Some things seem difficult to purchase in the right quantities. Why do we always end up with too much celery in our fridge?

Things mentioned in this podcast:

• WRAP report on food and drink waste

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Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts, we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Peter Coghill, Chris Wragg and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights. And this week, we're discussing celery. Go for it, Nick. Yeah, well, I mean, you're all familiar with celery. It's a, you know, sort of abundant, popular but, you know, but niche vegetable. Well, you say you hate it. And I think most people don't like eating it. It really isn't particularly tasty, no matter what you put on it. The only way to make it tasty is making it really unhealthy. And that's negating the point of celery. But you know, it's absolutely essential in some foods and shoes and things, you've got to put celery in, you know, to get it gives you there's an underlying sort of base glutamate taste, which you know, you need celery for its fundamental ingredient in, you know, various regional cuisines and so on. So anyway, the other the other week, I was doing that and I bought a celery lump, you know, I don't know what the word is, but a big, you know, bulb of celery, a bunch of celery. And it was huge. I mean, like celery always is right. Celery comes in bunches of what 10 sticks or something way more than you'd ever want to eat. I mean, you know, the rate of celery consumption can never be high enough to use up one of those things. But I did my best and I made some celery salt with the leaves, for example. And, you know, I've now got the problem of having too much celery salt. But the point is that you know, celery comes in portions that are way too big. And, you know, why? Why are they selling me way more celery than I need? Okay. So I think the answer is I don't know about celery, but let's talk about celery salt for a minute. Yeah. Is the there's no way the retailers would ever make a living if they were to sell celery salt in the levels that people needed. And so so one one pot is enough to last a lifetime. Well, I'm now finding uses for it. So it's quite nice sprinkled on toast on buttered toast. In fact, basically, celery salt you can use in place of salt. So, you know, actually, I've discovered since getting into the whole celery salt scene that there's more there's more uses for it than you'd think. And they generally just use it in place of salt for for fun, really. You're a celery salesman's dream. You are, aren't you? It's yeah, they saw you coming. Well, OK, so I've tried to answer the question, but I'll open it to others as well. Peter.

Well, I mean, I do. I like celery raw and in other forms. So I a lot of fooling yourself. So I sometimes find actually the celery is not big enough because I have it nearly every day and what? But it's also on average, you're getting enough celery. Yeah. I chuck it in nearly everything. So if I make a bolognese sauce, I'll put finely chopped celery in. Yeah,

it's nice to be there, which that's OK. Yeah, you can put you that's authentic.

Or a sauce in a yeah, any kind of a ragu or any kind of tomato sauce goes in there. But yeah, so but I think I get the same thing, the same problem with other things. So bread, for example, you can buy half loaves of bread, but then they're never quite as big. They're not the right. Never quite as big that half loaf is. They're never quite as big, but they're not quite the right dimensions for a piece of toast loaf. They're always shorter and squatter. And as a single person, I can never get through a whole loaf of bread unless I freeze the thing. Yeah. So I have a similar lumpiness

problem with other other things. You see, I think the key criteria for things that get wasted is this sort of indivisibility, the lumpiness. So you can't really get smaller amounts of celery. I suppose they could sell you an individual stick or whatever. Yeah. Why the hell don't they do that? Because they do that with cucumbers. Right. Yeah. They don't grow a bunch. But you can buy individual bananas, for example. Yeah. Yeah. But but well, I've got some data on food waste, which will shock you. And indeed, this is really what we want to talk about. We want to talk about waste. So the things are the criteria, I think, particularly for food waste are the indivisibility and low cost of the of the item. So celery, you know, to sell a small amount of celery wouldn't necessarily be financially viable. You have to sell it in sufficient, sufficient chunks and also perishability is critical, right? Because if you could leave celery in your fridge for a year, you'd eventually use all your all your celery. Which is kind of how it works

