New campaign to seek out UFOs in the freezer

26 November 2009

Love Food Hate Waste launches Freezer Expedition to seek out frozen foods. 

New research* from Love Food Hate Waste into freezer use in UK homes, reveals a third of us find food in the freezer we’d forgotten about or can’t identify, called “Unidentified Frozen Objects”. We keep £860m worth of food in our freezers, but doubts about freezing a wider variety of foods, and a belief that freezing is only for long-term storage, means that we are taking the freezer for granted.

Food that is thrown away which could have been frozen adds to the food waste problem.

In the run up to Christmas when the freezer comes into its own, Love Food Hate Waste is calling on us all to find out what’s inside our freezers. By making meals from what’s already there we can save money, postpone our regular shop and make room for new festive foods, homemade meals and those inevitable leftovers.

TV personality Sue Perkins is calling UK householders to join the Freezer Expedition at lovefoodhatewaste.com this weekend in preparation for the festive season.

Julia Falcon of the Love Food Hate Waste campaign explains:

“The Freezer Expedition is a journey into the unknown for some of us. Our new findings show that most of us would never freeze traditional Christmas foods if we’ve over catered, even though freezing means we can choose to eat them later. So Love Food Hate Waste is giving myth busting advice on what we can freeze – and it’s practically everything.”

Christmas cake, leftover turkey, potatoes and any extra stilton can all be frozen for another time.

Based on 2008 figures, UK households are about to spend more than £520m** on Christmas dinner alone this year. So, starting the season with more room to freeze our Christmas foods and leftovers should help us all save money and reduce our food waste.

You can watch Sue Perkins at lovefoodhatewaste.com taking part in her very own Freezer Expedition and discovering practical tips as she goes.  As Sue says:

“The freezer is just like a ‘pause’ button to help save foods – it’s no longer a dark, distant place to me.”

The website also features a new range of freezable family meals to make at home, many of which can be cooked straight from frozen for convenience over the holidays.

Top freezer tips from Love Food Hate Waste:

1. Food can be frozen at any point up to the end of the “use by” date.
2. If you defrost raw meat and then cook it thoroughly, you can freeze it again. Just take care to defrost thoroughly and re-heat until piping hot.
3. Freezing fresh foods and home-cooked meals is a great way to save food for later, sealing in the goodness until you are ready to eat it – freeze in portions or “meals”.
4. Almost any food (including hard cheese, milk, mashed potato, bread, homemade meals and cakes) can be frozen – check the website for more information.
5. Cooked food should be cooled before transferring into the freezer.
6. It is safe to defrost food at room temperature, provided you intend to eat it as soon as it’s thawed. Or defrost in the fridge overnight and plan to eat within 2 days.
7. Labelling and dating foods before you put them in the freezer will help avoid ‘UFOs’ in the future.
8. You can prepare ahead for Christmas by parboiling your potatoes and freezing them.
9. If you’re going away this Christmas don’t forget you can freeze any unused milk before you go.
10. If you’re struggling to get your portions right why not go to lovefoodhatewaste.com and use our portion calculator to find out exactly how much you need to cook Christmas dinner

Editor's notes:

* Freezer habits & attitudes quantitative survey; Freezer usage in-depth study & review October 2009

** Nielsen Homescan data based on Christmas foods 2008 spending figures

Key facts from the Love Food Hate Waste campaign:

• Since the Love Food Hate Waste campaign launched, 2 million homes are feeling the benefits of cutting back on the food they waste, saving £400 million.
• £12 billion worth of food and drink is thrown out every year in UK homes. Householders are throwing out on average £480/year. This increases to £680/year for families with children – or £50 per month.
• We throw food and drink out for two main reasons: 1) we let it go off, either completely untouched, or opened/started but not finished, costing £6.7 billion per year.; 2) we cook or prepare too much, costing us £4.8 billion per year.
• In terms of weight: 5.3 million tonnes of food and drink is thrown out every year in the UK – such as cheese, milk & juice, meat and fish, fruit and vegetables and bread. This figure does not include anything we wouldn’t normally eat, like peelings, bones, or crusts.
• Wasting food has a huge environmental impact – if we stopped throwing food and drink away, it would save the equivalent of at least 20 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.  That’s like taking 1 in every 4 cars off our roads.
• Food and drink waste is damaging to the environment because producing, storing and getting the food to our homes uses a lot of energy and resources – all of which are wasted when it gets binned. And most of this reaches landfill sites where it emits methane, a powerful greenhouse gas

General Footnote:

• For more information on the Love Food Hate Waste campaign, visit: http://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/
• Key findings of our recent research on the nature, scale and causes of household food waste can be found at: http://www.wrap.org.uk/retail/food_waste/index.html
• WRAP helps individuals, businesses and local authorities to reduce waste and recycle more, making better use of resources and helping to tackle climate change.
• Established as a not-for-profit company in 2000, WRAP is backed by Government funding from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Working in seven key areas (Construction, Retail, Manufacturing, Organics, Business Growth, Behavioural Change, and Local Authority Support), WRAP’s work focuses on market development and support to drive forward recycling and materials resource efficiency within these sectors, as well as wider communications and awareness activities including the multi-media national Recycle Now campaign for England

WRAP Press Office
01295 819695
viki.coppin@wrap.org.ukTel:

Susan Nisbet
PR Manager
07950 923260Tel: