BBC Food Survey

British households throw about a fifth of their food – untouched and uneaten – straight in the bin, according to a BBC radio show.

Sandra Sykes, producer of the BBC Radio 4 program, ‘Costing the Earth’, says: “Our shopping trolleys are bigger than our stomachs.”

She says people in the UK no longer prepare meals from leftover scraps and over cautiously throw out food – which might be perfectly edible – as soon as it passes its use by date.

“People are happily sending food to the bins that other people would be content to eat. That’s the moral issue.”

It all works out to an average of $1025, spent every year on wasted food by each person.

The program says this would be enough to pay the entire British council tax bill of almost $49 billion.