May / June 2015
LFHW Partner Guide
Meals for Me
During May and June, Love Food Hate Waste will be sharing lots of tips and ideas
that can help overcome some of the specific problems of managing food in one
person households or in households where numbers fluctuate.
We will be demonstrating how planning meals and keeping an eye on the date labels
on the foods that we already have in can help save money by ensuring that food is
eaten at its best. The Meals for Me theme will also be looking at how single person
households can still make the most of the food bought in larger portions sizes and
any special offers. This will include tips on storage so that food stays fresher for
longer. There will also be ideas on how recipes can be easily changed so that we do
not end up eating the same kind of meal several days in a row.
This guide contains:
 an overview of the theme
 Messages and facts
 example editorial for websites / newsletters / press releases etc
 example tweets and
 some suggested recipes but many more can be found here on our
recipe pages
We hope you can get involved.
Thank you
The Love Food Hate Waste team
Overview
Solo living is on the rise and now 29% of UK households consist of one person. In
addition to this trend, household numbers can fluctuate during the week, and from
week to week. Members of a family can end up eating at all sorts of different times
and some work away from home during the week. Whether cooking for one is a
regular occurrence, or whether having the house or kitchen to ourselves is a rare
event, Love Food Hate Waste will have some great money saving tips for those of us
who want to make the best out of meals just for one.
Those living on their own end up throwing away a larger proportion of the food that
they buy, when compared to larger households and more of what is wasted is
because it goes off before being eaten. Managing food in small households can be
more difficult. Some foods are sold in large packs or portions, individual or smaller
portions may be more expensive per helping, and it can be difficult to break the habit
of cooking for several people.
Even though the amounts of food thrown away by individuals may be thought to be
small, it adds up to a significant amount of both tonnes and money wasted. In fact,
80% of the food that is wasted was done so in instances larger than 50 grams - that’s
about the weight of a slice of bread. When packaged food is thrown away, 80% of it
is in packs that are more than a quarter full. Therefore, food wasted isn’t invisible,
but the good news is that one person households can save £290 a year simply by not
wasting any.
Don’t forget – there’s a wide range of FREE materials that you can
download to help you promote this theme in your local area at
www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/partners
Other things happening at this time
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Early May Bank Holiday – 2nd May
Spring Bank Holiday – 25th May
Ramadan Starts – 18th June
Father’s Day – 21st June
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Wimbledon Starts – 29th June
Messages and facts
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One person households made up 29% of the UK population in 20131
One person households throw away around 1 in 10 meals, but by not wasting
food they can save up to £290 each year.2
Food is usually thrown away in noticeable amounts – 80% (about 5.7 million
tonnes) of food wasted in 2012 was in amounts greater than 50 grammes.3
1 million tonnes of food was thrown away whole or in unopened packaging.4
When packaged food is thrown away, 80% of it is in packs that are more than
a quarter full.5
Managing food in single person households can be difficult when it is sold in
large packs or portions sizes.
Love Food Hate Waste has some great tips for solo living to help make the
most of the food we buy.
What can you do to get involved?
Big actions,
big impact
1
2
3
4
5
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Use our ready-made editorial available at
wwwlovefoodhatewaste.com/partners to generate
press coverage in your local media.
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Meals for Me Events try a cookery lesson or demo that
has a focus on meals for me.
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Community Organisations / Sheltered Housing often
organise get together events or lunches where ideas for
Meals for Me could be explored.
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Charities and community organisations – some will
have a focus on supporting and befriending those living on
their own. Offer some editorial, tips and recipes for their
newsletters or websites.
Office for National Statistics Statistical Bulletin: Families and Households, 2013
Based on WRAP’s Household Food and Drink Waste in the UK 2012
WRAP Household food and drink waste: A product focus 2014
WRAP Household food and drink waste: A product focus 2014
WRAP Household food and drink waste: A product focus 2014
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Help set up a BOGOF Club – a groups of people getting
together to make the most of special offered.
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Events for School Leavers – run a cookery lesson or
demo for those about to leave home or go to university.
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Get the local radio stations to link to the theme. Use
the poems on keeping food fresher for longer as a talking
point
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Suggest to local media to use the partner materials .
Get a journalist or feature writer to try out some of the tips.
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Promote the App – as a great time and money saver for
busy people as it helps with both meal planning and recipe
suggestions.
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Send information to residents and colleagues put a
link to Love Food Hate Waste on your website.
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For retailers and brands: Feature recipes, hints and tips
for solo meals in your in store magazines.
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Why not make use of our free template materials?
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Add information to your customer and colleague
communications – magazines, e-zines, POS recipes in the
appropriate section, website, social media, blogs etc.
