A Slice of Bread and Butter
The voice of The Bread and Butter Thing - with stories from the frontline of the cost of living crisis from one of the UK's leading food charities.
A Slice of Bread and Butter
Food Waste Wisdom From St Ambrose
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Kids can spot food waste a mile off and they say the quiet part out loud. We sit down with pupils from St Ambrose Primary for a funny, sharp, and surprisingly thoughtful chat about what food waste actually is, why it happens, and what people can do at home to stop good food ending up in the bin.
We start with favourite foods and quickly get into the real stuff: leftovers that never get eaten, food that goes out of date in the fridge, and the difference between unavoidable scraps like peel and bones versus perfectly edible meals that get chucked. The kids share practical ideas that are easy to copy such as saving meals for the next day, composting what cannot be eaten, and giving spare food to others rather than wasting it. One tip that lands hard is simple: don’t go shopping hungry, because overbuying turns into household food waste fast.
Then we zoom out. If a child were Prime Minister, would they fine people for wasting food, ban buying food you will not eat, or make a big national speech to change behaviour? We also dig into why food waste feels so complicated in the UK, from confusing bin systems to the sheer amount of choice in shops, and how those pressures collide with cost of living, the environment, and long-term resilience.
If you care about reducing food waste, saving money on your weekly shop, and building stronger communities through surplus food redistribution, press play. Subscribe, share the episode, leave us a review, and tell us your best leftover or shopping tip.
Hello and welcome back to a slice of bread and butter. With me, Mark and Vic. We're from the Bread and Butter Ting.
SPEAKER_01We run a network of mobile food clubs that take surplus food from supermarkets, farms and factories. We take it straight into communities where families are struggling to get by.
SPEAKER_00For less than a tenor, our members get bags packed with fruit, veg, fridge food, and cupboard staples. It's a weekly shop that helps stretch the budget and take some of the pressure off.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, our members at the heart of everything that we do, they turn food into friendship and neighbours into community. And that's what makes us tick.
SPEAKER_00So, Vic, we're doing something a bit different this week because we've been doing another round of food waste assemblies, as you know. And we thought it'd be a bit of fun to bring some of the kids together to have a chat about food waste. So let's have a listen to the conversation we had with the kids from St. Ambrose Primary.
SPEAKER_03Alpha. Eden, Marianne, Charlotte.
SPEAKER_00Brilliant. What's your favourite food?
SPEAKER_03Making me hungry.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I'm so sorry. You've just had lunch as well.
SPEAKER_03I know. And curry. Curry is your favourite. I love curry.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Spicy and spicy. Uh Jamaican rice and peas.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I like rice and peas.
SPEAKER_02Lamb.
SPEAKER_00Lamb. Do you like all the gravy and the roast potatoes? Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Uh kebab.
SPEAKER_00Oh, okay. It's because I'm Turkish. Do you like it spicy?
SPEAKER_04A bit, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Cool.
SPEAKER_04Lasagna. I like a good katsu chicken.
SPEAKER_00Wow, this is quite sophisticated. Okay, katsu chicken.
SPEAKER_05I changed mine. Uh because I'm like uh a little bit vegetarian. I like lasagna and uh I like actually I like every food.
SPEAKER_00Right. So maybe we should call you Garfield then.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I would love to be called that.
SPEAKER_00Right, so can any of you tell me what you think food waste is? Let's do it with hands so we're not all talking over each other. Let's go first.
SPEAKER_04Just throwing away food.
SPEAKER_00So is it waste or is it just food in a bin? Because there's two things that I see. There's lasagna that goes in the bin, or there's the leftover scrapings on your plate.
SPEAKER_02Lasagna.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Preparing food and just not eating at all.
SPEAKER_03Isn't food waste a bit like being picky? Like if you don't want it, you just don't eat it. Say, for example, you were given a Sunday dinner and then the person didn't like it, and then wouldn't that be like food waste? Because say he only ate like the mashed potato, that that would all be wasting just because he's being picky.
SPEAKER_00Can be.
