Average Brit throws away £400 of food every year - study

Britain is a nation of wasters who throw out hundreds of pounds of food each year, a new study revealed.

Despite a tightening of purse strings, the average person still bins £400 worth a perishables from one year to the next.

And where previous generations would have saved every last morsel, more than half of those polled (56%) admitted discarding bread every week.

Meanwhile, more than a third said they threw out bananas on a regular basis or disposed of bagged salads which go uneaten.

However the study of more than 3,000 adults identified something of a gender divide - only 1% of women said they binned chocolate compared with 3% of men.

Despite a wasteful mentality, the study found most people (73%) felt guilty for allowing food to go off.

And some 60% said they would pack up their leftovers for lunch, while 92% said they reused shopping bags.

On a regional level, those who claim to be the least wasteful were found to live in Essex where only 2% of people admitted throwing out items every day.

The worst offenders for this were in Brighton where 16% of people put their hands up to binning uneaten food while this figure was slightly lower in London, at 13%.

The study was carried out by OnePoll for Waitrose earlier this month.

Environment Minister Lord Henley said: "Reducing food waste is good for the environment and good for the household budget.

"We need to make it easier for people to cut down the amount of food they throw away and the Government is working with businesses to do this."

The items most frequently binned each week are:

• Bread
• Bananas
• Bagged Salads
• Lettuce
• Cold Meats
• Apples
• Milk
• Yoghurt
• Cucumber
• Potatoes