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Small
actions, big
impact
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If you do
nothing
else…
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Add the LFHW editorial information to your website
Make a feature of the LFHW information about Meals for
Me.
Put out our template tweets on your Twitter feed
Make use of the Love Food Hate Waste videos – you can
embed any of these on your own website free of chargeespecially the following – Meal Planning, Lovely
Leftovers, Surprisingly Freezable Foods, Fresher for
Longer.
Encourage people to sign up to the Love Food Hate
Waste newsletter which will have a Meals for Me theme.
Blog about Meals for Me. You could use our template
editorial as a starting point.
Link your website to lovefoodhatewaste.com
‘Like’ us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
What are we doing?
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We’ll be working with the media (particularly regional broadcast/print and
lifestyle) and our partners to promote our information on meals for me.
Our social media activity on Twitter and Facebook will ramp up and focus on
this theme during May and June.
We’ll be looking to engage new partners to help us promote the theme, using
our template editorial, recipes and tweets.
Our regular blog will focus on Meals for Me during May and June.
Resources on the Love Food Hate Waste and partners’
site
Template editorial
Twitter ideas
Recipes
LFHW posters/adverts/leaflets
LFHW videos
LFHW App
Fresher for Longer Poems
LFHW Portion and Plan tips
All available on the LFHW partner website at:
www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/partners
Videos available to use
LFHW has lots of free videos available for you to use – from menu planning, perfect
portions, savvy storage to making perfect roast potatoes. There are plenty to choose
from!
To share the videos simply follow the link above, click on the video that you want to
share and then hover the cursor over the right hand side of the video frame – the
“share” icon will appear – click on it and then choose the “copy URL” option to get
the link to paste elsewhere.
If you would like to embed one of the videos on your own website, follow the
instructions above, but instead of choosing the “Share” icon choose the “Embed” icon
– you can then copy the embed code required to add the video to your website.
Editorial
This is example content which you can use for newsletters, websites, articles, blogs
and turning into a press release – mix and match to make it work for you and your
audience.
Meals for Me
Make the most of having the kitchen to yourself and
save up to £290 a year in the process6!
Solo living is on the rise and now 29% of UK households consist of one person7. In
addition to this trend, household numbers can fluctuate during the week, and from
week to week. Members of a family can end up eating at all sorts of different times
and some work away from home during the week. Whether cooking for one is a
regular occurrence, or whether having the house or kitchen to ourselves is a rare
event, Love Food Hate Waste will have some great money saving tips for those of us
who want to make the best out of meals just for one.
Freedom with your feet up?
Meals made just for us have the great advantage of being what we want. No faddy
diets to consider and no-one painstakingly picking out bits that they don’t like. Meals
for one do give us total control over what we eat whether than involves treating
ourselves to something special, or rummaging in the fridge to find something that we
can eat in front of the TV.
Despite these advantages, managing food for solo meals isn’t always that easy.
Many of us find that the pack size is just too large for our needs and it’s rather tricky
trying to get through it before it goes off- even if we did want to eat the same foods
for several days running. Whether it is packs of pre prepared salads, large jars of
cooking sauces, family sized ready meals or even finding that the large multi packs
6
Average person can saved £200 a year not throwing away good food and drink. The average person
living solo can save up to £290 a year.
7
Office for National Statistics Statistical Bulletin: Families and Households, 2013
are so much cheaper per serving than buying smaller portions there are some
challenges around making the best of our foods if we are catering for one.
It all adds up
It might be tempting to think that food wasted by one person households doesn’t
amount to much – but it actually adds up to a significant amount of both food and
money wasted. In fact, 80% of the food that is wasted was done so in instances
larger than 50 grams - that’s about the weight of a slice of bread. When packaged
food is thrown away, 80% of it is in packs that are more than a quarter full.8
Those living on their own end up throwing away a larger proportion of the food that
they buy, when compared to larger households. Around 1 in 10 meals from one
person households are thrown away but the good news is that one person
households can save £290 a year simply by not wasting any9.
So, if that has got you thinking about how you could spent that £290 on something
else, Love Food Hate Waste is here to help with lots of tips on how to succeed as a
solo meal maker.
Single Minded Planning
If it’s just us we have to consider, it’s tempting to wing it rather than plan our meals
but one person households find that a large proportion of food goes off before it’s
eaten. A quick weekly plan will help identify those days when we might not even
need to cook. It also gets us into the habit of checking the date labels on foods in
the fridge and either planning when to eat them, of freeze them for later.
It’s not a bargain if we bin it!