SPEAKER_05Um I think food waste is like when I eat something and I still want it, my mum says you're just thinking of being hungry, but you're not actually. Then when I get the food, I take one bite of it and then I just leave it on the side and then it gets wasted. Also, I have like one dog and two cats, so we have to go to the shop like every week to get them food.
SPEAKER_00Good for them. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And then in like the next two weeks, I've only had like ten because they're always outside and just eating random stuff outside.
SPEAKER_00So, what what do you think happens with food waste? So when you put food in the bin, what do you think happens to it?
SPEAKER_03It gets wasted and it's not edible anymore because it's very dirty.
SPEAKER_00I see two different types of food waste, okay? So there's things like bones and peel and banana and all that sort of stuff, but then there's the there's any that goes in the bin. So the the food waste, so the bones and the peel and stuff, what do you think happens to that?
SPEAKER_03It gets recycled.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it does in a way, yeah, yeah, yeah. But what about the other stuff? The food that actually goes in the bin.
SPEAKER_02Um do they go to places like the red and butter thing, and it kind of gets sorted out and all that? It does.
SPEAKER_00Some of it goes here, but a lot of it just goes in a bin.
SPEAKER_05Don't like bones and like is it soy get turned to bone meal and sometimes and they put it on plants and that helps the environment. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So that's that's the same point.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. They put is it bones and soil? What is it? You can do. Is it worms that eat it and then like they put it in plants and then it helps it grow?
SPEAKER_00You've been doing your research.
SPEAKER_05I've seen it on Minecraft.
SPEAKER_00Good to see there's some educational uh benefits to mine.
Fridge Leftovers And Expiry Dates
SPEAKER_05That helps the environment, doesn't it? It does. So sometimes waste can be good, but most of the time it's not, and it's like polluting the yard.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so the bit I worry about is a bit where there's things in your fridge and they go out of date in your fridge. Does anybody see that at home and it ends up going in the bin instead?
SPEAKER_03Like the food we don't eat, like say we were lasagna, yeah, and we didn't eat all of it. It would either go in the bin or someone else would, or my mum or dad would eat it.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_04Sometimes I would see just random things in the trash that you can still eat at home.
SPEAKER_00Like what?
SPEAKER_04Sometimes I just see chips and things that are not expired.
SPEAKER_02Usually uh we have two separate bins, a food bin where the leftovers go, and then the things like the bones and the shells of the eggs go and all them.
SPEAKER_05Um so my dog and my two cats is my dog named Draco, my cat is called Dream, and then Dolly. Whenever we get like meat or something that I don't eat, before it expires, we we either give it to my dog because like he loves meat, or because he had chicken nuggets that nobody was eating, and right before it went expired, we just took the uh fingy off it and we just gave the chicken to the uh cats.
SPEAKER_03My auntie has a dog, and when we don't like eat all of the meat, we normally just give it to our to my auntie's dog.
SPEAKER_00Okay. What do you think happens to the veg?
SPEAKER_03Um we normally eat it, but sometimes we do kind of like use it for the next day.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Sometimes it does get a bit mouldy, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
Tips To Waste Less At Home
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So how how do you think? Because there'll be people listening to this that will be thinking, how can I actually stop wasting food at home? What's your top tip?
SPEAKER_03If you've got like any vegetable fruit, put it in the compost so that way it's being a little bit more.
SPEAKER_00If you do that, surely you should eat it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you sh I think you should just eat it, you shouldn't just be picky, just eat it all, no matter what. That's a really good one.
SPEAKER_00Picky. Come on, I I see your hands up already because they want to answer the question, but let's just have a poll. Who's a picky eater round the table? Are you picky eaters, all of you? Wow, okay. Because that's that's tricky as well, isn't it? Because if your mums and dads put something in front of you and you don't want to eat it, what do you do?
SPEAKER_02We usually put it in like bags that has our names on it and then goes to the fridge. Yeah. You're gonna have to eat it next dinner.
SPEAKER_00Extreme measures, but I like it.
SPEAKER_04My mum just puts it in a container and leaves it in the fridge until I want to eat it again.
SPEAKER_00These are quite determined parents. I'm I'm admiring the parents at this stage.