with celery salt. But anyway, but nonetheless, I agree. There's a link with perishability. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So looking at the data on food waste. And there is quite a lot of there's there's various studies of this and including the seminal and highly recommended study into household food and drink waste in the UK by the Waste and Action Resources, Waste Resources and Action Program. Wait, I'm going to give you a quick prediction. Go on. I think the big one is lettuce. And I'm going to say something insane, like 75% of all lettuces is waste. Well, okay, I can give you so actually, so they, yeah, they categorised it. So we can't quite drill into individual food items as such. Well, actually, I'm just checked and you're wrong. They do have it broken down actually by fruit and veg. But just first of all numbers, raw numbers, according to UK Harvest, the most wasted foods in the UK are potatoes, right? Guess how many potatoes we throw out per day? I know the answer to this. Okay, what do you think, Fraser? In the whole of the UK? A million. A million. Six million potatoes. Wow. 24 million slices of bread. Six million loaves of bread. That's annually? The potatoes? No, it's per day. Okay. It can't be annually. That would only be one potato out of

every 10 people. I know, but in, okay. I mean, on the RAP study, yeah, no, I agree. That does,

but six million. It amounts to in total, data I have in the, well, in Europe as across Europe as a whole, but consumer waste, this is not production waste, which is actually significantly higher, about 90 kilos per person. Interestingly, sub-Saharan Africa, it's five kilos per person. Is that now per annum in all? That's per year, yeah. So looking at the food groups, absolutely top of the list, no doubt about it, fresh veg and salads, right? Where around about 2 million tonnes per year is wasted in the UK, and they reckon that about sort of one, about a million of that, about half of it is avoidable, possibly avoidable. Sorry, no, nearly all of it is avoidable or possibly avoidable. And then it's, then it's drink is the next category, fresh fruit, bakery, meals, et cetera. So there's, you know, so that's pre-prepared meals and so on. And then everything else is quite small. Meat and fish, dairy and eggs are up there, but most of the other stuff is quite small in terms of tonnage. Looking at the actual drilling into the individual vegetables. So potatoes dominate here, right? So nearly all the waste is basically potatoes and it's something like nearly 800,000 tonnes per year of potatoes are wasted. And they think nearly all of that is avoidable or possibly avoidable. And then, and then it's mixed vegetables, onions, the humble carrot, cabbages, lettuces are the sixth most wasted in terms of tonnes. So yeah. So yeah, you've got, and so in terms of avoidability, obviously there are things like, things like tea bags and peelings, but there's also, that's about, there's about 19% of waste, about 20% of waste is unavoidable because people have preferences. So that's things like potato skins, bread crusts, fish skins, you could eat them, but you don't want to. And the other 61% of food waste is apparently avoidable. So there we are. So, so there's a lot of food being thrown out. And yes, it is largely fresh fruit and vegetables. Okay. But you were wrong about it being cabbage,

lettuce based. Yeah. I'm really surprised about the potatoes. In Norway apparently it's bananas. Bananas are the big thing that get thrown away. Yeah. Now the question is, do the Norwegians

buy their bananas in pre-prepared bunches? Because if they bought them one by one,

we're throwing out one and a half million bananas a day. Because I have a banana every morning with my breakfast and trying to keep a banana cycle going is quite difficult because you, obviously they ripen pretty quickly. It's tricky. So you've got to have some green ones on the go and you've got to have some, you know, riper ones and you're using them every day. It actually requires three banana trips a week to keep a banana cycle. You're barely paying for

it in the calories expended by consuming those bananas. I might as well just stay at home. Cut the bananas out altogether. Yeah. I mean, holding down that cycle and a full-time job as well. It's tricky. Yeah. Peter, any thoughts at this stage? Yeah. Well, there is, you'll be

