I WILL Stop Wasting Food - Maybe

I'm intrigued by Gordon Brown's latest proclamation that we should all stop wasting food. I agree with him - food wastage is a big problem and I'm as guilty as the next person. If not more so. It's not that I throw away perfectly good food. It's that I allow food to go off and then throw it out. I try to plan my menus and buy my food in advance. Store it properly. All that carry on. It all goes wrong when I get home from work at night. Sometimes, in fact a lot of the time, I get home and the last thing I can be bothered doing is peeling and chopping and making something sensible with the nice fresh food I've bought.

I don't think I'm alone in this one. I think in many households time in the evening is scarce and unless cooking is a particularly pleasurable activity it's something that doesn't become a priority. Relaxing, catching up with your partner's day, doing other housework all take precedence. And as a consequence we don't make that nice risotto we had bought fresh veggies for. We grab a snack or a takeaway.

The average British worker has a 45 minute commute and we work longer hours, have fewer holidays and a lower standard of living than our European neighbours. Is it any wonder we're knackered and can't be bothered cooking?

I get that it's wrong to waste food. I understand that we are putting pressure on our bank accounts and the environment by buying food we don't use, but frankly I don't want to be patronised by a man who has a stay-at-home wife, an army of staff, official dinners prepared for him and the ability to eat out every night at taxpayers' expenses without producing a receipt telling me where I'm going wrong in life. Yet another example of Government interference at its most insidious.