Considering his highbrow educational background and wealthy family, we at Boriswatch don’t imagine the Mayor has ever had to eat a lot of bubble and squeak or tried to make jam out of the remains of his rotting apricots.
"Ah, yes. Takes me back to my Eton days with the senior boys..."
Still, that didn’t stop him this week endorsing a new campaign to encourage Londoners to reduce the amount of food they waste. A recent report estimated that the UK threw away a staggering 6.7million tons of food every year – about enough to feed one Texan – and so leading chefs have teamed up to produce recipes to make the most of leftovers.
Among the recipes is one for a risotto including leftover pork. (Now, we don’t know about you, but we rarely find gigantic legs of non-eaten pork lying about in the back of our fridges. We normally cook just about enough pork for us to eat. Perhaps Hugh Fearnley-Whatsisname is alone in having to cobble together a soup from leftover samphire and wood pigeon.)
BoJo somehow managed to crowbar the unusual and slightly bizarre phrase “marooned mashed potato” into his endorsement. “Londoners chuck away a mind-boggling amount of perfectly edible food, some of which could instead be used to make a great tasting meal. It is high time we treated that lonely dish of marooned mashed potato or plate of rice relegated to the back of the fridge with the respect it deserves. It makes sense for your wallet, as well as for the good of the planet, to make your food go further.â€?
All the “buy one, get one free” offers account for so much waste. It has been calculated that 64% of salad ingredients purchased are wasted.
Instead of “buy one get one free” it would be more economical for the customer if stores just reduced the prices of certain items, and also sold portions for singletons. My friend endlessly bemoans that you can never just buy one portion.
Seriously Boris is on to a good thing here, the food being wasted is just appalling, and even more appalling is the amount being eaten, resulting in clinical obesity.
Funny website thought you may like to know the link in your article (Marooned Mashed Potato) to the campaign to encourage Londoners to reduce the amount of food they waste doesn’t work.
Nick – thanks, all fixed!