glad to hear a rediscovery of an old way of shopping that might be solving this. In response to the convenience shopping and the more smaller trips to shops, the decline in the weekly shop, I spotted one the other day, actually I happened to stop for a coffee at a coffee shop that was doing this very thing. It was zero waste markets. So back to the old stage, back to the old style of shopping where rather than buy a kilo of flour or a kilo of rice, you go in with your own container and you buy as much of the thing that you want from loose. So you stick a scoop into the bag and pull out whatever, however much you want, which is positive because this is driven really by the trying to cut down packaging rather than anything else, but it could solve the problem. Is it more costly to the consumer or not? Well, it's going to be more costly. It's going to cost more to store and to provide your goods like this. It's probably going to be more potential wastage on the retailer side, I would imagine. And if it's sort of perishable stuff that needs to be handled properly and put into containers properly, then yeah, you're going to need more staff and things to provide that kind of stuff. But also just thinking through for the

consumer, in theory, it might be the case that it costs more by weight or per, but in theory, let's say if you're like an average family, you're not throwing away 60%, let's say. And so in theory, it's even if it looks like it costs more, it doesn't. It'd be an easy way to hide cost,

easy way of bumping the price without making it harder for people to compare the price.

The problem I have, right, is baked beans. So baked beans, they do 150 gram tin of baked beans, right? The little small baked beans. It's a one portion thing. Just to say, it's not one portion,

it's half a portion. Well, hold on. I am a huge baked bean fan. I often have debates with my family about what my last meal would be. And baked beans is a frequent appearance. I'm all ears. I

want to hear all about this. So for that tin, 150 grams is about between 50 and 60p say. For the 415 gram full-sized baked bean tin, which is nearly three times as much, 75p. So tiny increase in price. Now, obviously that's more wasteful financially for me as a purchaser, but also in terms of packaging, you know, the surface area per bean of packaging is probably going up. But nonetheless, I buy the smaller packets of beans because that's what I want to consume my beans in. So I think there's a consumer willingness there. Put the beans in a bowl. I don't want them in a bowl, that's manky. I don't like that.

Well, see, there you go. Your weird preferences. I mean, what you're saying is true. You're a definite westerner. So just this thing about one person versus multiple people and so on in the economies of scale of that, definitely borne out by the facts in that single person households waste on average 140 kilos of food per year. But four people only waste on average per person about 80 kilos each. And apparently adding children doesn't make any significant difference there. So having children or not, or four grownups versus two grownups and two children, roughly the same. Age of occupants also doesn't. I mean, I know we might think of as old people as being somehow more careful or coming from an age where you didn't waste food, but that's bullshit. Then they're just as likely to waste food as millennials are. So, yeah, I mean, what Chris is describing there is, I think, one of the drivers here, isn't it? Yeah. He's not willing to put aside his disgust of putting beans in a bowl. Whereas I think I'm a fanatical food waste reducer. I mean, I hate throwing food out. So I just use it up. You eat it all. I eat it. So if there's something that's kind of going off or which has passed its sell by date by day or two, I'll cook it and find something I can cook it, like a recipe that I can use that thing in.

That's kind of like the sunk cost fallacy almost, isn't it? You know, there are two kinds of waste. One is that you don't want to spend more than you have to on something. The other is that you insufficiently use what you've already spent. And if you've prepaid for something, you're more inclined to use that thing. Because it's free. Because it's free.

I mean, it is free. That's not irrational. It's free at the point of use to finish that bean.

Peter, anything? Well, I kind of, with my technocratic head on, I foresee... Yeah, there's a blockchain solution out there, surely, Peter. No, there's not. Celery is a service. Well, this is going to be... Yes, yes. So I...

You're into your pulses, by the way, aren't you? I do like pulses.

Beans, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think I pick up... Well, by the way, it should be called Cucuba.

No, it shouldn't. So I get where Peter's coming from, but there is... And that would no doubt work. But there is inherent lumpiness, which means that waste is going to be unavoidable. And I mean, one obvious thing is you can't bloody grow a celery on demand, right? So the celery quantities have to be decided at the point of sowing. And it's not for months later that you actually get the celery. So there's like right from the off, you've got this source of...

My FICO plans never work. Yeah, exactly.

So you've got this issue of sort of intertemporal problems of growing stuff in terms of anticipated demand. Well, that's going to create problems.

Well, technology itself could, at the point at which we have sort of instantly growing organic matter or 3D printing of beef or something.

