Tips for food waste reduction

Food. One of the greatest things on earth and, let’s be honest, everyone loves it. However, with the topic of food comes the lesser spoken-about phenomenon of food waste. Approximately one third of the food produced for human consumption (±1.3 billion tons) goes to waste annually. That’s almost 100kg per European consumer and enough to feed 200 million hungry people.* But, because food is a daily necessity, it is not something that can stop being produced, making it up to us as individuals to reduce our own food waste. Sounds tedious? Not at all, below we’ve compiled a few handy tips for your food waste reduction at home!

Food expiry dates merely act as a guideline as to when food should be consumed by, not as a steadfast rule. Our first tip to reduce food waste is a more reliable method to check the freshness of your food: the eye-nose test. Once it goes off, most food will look and smell different to when it was fresh.

Just because you didn’t finish a meal, doesn’t mean you have to throw it away. It will give you some well-needed time out from cooking! Thanks to optimal storage for leftovers in the VitaFresh 0° Compartment of your Bosch fridge-freezer, you can help the food waste reduction.

Cooked too much or purchased something that you won’t be able to consume in a few days? Freeze it in your freezer! Most food, raw or cooked, can be frozen without a problem to reduce food waste at home. To decrease waste even more, freeze food in portions as this ensures you only defrost what you need. Always label and date your items to keep an overview of what you have in your freezer.

When grocery shopping there is nothing more important than checking what you already have at home to prevent repeat repurchases and wastage. Try make a list of your fridge contents before heading out or, if you have one of our VitaFresh fridge freezers with Camera in the Fridge, just access the Home Connect App and check what`s in your fridge anytime, anywhere.

Storing meat and fish is tricky, as these products often come with juices and can contaminate other food in the fridge. So here comes our next tip to reduce food waste: Meat and fish are best stored on the bottom shelf of the fridge. If you have a fridge-freezer with separate fish and meat drawers like our Bosch VitaFresh range, they should be stored in these drawers, as here they are kept separate from other foods as well as fresh.

Preventing food waste starts with a good storage. Find out how VitaFresh by Bosch can help you to store your food properly and reduce food waste at home.

*Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2019, SAVE FOOD: Global Initiative on Food Loss and Waste Reduction, http://www.fao.org/save-food/resources/keyfindings/infographics/fruit/en, 28th January, 2019