Nearly a million tons of bread gets thrown away in the United Kingdom every year -- too stale to use in the morning as toast, and an unappetizing accompaniment at lunch or dinner. That amounts to roughly 24 million slices of bread getting tossed out every day. Some blame the rise of the mass-produced “factory loaf,” created by the Chorleywood bread process. Others say that most people just don’t know how to store bread properly -- the fridge actually makes bread go stale faster -- or they routinely throw out perfectly good bread.
The fate of our daily bread:
- The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs estimates that 32 percent of the bread purchased in the UK gets thrown away.
- A recent survey found that the majority of UK consumers believe that bread lasts only three to four days, yet in taste tests, people could not tell the difference between two-day-old bread and six-day-old bread.
- Low-cost loaves made through the Chorleywood bread process dominate the UK market.
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More Info: The Mirror
Discussion Comments
I see people throw bread away all the time because it's cheap. Wastefulness is not good, but many are also sick of being bullied by the SJW type of shaming mentality too and fight back by refusing to do even simple things that could reduce waste.
Tough problem with many hard to overcome obstacles, but the best we can do is to work harder to discipline ourselves and be good examples.
I store bread slices in small tightly closed plastic bags in the lower (vegetable) compartments of my fridge and they last two weeks.
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