FAQs - Frozen Food Revolution

Can buying frozen rather than fresh food help to reduce food waste/ save money in the home?

There are various ways to reduce food waste at home, such as planning meals or using up leftovers, and buying more frozen food is certainly one of them: frozen food lasts longer, you can use the amount you need when you need it and, in some cases, yes, it’s cheaper.

One thing’s for sure - if you’re wasting the food you buy, you’re wasting money! And we’re wasting lots of it: 4.7 million tonnes of good food that could have been eaten is wasted from UK homes every year. (That’s enough to fill Wembley eight times.) The average UK family could save £80 a month by not binning food.

Can you give some examples of fresh foods that are often wasted and where buying frozen might make more sense?

It’s a good idea to look at what’s ended up going to waste in your household and think about whether there’s a frozen ‘swaption’. For example: if you’re wasting lots of fresh fruit - all bought with good smoothie-making intentions - then it might be worth swapping the bananas and berries from the fresh produce aisle for a smoothie mix from the freezer section

Fresh vegetables and salad is the most wasted food group in the UK. So, swapping fresh for frozen veg. to reduce waste is always a good option. And we’re not just talking peas, carrots, cauliflower and broccoli. You can get frozen mushrooms, peppers, Mediterranean-style roasted vegetables, butternut squash, spinach, not to mention frozen chopped onions – and that’s another benefit of buying frozen, the prep. has been done for you!

Pastries and desserts also make good fuss-free swaptions, such as bake-from-frozen croissants and pain au chocolat (we waste £210 million worth of ‘morning goods’, which includes croissants, every year, mainly because we don’t use them in time) or ready-made cheesecakes, meringues and macarons. We waste cakes and desserts? Yes, 100,000 tonnes a year, costing £270 million, mainly because we don’t use them in time.

When you talk about the prep. being done for you or buying e.g., frozen mash so you don’t end up with the peelings as waste, isn’t that just pushing the waste further up the chain from the home to the manufacturer?

It’s more likely a manufacturer will have a better way of dealing with what might end up as waste at home, such as it going to animal feed or even working with another business to use it for a different product. Not every household in the UK has a food waste collection at the moment (although most authorities will have one by April 2026), which means, if they don’t home compost either, they can’t recycle material such as potato peelings, which are edible and counted as wasted food.

How does frozen food help to reduce meat waste?

Pork and poultry both feature in the top 10 most wasted foods from UK homes. And meat and fish make up the greatest proportion of food waste from our homes in terms of greenhouse gas emissions (26%).

However, all can be bought frozen. For example, buying frozen chicken breasts or sausages or salmon fillets means the number you need can be removed from the pack, leaving the rest in the freezer for later, and they can usually be cooked from frozen, getting over the defrosting barrier both in terms of time and worry. You can avoid binning chicken or turkey left over from a whole bird by swapping for a premium, prepared joint from the freezer for more taste, less waste.