What a waste... my family is throwing away £1,800 worth of food a year...

The average family throws away £610 of perfectly good food each year — much of it totally untouched — according to figures released this week. That works out at £11.73 a week. And all of that adds to the £10billion of waste across the country. But are these figures really representative of an ordinary family? Femail challenged Ursula Hirschkorn, 36, who lives in North London with her husband Mike, 32, and two sons, Jacob, four, and Max, two, to keep a diary for a week to discover just how much food her family throws out.

DAY ONE

The weekly shop is done and my kitchen is packed with good intentions. The fridge is groaning under all the fresh fruit and veg, bought in the vain hope that we will finally hit that ever-elusive five-a-day target. The shelves are packed with the makings of a week's worth of healthy and balanced meals.

Of course, before I could put all this shiny new food away, I had to make the ritual cull of all those items left on the shelves following last week's supermarket sweep.

A half-eaten crumble, six apples, a packet of ham and a pot of crème fraiche left over from a recipe that required just two tablespoons are tossed in the bin, and that's before I've even taken into account this week's waste. More...

See also: Iraq, where the poor and hungry sell their kidneys to buy food...
And this: Egypt:bread shortage kills ten people...