SPEAKER_06Full disclosure, I'm Charlotte's mum. So she knows if she doesn't mean it's gonna be anything else. But think about what we do. We've got a big thing at home of like we've bought beds and we haven't communicated.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_06There's batch cooking, isn't there? Yeah. So there's a pile of chicken soup in our fridge that's waiting to freeze a little bit. And you don't like chicken or chicken soup at all. Do you not like it, Charlotte? Or the stew. If we have a roast dinner, there's always a stew the next day, they're in the slow cooker.
SPEAKER_00What's wrong with your mum's cooking, Charlotte?
SPEAKER_03It's too meaty.
SPEAKER_00Too meaty. If mum was batch cooking it for you, what would be a good thing to batch cook for you?
SPEAKER_03Pasta.
SPEAKER_00Pasta. What about vegetable stews or vegetable soups?
SPEAKER_03I don't mind soup, but not stew.
SPEAKER_00Okay, what kind of soup?
SPEAKER_05Chicken broth. I think some people are just picky because they saw something online and now other people don't like it, but they don't know if they like it or not. They just see other people eating it and them not liking it, but you never know if you like it or not. You shouldn't watch other people, you shouldn't take other people's opinion if it's not your opinion.
SPEAKER_00Don't knock it till you try it, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00That's a really good idea.
SPEAKER_03I feel like you should put a little bit more sugar in the food. It's just sweeter. Wow. I do just put a little bit more sugar in the food.
SPEAKER_00Okay, I don't think that's gonna pass as a government policy, Alfie, but okay.
SPEAKER_02I think it will. You're not gonna put sugar in your pasta, are you? I am.
SPEAKER_00Do you think that wasting food is a good or bad thing?
SPEAKER_02Bad.
SPEAKER_00Bad. Bad, bad. Uh oh, there's a hesitation.
SPEAKER_05Like if you put it in the bin and it's not usable, that's bad. But like compost, uh or like if you're gonna do it. If you give it to other people.
SPEAKER_00Giving it to other people's a good thing, because then still human beings are eating the right.
SPEAKER_05If you like don't have any like cat or dog food and like Oh, you're you're back on feeding the animals, aren't you? But if you don't have any dog food or cat food, you should you should just probably wasting food is a bad thing.
SPEAKER_00Human beings should eat.
SPEAKER_05It is a bad thing, but if you give it away, it's nothing.
SPEAKER_00If we can agree it's a bad thing, can we do a bit of a thought experiment?
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00If you were Prime Minister, what would you do? One thing to stop people wasting food. Let's go Alfie first. And no, you can't put sugar on everything.
SPEAKER_03I wasn't gonna say that first. I was gonna say, like every time you have a meal, you should either if you don't eat it, you should either put it in the fridge, or if you don't put it in the fridge, you should try and eat it all at once.
SPEAKER_00What do you think the Prime Minister or the government could do to say, okay, you've put food in the bin, that's a bad thing, what should we do about it?
SPEAKER_03Like you just like give a big speech saying it's bad to waste food, it's very bad, it goes to dumps, then we can't eat it again, and then what then so then everyone else is then everyone else is like, I don't want to be the person who makes the world a little bit worse by wasting food. So then everyone else just tries their hardest to eat the food and that's cool.
SPEAKER_00Cool.
SPEAKER_02Uh I would first stop after put sugar in the food. And why would you make food that you don't like in the first place?
SPEAKER_00It's a really interesting point that you've picked up on because one of the biggest things that I think wastes food is choice. So the amount of choice and the variety of everything that we have nowadays means that everybody wants to be able to choose whatever they want. And I remember it never used to be like that. Maybe we've got too much choice nowadays.
SPEAKER_05I have a lot of reasons, but I'm just gonna go with my favourite one. Uh if you blatantly or just waste food in public, like throw it out, or if like you're buying food and like you say that you're not gonna eat it. I don't think the shopkeeper should let you buy it if you're gonna just gonna waste it. But I think if they like throw it out in like not in a bin, they should get fine because that's littering, and I just think people should stop wasting food because there's a lot of people that need that food and they're just throwing it out onto the road.