Bulk buying and special offers are a fantastic way of bagging a bargain, and a way to
help our food budget stretch. Even when not bulk buying, one person households
may not have much choice as food often comes in packs for 4 or 6 people. However,
it’s a huge waste of money if all of it or some of it ends up in the bin. One million
8
9
WRAP Household food and drink waste: A product focus 2014
Based on WRAP’s Household Food and Drink Waste in the UK 2012
tonnes of food gets chucked out completely unopened10 so we need to be a bit smart
with special offers to ensure they really do remain a bargain. It’s always worth
asking ourselves if we really like the food. If a multipack of yogurts contains flavours
that we are not keen on, chances are they will end up pushed to the back of the
fridge and are a false economy if they end up in the bin.
Portion out food before freezing it. If you freeze large portions the chances are that
you will end up defrosting too much and it might get wasted. Foods freeze faster in
smaller quantities which helps maintain their quality and it’s easy and quick to
defrost several portions if you need more than one.
It might take a few minutes to portion and wrap your food for the freezer when you
get it back from the shop but it will save you both time and money in the long run.
Try wrapping and freezing individual chops, chicken breasts, two or three sausages,
a couple of bacon rashers, single fish fillets or portions of mince.
With readymade items such as pizza, quiches, pies and cakes, try cutting them into
slices before resealing and freezing them. It’s then very easy just to take out what
you need without defrosting the whole dish. If you are opting for homemade meals,
why not search for inspiration from our ‘cook once, eat twice’ or ‘great for freezing’
recipes online.
Looking after leftovers
It’s often with the best of intentions that we put leftovers into the fridge, expecting
to use them later – but let’s be honest, we often don’t find them again until they look
unappetising so they end up in the bin. A top tip is to get into the habit of freezing
them unless you are absolutely sure when you are going to be using them. Even
one portion is worth freezing – and it also means that you won’t feel obliged to eat
the same as the night before. If our plans change and we eat out, or grab a
takeaway then it won’t go off.
10
WRAP Household food and drink waste: A product focus 2014
If your meal for one does involve making the best use of the main meal from the
night before you can always tweak it by serving different accompanying foods. For
example, our Roasted vegetable couscous or Moroccan style chicken stew are
delicious main meals, but make a speedy, slightly different dish when served in a
pitta bread.
Peg Out and Cling On!
Clingfilm, foil, clips or even clothes pegs are a good way to make sure that your food
stays as fresh as possible. For example cheese or meat slices can easily dry out and
become unappetizing if not in sealed properly. Taking just a few seconds to re-seal
them or if you find that tricky, wrapping food or popping it into lidded takeaway
containers will ensure it lasts longer. For more ideas on how to keep your food at its
best, take a look at our fresher for longer tips on our website.
Re-appraising Portions
Take the guesswork out of getting the portions right for you. It doesn’t look like it
but just a quarter of a mug of uncooked rice or a handful of spaghetti the diameter
of a one pence piece is usually about the right amount for one! For more portions
for everyday foods visit the website.
C’mon Get ‘Appy
Why not download the free Love Food Hate Waste app? It has a diary for planning
recipes, meals and leftovers up to 14 days in advance, a portion planner and
shopping list to track everything you need for your planned meals and alerts you if
you have duplicates in stock. You can store all the information about what you've
got in stock and find recipes instantly that you can make with what you already have
in your kitchen
For hints, tips and recipes on how to make the best of the food that we buy and save
up to £60 a month, visit lovefoodhatewaste.com.
Meals for Me Twitter ideas!
If you use Twitter to share Love Food Hate Waste messages, here are some ideas for
our Meals for Me theme in May and June 2015. Why not try working with local
community groups, find them on Twitter and give them an @ mention as part of the
tweet. Hopefully they’ll retweet for all their followers to see!
1. Solo households bin around 1 in 10 meals, but by not wasting food can save
up to £290 each year @LFHW_UK can help http://bit.ly/Jj7Xga
2. Food keeps going off before you eat it? Planning meals and menus can save
time and money @LFHW_UK has tips http://bit.ly/1F6jl74
3. How would you spend £290? @LFHW_UK is here to help solo households save
money and time at http://bit.ly/Jj7Xga
4. 1 million tonnes of food is thrown away untouched. Try the @LFHW_UK meal
planning tips make the most of your food http://bit.ly/1nHrZjS
5. Make the most of bulk buy bargains! Portion and then freeze them for later
use. @LFHW_UK has tips http://bit.ly/1eUDXyF
6. All wrapped up? Food keeps fresher for longer if wrapped & stored correctly.
See @LFHW_UK for tips and ideas http://bit.ly/1fBOm8k
7. Poet’s Corner! Listen to the @LFHW_UK little poems to help you remember
the ways to keep food fresher for longer http://bit.ly/KGawIE
There are plenty of hints and tips on the website which we find go down very well on
Twitter – please feel free to tweet them. Be sure to include @LFHW_UK in your
tweet so we can help retweet them as well.
Suggested Recipes
Coming soon – new meals for one!