THE statistics are shocking. Every year, Scottish households throw out enough food to make 800 million meals or feed everyone in the country three times a day for 50 days.

Around £130 million worth of meat and fish is binned every year, and veg isn’t far behind at £100 million. As for milk, we pour £24 million worth down the sink.

These figures are difficult to digest. Certainly, there will always be food waste but, undoubtedly, much could be avoided. Zero Waste Scotland is calling on Scots to do themselves a favour in this regard. That means all of us.

We could try more judicious supermarket shopping, resisting the temptation to pop in extras that never get eaten or trying not to grossly over-estimate the amount of food we need.

We might even take a more relaxed attitude to “best by”, as distinct from “use by”, dates. The former are advisory. Last month, the Love Food Hate Waste campaign pointed out too that “display until” is guidance for staff not shoppers.

Everyone has a horror of food poisoning, but it has become clear that many foodstuffs beyond advisory dates aren’t going to kill us. All it requires is common sense, which means not taking risks with meat, raw seafood or soft cheeses.

While Zero Waste Scotland gets into gear for the European Week for Waste Reduction, starting today, we are reminded that the Scottish Government has set an ambitious target to reduce food waste by a third by 2025. Its heart is certainly in the right place and, earlier this year, it was able to show that household food waste had declined by 5.7 per cent since 2009.

So, ostensibly we’re getting better and, indeed, in declaring such targets have set ourselves up as good guys in this regard. However, the proof of the pudding will remain, as ever, in the eating. And not in the throwing out.