SPEAKER_04So I think we should just convince the parents to tell the children just not to waste food and tell them it's kind of good for them instead of wasting food that's even better than not eating it.
SPEAKER_00What top tip would you give everybody?
SPEAKER_03Don't go short shopping hungry.
SPEAKER_00Don't go shopping hungry?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, like if you don't need it, don't get it, because then you're just kind of wasting money as well and wasting.
SPEAKER_00I've been shopping hungry and it's always tricky because you always buy too much. Xavier, you've got an answer for everything. I can see that arms going up. It's like you've got a helium balloon.
SPEAKER_05I don't even have an answer. I'm I'm literally thinking of one as I'm raising my hand.
SPEAKER_01So I think that you had more fun than the kids did. Let's bring it up.
SPEAKER_00I definitely did. I definitely did.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and like favourite foods. I absolutely loved it when the uh katsu chicken landed.
SPEAKER_00That was I knew you would, but as soon as that landed, I thought of you.
SPEAKER_01Why do I look like a light katsu chicken?
SPEAKER_00No, I I just thought because I know you like um, shall we say ingredient heavy, slightly complicated type food, and they were definitely coming up with some mixes that were more diverse than just a light chicken.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the enthusiasm and the energy was just absolutely fantastic.
SPEAKER_00I love Xavier's comment when he went because every time I asked something, he he would put his hand up before I'd even finish the sentence. And I was like, Xavier, just stop putting your hand up. He's like, I can't help it. He said, I I I just put my hand up and then I think of an answer.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that was funny. I mean, there's a couple of people we work with that I think would do that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, definitely.
SPEAKER_01Do you know what was really interesting? How complicated food waste is because nobody was necessarily wrong, but everybody had a slightly different bit of the story, didn't they? And if you knit those together, then you get kind of like quite a full picture and a better understanding. But everyone's just got the, you know, oh you compost it, oh you can give it to the animals, oh you can. And you were like, why don't you just eat it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, maybe we should uh also kind of lobby Microsoft to put the uh entire food waste process into Minecraft and maybe they'd be better educated.
SPEAKER_01That was special, wasn't it? Super knowledgeable, yeah. So a Minecraft. You know what though, if it lands, if it lands, it lands.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. What about Alfie then and just put more sugar on your food and then you won't waste it?
SPEAKER_01What was that about? Alfie sugar doesn't go off. You can leave it in the cupboard and use it next time.
SPEAKER_00At least he didn't say he'd um make that policy if he was prime minister.
SPEAKER_01No, that was a really tough question you asked them. Mini kids, and you're like, imagine you're the prime minister. You know, first thing, well, I'd rather not, right now.
SPEAKER_00In my defence, I did flag it and they did know and they did have time to think about it. So we've kind of lost that in the edit, which is fine, but Okay.
SPEAKER_01You gave them homework before.
SPEAKER_00They had time to think about it, but I guess they were having too much time to think about it.
Bins And Local Collection Confusion
SPEAKER_01Well, I mean, what would you do if you were Prime Minister?
SPEAKER_00Now you've put me on the spot because I'm I'm thinking we've got five minutes to talk about this.
SPEAKER_01You're in the lift with Keystarmer.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01What are you telling him to do?
SPEAKER_00I would weigh everybody's food waste. I would separate it, weigh it, and charge for it by the kilo.
SPEAKER_01At the household level.
SPEAKER_00And both uh industry and household level. And there'll be all sorts of consequences, and people will hide stuff and but I'm just thinking, I'm just using my green bin for everything.
SPEAKER_01Like my grey bin or my green bin. I'm not using my food bin.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I don't have a food bin yet. It's not come to me. Do you have a food bin?
SPEAKER_00I've got two because one's the dog.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so you're just like feed the animals, you're in that company.
SPEAKER_00No, no, no, no, in my defence, it's part of the food waste hierarchy. Plate scrapings are good enough for the dog.
SPEAKER_01And then do your local council come and collect your food waste?
SPEAKER_00Well, it's it's really odd, Vic, because we have a food bin in the house, and then that food bin gets bagged up and put in the green bin and just goes with everything from the garden.
