For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

Waste not, want not (08.03.11)

I’ve always thought that Prêt à Manger is a rather pretentious name for what is, frankly, just a sandwich shop. The company would seem to now agree with me, for recently they have been referring to themselves simply as Prêt, whatever that might mean. But I can forgive them all the marketing hype when I see their little vans promoting the company’s philanthropy.

Throughout the year they support hundreds of charities by giving unsold sandwiches to the homeless at the end of each day; they deliver over 12,000 fresh meals to numerous shelters in London every week. In total, Prêt à Manger donates over 1.7 million products to charities for the homeless across the UK every year. Their philosophy is that it’s much better that unsold food goes to people who really need it at the end of each day than putting it in the bin.

Being born just after World War II my mother intoned her mantra that nothing should be left on the plate at the end of a meal, for there were many children starving in the world who could do with a square meal. She had good reason for promoting the virtues of preventing food waste, for incredibly until I was seven years old in 1954, Londoner’s were still subject to food rationing.

In the succeeding decades scientists and farmers have been very successful at increasing crop yields but at a cost. Increased use of fertilizers and pesticides has given rise to adverse health problems for many people. While the increase in water consumption used to grow food for the West, has for many countries, promoted friction, indeed many analysts predict the next major war will be caused, not by land ownership, but water rights.

British households throw away a third of the food they buy, while supermarket waste adds a further 25 per cent to that. From a time during the last war when nothing was wasted (even eggs were dehydrated to increase their shelf life), we have come to a point that recently in 2009 the United Nation’s Environmental Programme estimated that more than half of the world’s food is lost, wasted or discarded along the chain from farm to shop, that before consumers’ buy it. They concluded that the world could easily feed itself for a long time into the future, even with the Third World’s burgeoning wealth resulting in increased consumption. All we have to do is radically change our attitude to waste.

The major supermarkets chains claim to send waste food to power the national grid, but this is part of the distorted consumerism that has developed since 1950. What sense is there in sending carefully bred meat and delicately nurtured tomatoes to an anaerobic digester to produce methane gas? This it seems to me, a gross waste.

At least Prêt with their cute little charity vans are putting surplus food into someone’s deserving mouth. It’s just every time I see their evening deliveries I have the notion of two homeless people saying “Oh No! Not wild crayfish and rocket salad with mayo and lemon juice dressing again, what I’d give for a cheese and pickle sandwich.