The most wasted foods in restaurants, and what customers can do about it

most wasted food
Potatoes are, by far, the most wasted food in Britain Credit: Bloomberg Creative Photos

No one likes the two slices of gherkin in their Big Mac and McDonald’s knows it. In 2013, the chain created an advert proving so. “Nah, You’re Alright”, was a heartwarming campaign depicting a young man and his mum’s new boyfriend whose only common ground was the fact that they both dislike gherkins - and take them out of their burgers.

But if McDonald’s knows and feels capable of winking towards the fact that nobody wants its slimy green pickles, why do they keep stuffing them inside their Big Macs? In a modern Britain which is starting to face up to the environmental, social, and financial cost of food waste, it feels irresponsible.

OK, so that's only a tiny example of the food industry's wastefulness - and presumably there are some people out there do like a gherkin in their Big Mac - but it does speak to a wider point: a lot of restaurants waste a lot of food.

According to data from WRAP, the most wasted foods in British restaurants are, in order from most to least wasted: fruit and veg, then meat, bread and baked goods, pasta, and rice. But one specific food stands above all others.

“In eight out of the nine sectors (from restaurants and hotels right through to hospitals and schools), the most wasted food is potatoes,” says Eleanor Morris, the hospitality-sector specialist at WRAP. “They are also the most wasted food in households as well.”

Potatoes are a good example of how and where the hospitality industry tends to generate food waste, says Morris. “For a potato, you get peeling waste, plus a lot of food being left on the plate. Chips, for example, often get left behind by diners.”

She points to KFC as an example of how to avoid this waste. The fast food chain launched skin-on fries this year and in doing so saved the equivalent of 35 million potatoes across the entire company.

Portion sizes are simply much too big Credit: RapidEye/E+

But potatoes are far from the only problem food, says Hayley Conick, UK managing director at Too Good To Go, a food redistribution service and app which is working with thousands of restaurants, bakeries and supermarkets across Europe, helping them to fight waste and share their excess food. “We see lots of bread, cakes and salads available on our app, because restaurants can’t always sell them to customers the next day, as they are freshly prepared, and can’t always estimate how much food they will need,” she explains. “Sushi is one of the most popular foods on the app, as a restaurant can’t always know how much to prepare and as the shelf life of sushi is so short, and lots of it is at risk of being thrown away.”

In total, a third of the waste generated by the hospitality industry is from customers who don’t clear their plates. One problem is the fact that portion sizes, many have argued, are now completely out of control. Restaurants bump up portion sizes to suggest better value for money, or as a sign of opulence. But it just isn’t necessary and if restaurants gave it more consideration, they could dramatically cut plate waste, says Doug McMaster,  the chef behind zero-waste Brighton restaurant Silo (which is relocating to London soon.)

“Through experience I know how much pure mass can go into a hungry person's belly versus the belly of someone who isn't hungry. There's a threshold, it depends how it's spread out, whether it's in one plate or across several plates, how much people can take.

“You can tell where the threshold is for the amount a person can eat over a certain amount of time, then there's no waste. Then there's no plate waste and no one goes hungry. Bigger people, smaller people, there's the perfect amount because we've given it that much consideration.”

The problem, thinks McMaster, is our whole culture around food, where paying customers just expect to be given a lot and don’t even consider asking for a smaller portion. “Industrialism has created unnatural amounts of food where it becomes a commodity and food is expendable, we think we can throw it away because there's an endless supply. It gives us everything we want when we want it, but it's a very short-sighted outlook.”

Of course, food wastage and plate waste are only one part of the problem. The other big problem in the industry is manufacturing waste.

“It's less about a specific food, it's more about by-products,” explains McMaster. “To me, there's no such thing as a by-product; a by-product is simply something that we haven't yet figured out or assigned a value for. When you peel a vegetable, it's part of the culture to throw it away or not use the carrot tops because we don't know of how to create a great product out of them. But there's an emerging movement, ourselves hopefully included, that find value in these items.

“For instance, from all our vegetable scraps we make treacle; natural treacle without sugar made from the natural sugars within vegetable scraps.”

To be fair, the hospitality sector is far from the biggest offender when it comes to food waste. According to figures from Waste & Resources Action Programme, the industry is only responsible for about 10pc of the UK’s total food waste. Still, that’s nearly a million tonnes and £2.9m worth of food going to waste, 75 per cent of which is edible.

Which is why restaurants and the hospitality industry have been urged to cut their food waste in half, by offering customers options of smaller size portions at reduced prices, as part of a government campaign to tackle what Environment Secretary Michael Gove has described as an “environmental, economic and moral scandal”.

But before we lay the blame at the restaurants' doors, this whole situation can be improved by diners to a large extent. If you know that you’re not going to eat the side salad, ask the waiter not to serve it in the first place. If you’re feeling full, choose a smaller portion, or just a starter. And seek out the restaurants who are making commitments to tackling food waste next time you’re looking for a more inventive dinner.