SPEAKER_01Well, this is already complex because your green bin does garden stuff. If I want a garden bin, mine's brown.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. It doesn't make sense, does it?
SPEAKER_01No. We need one colour of bin, the same bins, the same thing everywhere, don't we?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Maybe that's why it feels really complicated when you start talking about it.
SPEAKER_00I think it does. I it it's not a straightforward area for sure, because if we were going through it all thinking about it high level, I possibly would turn around and explore more of that point about there is too much choice nowadays.
SPEAKER_01Ooh.
SPEAKER_00I know.
SPEAKER_01That's not something the government would want to take on. That's like nanny state stuff, Mark.
SPEAKER_00No, I disagree. I don't think it's nanny state stuff, because I'm not I'm not trying to take the choice off, but we don't need 12 ketchups, we don't need 10 tomato soups. That's what I mean.
SPEAKER_01Still a strange place for government to get to. No one could see my head wobble then, could they?
SPEAKER_00I could, but it how else are we gonna make any of the changes that we need to make? Because nobody's gonna listen. Let's be frank. Every time there's another crisis, like, oh, I don't know, Iran. The environment goes off the agenda and everybody goes price driven again. And I don't think the economy should drive every decision and every policy that way, because this is how we're getting more and more populist, but also driving out human rights and environmental issues from many of the pricing decisions that people make. And then in 20 years' time, when we're all working for China, everybody's gonna say, What happened?
SPEAKER_01Wow, you did just say that. We won't all be working for China, let's be clear. But in 20 years' time, it'll be the kids that you met at St. Ambrose that are starting off in their careers proper that are dealing with whatever situation we're in, won't they?
SPEAKER_00Well, go on then, Vic. If we're not all working for China, what will we be doing? What will the economic state look like if every choice that we're making is just to make life cheaper? And I get this is where we're we are provocatively. I'm currently in the space of saying dropping prices and everything is not the uh right policy every time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean would economically I don't think we're going we're gonna do a massive recovery, are we, and be like in a brilliant situation. But equally, I do believe that we won't all be uh working for China.
SPEAKER_00Uh so the majority of government bonds at the moment do still sit within the UK, but that is slowly moving and drifting away. So there will be more and more overseas control.
SPEAKER_01This is really deep. Nobody cares about government bonds. What they care about is can they afford to eat their next meal?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I'm absolutely with you. And with less choice and more focus, you could do that.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Well, mark a game for Prime Minister next, is that you know?
SPEAKER_00No, just no.
SPEAKER_01So I think that the kids were onto something with their little hacks about don't go shopping hungry because we've all made that mistake and you don't even come out with food that goes together. Agreed. Like that's terrible. And I think one of the things that was a bit of an undercurrent in what they were saying was about nobody wants to be seen to be the one. People know that wasting food isn't a great thing, especially when you're struggling to buy it in the first place. So being seen to be that person, you don't kind of feel comfy within yourself, even though people may not call you out. And I think that's a real helpful instinct that you know our kids are growing up with. You know, hopefully that'll help drive their behaviour. Yeah. I didn't expect that.
SPEAKER_00No, because I I think that was Charlotte, wasn't it? Because she goes shopping with her mum and she was saying don't go shopping greedy or hungry, and she's bang on. Um, but then Alfie as well, being, you know, if I was prime minister, I'd make the speech about it because I want everybody to feel like I don't want to be the dude that's doing something that's going to damage the planet. Alfie for Prime Minister with a sugar tax on him.
SPEAKER_01I mean, he wasn't necessarily saying make things more sweet, he was saying save the sugar from going to waste, which is a slight nuance.
SPEAKER_00I I feel some parent protection going on there.
SPEAKER_01Was it Charlotte's mum that decided that she needed to chip in and like clarify some bits? I loved that.
SPEAKER_00So if you'd like to know more about the bread and butter thing and what we get up to, you can find us at Team TBBT on TikTok, Instagram and Twitter on LinkedIn or online at breadandbutterthing.org.
SPEAKER_01And if you've got any feedback or thoughts on the podcast, or you'd like to come and join us and have a chat, please drop us an email at podcast at breadandbutterthing.org.
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