4 Sustainable Ways to Celebrate World Food Day

If you're stuck trying to think of a new recipe to cook up, the easiest place to start is the refrigerator. Get your hands on your favourite go-to ingredients for some fresh ideas. Today's smart refrigerators like LG's Smart InstaView models come with a large touchscreen panel which allows you to look inside the fridge without opening the door, with just two simple taps.

When it comes to grocery shopping, buying only as much as you need is key to reducing waste. Take stock of the groceries stored in your fridge and pantry to get a clear idea of which food items you still need to use and which need to be topped up. This helps you from excessive buying–and it goes without saying that less buying equals less waste.

Once you’re aware of the ingredients you’ve got in stock, make sure to use them before they spoil because some will expire before you know it. To keep tabs on all your perishable items, try setting expiration date alerts for your smart fridge on the LG ThinQ app. You’ll have notifications sent straight to your phone, so you can sleep easy knowing that your favourite meal will be on the dinner table before it’s too late. 

There also a tonne of apps out there, which are built to help us reduce food waste. If you are in need of a last-minute meal, try looking on apps such as Too Good To Go, which allows restaurants, cafes and bakeries to list leftover food that would otherwise be thrown away. Users can then browse the map for food near them and pick up a ‘magic bag’ for a fraction of the original retail cost.

And if you do find yourself in a situation where you have leftover grocery items that you won’t be able to use up, try listing them on an app like Olio, which is a platform for neighbours to share unwanted food and other items, all for free.

Whether you live in the city or countryside, local farmers' markets are always selling the freshest ingredients–so buy local! Because these markets deliver food straight from a farm to your table, not only is the farmer getting a great deal, but the stuff you buy is fresher and more flavourful than anything you can get from the supermarket. The fresher the produce is, the longer it’ll last–and it’ll be less likely to get thrown away because of spoilage.

But if you’re looking for a more hands-on experience, you could always opt to grow your own produce by dedicating a small plot of land in your back garden to growing veggies and fruit. By doing so, you’ll minimise the environmental impact of mass-scale food production. Having a garden close by also means you can turn inedible food into compost that’ll help your self-produced groceries grow better thanks to healthier soil; you might even discover a new hobby in the process. Plus, you can bring your garden indoors for the upcoming colder seasons with the help of LG’s smart air conditioners, which let you set the optimal home temperature for your plants right from your phone.

You could also buy smart appliances from eco-conscious providers like LG ThinQ, because they provide ‘eco’ or ‘energy-saving’ settings that help you minimise energy consumption without having to sacrifice the device’s performance. And by effortlessly connecting such an appliance to a smart-home app with energy-saving features, such as the LG ThinQ app, you can keep your carbon footprint in check with minimal effort. 

With these easy-to-follow tips, we can all adopt a more mindful way of preparing and eating our food to help pave the way for a sustainable future.