I think you just get very good at optimizing the scheduling problem. So if the consumer rate of use of celery backs up and you're growing too much celery, then you convert more celery into sources that keep longer.

Yeah, I mean, the price will moderate that. But I'm just saying that there's real life imperfection. And I mean, you know, things like the... You know, OK, you can't... I mean, you can't grow a quarter of a chicken, right? You can't kill a quarter of a chicken. I don't know if you know that. You can eat a quarter of a chicken. Consumption is smooth-ish, and production is lumbery. You probably could kill a quarter of a chicken. And there are also economies of scale, real life physical ones. Like if you're transporting goods, it's better to have a one full lorry than five, you know, one fifth full lorries. You know, it's just... Yeah, and ultimately... There are real life things that make the real world lumpy. And that lumpiness is, you know, is imperfect when it comes to trying to match consumption.

Even where that lumpiness doesn't exist, there is still a commercial pressure to sell in lumps, right? So take something like your mobile phone data usage, right? There's no particular requirements, presumably, why you have to... I know there are pay-as-you-go sort of services. But generally, people buy their bundle and they're looking at all these transferring of things. But that is presumably to sell you more stuff than you actually need. It's why there's six bags of crisps in a multi-pack, right? You know, people have one a day in their packed lunch or something. But, you know, let's chuck an extra one in there because they'll probably eat it on the Saturday then and we'll sell them more crisps. So that, you know, the producers both have their own production reasons and logistical reasons for why they need to move things around in lumpy qualities. But also, we're being driven to... They're trying to force us to consume more of whatever it is.

And that's what's happened, actually, in confectionery with things like Cadbury selling you... You can now get bags of Whisper Chocolates and things like that and other things that... Actually, the bit you're getting is actually smaller, but they're selling you into a larger package, effectively. Perception things. Yeah.

So maybe there's been a celery arms race between supermarkets selling you ever larger bunches of celery. They certainly changed the color of celery. Celery used to be more white, kind of pasty color.

Well, I mean, that's a good point. Organic products are designed for, you know, consumer behavior. So apples get bigger, grapes get sweeter. There's no reason, presumably, why they couldn't grow a stick of celery if they put enough resource into, you know, sort of genetically modifying it.

I mean, part of the problem... So we only briefly touched on, you know, waste at the production and retail end, which is actually about twice as much as the waste at consumer end. So, you know, it's... And that is, you know, people... Basically, supermarkets chucking stuff out or not buying it and farms destroying it because it's, you know, lumpy, weird shaped apples and, you know, fish that are not quite the right size and all of that kind of thing. And I know there's always a TV chef. It's usually Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall or Jamie Oliver will come on every couple of years and kick up a stink about this. And supermarkets will go, well, from now on, we're going to sell ugly potatoes. And because people are idiots, no one buys them. So we've only ourselves to blame for... It's not... It wouldn't be fair to blame producers for that because they really are giving people what they want. And it's people like him who won't have a bean if it's been in a bowl. Yeah, I want to return to that, actually. But, you know, it's a bit like McDonald's getting hassled for selling so much unhealthy stuff. And they said, OK, great. And they put more salads on their menu. A few months later, had to take them because no one was buying them. Look, where do we want to... I mean, actually, we need to kind of wrap up, to be honest. I thought we would go on to a few other bits and pieces to do with waste that was not to do with food. But I think...

I think we skirted around that.

Yeah, we talked a little bit about mobile phone data. Actually, I do want to close it off with... Well, look, first of all, let's return to this thing about baked beans. OK, because that... Yeah, I don't know what's going on there. Because I don't... So I always buy a big tin, or my wife does. And that's exactly two portions in there for my baked beans on toast. OK. And yeah, half it goes in the microwave and the other half just goes to another bowl and cover it either with a plate or some other covering. And the only thing I don't like about it, it means that I then have to make sure I have baked beans twice in two or three days. That's the only thing I don't like about it. But I can kind of live with that. I don't like this sort of slightly sort of princess approach to like, no, I'm not having... How about this? I just stick it in a bloody tin, close the tin lid and stick it in the fridge. Yeah.

