UK consumers ‘don’t know what to cook’ as £1.2bn of food is binned a year

A fifth of those polled said they could reduce food waste if they knew more recipes

Almost 1.2bn worth of fruit, veg and bread is binned in the UK every year, with one in five consumers stating the reason they waste so much is they don't know what to cook".

Close to 76m items - an average of nearly three a household - are thrown away every week, according to data based on research by the Censuswide, which asked consumers how much food they threw away. The scale of the waste is staggering, with 914m potatoes, 733m tomatoes and 728m carrots ending up in dustbins each year.