PRIVATELY built and operated hospitals don't generally go down well with the public. There is something profoundly distasteful about commercially milking patients in their sick beds, not to mention extra charges, such as exorbitant parking, imposed on their visitors.
Everything they do comes under scrutiny, which is why the revelation that Edinburgh Royal Infirmary's food outlets for staff and visitors throw out 32,000 portions of food each year, has been greeted with tuttings of disapproval and weary head-shakin
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If they wasted less they could cut down on the parking charges, we murmur. And that might be true as Consort are the same people who run the car park and the restaurants.
In Consort's defence, British families also fail to manage food properly, chucking out millions of tonnes a year to landfill. And the more people you cater for, the higher the risk of wastage.
We know why food is wasted at home. People are misled by the utterly useless "sell by" date which, mercifully, will soon be consigned to history as far as customers are concerned. Younger generations of home cooks are more likely to travel to the moon in their lifetime than make a rissole. They are over-dependent on ready meals and microwaves, less knowledgeable about food in general and often completely devoid of their grandmothers' skills of using up leftovers. They reject fruit and veg with the slightest blemish, bin herb, broccoli and mushroom stalks and turn their noses up at anything a caterpillar has nibbled.
But on the basis that they are paid if nothing else, Consort are professionals who should know better. So what's going wrong?
The catering world is full of minimum-waged, predominantly young people armed with nothing more than a basic health and safety certificate, turning out rigid menus to a rule book. That in itself is a recipe for disaster.
Were I daft enough at home to cook half a dozen sausages too many at breakfast I know that, once cooked, they can be re-frozen. Or with interesting veg, sauce and seasoning I could turn them into a sausage casserole for supper. Consort throws out 7,000 sausages annually.
If I had inadvertently baked four more potatoes than I needed, I'd scoop out the insides, mix them with greens and produce bubble and squeak. Consort binned 3,200 baked potatoes last year.
My freezer contains boxes of homemade soup. I never add cream or milk until just before serving, precisely so that I can freeze any excess. Consort chucked out 2,000 bowls of soup.
And I'm amazed that they flung out 1,200 portions of black pudding. Black pud is already cooked. It requires about two minutes in a frying pan and could almost be cooked to order or in small batches to minimise waste. Ditto for eggs.
I could go on but I'm sure you get the point. Bulk cooking in advance makes service easier and quicker, but it produces rubbery food and guarantees higher levels of waste.
Of course it's easier to get it right at home. Quantities are smaller. At home we are not just the cook, we are the manager, the area manager, the chief executive, the buyer and the menu setter in one.
The key to low waste is flexibility and ingenuity, cooking to order where possible to remove guesswork, knowing when something is safe to reuse and when it's not and quickly adapting menus to suit. That is how top restaurants survive and still manage to stay within health and safety laws.
Consort, I am sure, is no worse than any other mass caterer. All of them function on low-paid staff – and as few as possible – who don't have that expertise and cannot be trusted to make such decisions on the hoof.
It's a simple financial calculation with no room for moral, global or green concerns. And as long as low wages save more than wasted food costs, it will continue.
But here's a thought. Around 15 million tonnes of food is wasted in Britain each year. Just over half of that comes from commercial caterers with their industrial-sized difficulties and need for profit if they are to employ anyone at all. The rest comes from our own, domestic, household kitchens – simply because we can't be bothered.
Pipe downUTILITIES work on a simple principle. The supplier lays cables, pipes or lines. It's a business cost, an investment so that they can supply customers and make profits. On rare occasions customers in inaccessible areas will pay for connection if they want the service.
So why are we all having to stump up an extra £6 tax a year on landlines to pay for installing fast broadband for those who want it so that suppliers can profit?
And why, following tram carnage, are we even considering digging up roads again to install a £25 million subterranean litter vacuum system in Edinburgh?
Britain is broke. Edinburgh is broke. We are broke. We can't afford either.
