster that looks like Keith Richard on the shelf.

So it’s our fault, as well as theirs. 

Indeed, I often think supermarkets are unfairly blamed for offering BOGOFs instead of single packets at half price. Experts in the business will correct me if I’m wrong, but I guess they offer ‘free’ vegetables only when they find they need to shift surplus supplies before they reach their sell-by dates — when they’ll have to be binned by the shop anyway.

Better, they reckon, to have the waste on their customers’ consciences than on their own.

Of course, it feels hideously wrong to be throwing food away when millions in the Third World are starving. But — as everyone knows — it’s simply untrue that a cabbage chucked onto the compost in Colchester is one that could have filled an empty belly in Karachi. 

The problem is storage and distribution. Which is why millions of tons of good food are destroyed in the poorest countries, just as they are here.

So don’t ask me for the answer to world hunger. All I can say is that the lifetime figure of £24,000 wasted on uneaten food by every UK householder (surely a gross underestimate) has set me thinking. 

I hereby resolve to take a leaf from my mother’s book over best-before dates. 

Maggoty ham, anyone? Yum, yum.




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