I put the whole tin in one heat proof dish, heat it, take what I want and then heat it again next time I want it.

Well, so a few things that like when they come out of the, they're obviously like really kind of vacuum packed in there and in a very sort of sterile environment when you get them out the bowl and you put them into your own bowl. I think part of this, even if you seal it, it's usually an imperfect seal. And I think you get evaporation of the source, right? So I've got a solution for you. They're a bit more dry. They're a bit drier and they, some things going on with oxidization and the skin, they get a slight custard. You get custard skin. They get slight.

But also, I tell you what, you're right, but what you do is when you first pour them out, okay, I think the first pouring. The first, the bit from the first half will be more juicy than the second half. And so therefore what you do is your first portion that you eat on the first day, you have the second half is drier so that the more juicy one goes into the fridge. Yeah, I'm going to show, I know I shocked you with my leaving beans in the tin, but I'm going to blow your mind now. Okay. I actually drain the juice off beans when I open them. Okay. Which kind of beans? Baked beans. What? Drain out the tomato sauce. There's always too, way too much sauce. So you just have to drain it off and I just have the beanie bit. And plus I like my beans really, really overcooked. I like them practically mushy, like, you know, refried beans. So yeah, well, I mean, there you are. That's just bizarre.

I've got another tip for you. Yeah. If you store your cans upside down, assuming you've got them upside down, then it's easy to pour stuff out because the juice will be underneath and will run out rather than the beans all being stuck to the bottom of the tin.

I knew there was a reason why we did these podcasts. Well, yeah, I mean, I think we should start doing lifestyle and food podcasts instead.

Aleph Insights influence. Yeah.

Look, just to finish things off really briefly, slightly off topic, but I mentioned it earlier on. Yeah. Baked beans on toast. So yeah, for crimes against podcasting, we've all been sentenced to death. Okay. And so my personal last meal would either be baked beans on toast or steak and chips. Right. That would probably be my last meal. Last meal. What would be your last meal? Well, I'd probably actually, boringly, steak and chips. I think that's the most common last meal, actually, in general. Or a Sunday lunch. Sorry, I forgot. A Sunday lunch. Yeah, but for me, it would be a cheeseburger. Good old fashioned cheeseburger if steak and chips were off the menu.

Cheeseburger in paradise.

And I would have to be cooked by me because nobody else can do it right. Because you get cheeseburgers from all gastro pubs now. They're always really thick. And I like to have a double cheeseburger where both burgers are quite thin. Yeah, I agree. Like the American smash burger. Exactly, that is. Perfect burger. Makes sense, makes sense. Peter?

Well, either like a sort of Argentinian mixed grill with literally every kind of meat on it. Sweetbreads and everything. Black pudding. Every kind of meat combination you can get on there. Or some extremely old rice that will poison me so I can deny my execution of

Yeah, Chris? Yeah, well, I'd probably go for a sort of several week long banquets just to prolong my life a little bit. But no, if I had to pick an actual last meal, it would probably be a pie of some description, I think.

A banquet for Chris would be like a bowl of peas per day. Yeah. That would be it. Yeah, a fresh bowl of beans. Yeah. Yeah, a fresh one, not one that's been put in. Yeah. Pie, yeah. Steak pie. Steak pie, yeah. I mean, you know, just to get this, you mean a proper pie, right, with the pastry going all the way around and not as, I think there should be a law against pubs serving pies that are just a stew with a bloody pastry lid on. There should be a law against that. I don't know how it's legal. It's not a pie.

It's not a pie. And it's got to be shortcrust pastry. It's got to be shortcrust. You know, you don't want flakes of puff pastry everywhere.

Okay. Gentlemen, thank you. We'll wrap up there. Thank you, as always, for listening to the Cognitive Engineering podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. We've been here with Peter Coghill, Chris Wragg, and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights. Until next time, goodbye.