We throw away about 1/4 of produce, but honestly, it’s not our fault because there are just two of us. We eat it as fast as we can, but there’s no way two people are going to go through everything in one week. The more expensive stuff always gets eaten - any kind of berries, etc. My parents can barely keep the fridge stocked with produce; 5-6 people really blow through produce quickly.
I bought a bunch of bananas Wednesday. Friday I reached for the bunch because I noticed the top few were getting those black specks they often get. I figured I better make a pudding before they go bad. Picked them up and the four bottom bananas squirted all over me my clothes and the floor. In two days time they had liquefied!
Generally we’re good about eating fresh stuff as soon as we get it, usually in two or three days.
I’m a little confused - why not just buy enough for 2 people? Or are you talking about some sort of CSA box?
Many vegetables come quantized: 1Head of lettuce, 1 head of celery, etc. In addition, you can often buy a 10# bag of spuds for the price of buying 2-3 loose bakers. So if you want some variety, then you end up with one “purchase unit” of 5-6 items, which is too much for a couple of all-too-typical Americans to eat in a week. Even with some waste, it can end up far cheaper than buying bagged salad for example.
All too typical Americans: Not enough vegetables, cook perhaps 3-4 meals/week. No/few vegetables with breakfast excepting potatoes (and those are likely to be packaged hash browns). We used to fit this model. We have improved a great deal, and are still working on it. I even, by gum, put in a garden this year!
We keep the waste low by deciding first what needs to be used, then figuring out what to make. We do still plan, and buy for the plan, but might push back eggplant a night or two if there is squash that won’t keep another day, or make a squash goulash instead of the tacos we had planned. A little shuffling of the plans really helps.
Really? Apples are a fall fruit but are available year-round. Seems like that would be an obvious conclusion.
For me, wastage is < 50%, but not * much * less than 50%. Broccoli tends to get lost in the fridge a lot, as does celery. Every once in a while I’ll get tempted by a grapefruit or melon and buy one, ignoring the fact that I never eat breakfast at home and have thus doomed a perfectly good citrus to a lonely death in the back reaches of the fridge.
I didn’t really think much on it - mind you, I learned it in my early 20s. 
I just figured that they were grown and shipped from elsewhere, somewhere warmer, when northern US orchards weren’t producing. Living in Illinois, except for greenhouse growing, there’s a big part of the year when growing produce around here isn’t feasible/practical, so I eat plenty of vegetables and fruits year-round that are grown here during “typical” growing season.
We eat bananas at their peak, then peel what is left and freeze them in ziplock bags. We use the frozen bananas (and berries,etc) in smoothies or as add ins for oatmeal.
What cannot be eaten gets composted.
I voted “less than half” but in reality it’s much more like “virtually none”.
I have an organic veg box every week which sorts out my requirements, all I buy in addition is salad veg but I only buy enough for a week at a time. Any leftover veg that looks like it’s not going to last, that gets cooked and frozen. We don’t have a compost bin, if I had a garden that was usable then I’d have a compost bin.
I voted nothing because I too would be way less than half but once in a while waste something. I live alone and just buy fresh stuff for the next couple of days. If I don’t want anything special I just used steamed frozen vegetables - I always keep a wide variety. I buy fresh potatoes, pumpkin and squashes, chinese green vegetables, peppers and chili, tomatoes, mushrooms, onions and salad stuff but just a handful at a time.
I forgot to add - we have a fruit and veg stall here on campus every day of the week so I can buy whatever greengroceries I need on a daily basis which cuts down tremendously on the potential wastage.
A tip for people who want to make banana bread - but not right now when the banana skins are rapidly spotting with black: Banana skins make great “freezer bags” in this situation. Put the whole banana in the freezer until you’re ready to make the banana bread.
What the heck is a CSA, please? I keep thinking Culinary Savings Account!
Community Supported Agriculture.
I belonged to a great one in Redmond, WA. I miss it.
It’s starting to look like green beans are a Cursed Vegetable in our household. The last two times I bought them - plump, vibrantly-colored, beautiful - with plans involving bacon, or almonds, or both … the whole bagful wound up in the compost pile, no longer so plump and lovely.
There’s a bag in our fridge right now. Anyone care to place a bet?
Basically you pay a local farm a chunk of money before the growing season, and so do lots of other people. The farmer puts the money towards seeds, labor costs, etc., and grows a big variety of veggies. (Some farms may ask/require contributors to also put in some hours helping on the farm.) Each week, you go to the farm/go to a pickup site/get delivered to your doorstep a decent-sized bag or box of a variety of vegetables (their selection, depending on what’s ripe and ready), maybe with some fruit or other stuff in it. Some CSAs provide recipes, newsletters, etc. A lot of CSA farms grow organically or with integrated pest management techniques to reduce pesticide usage.
You pay a fair amount of money, but you get straight-from-the-farm veggies picked only a day or so prior. The tomatoes (and other veggies) aren’t bred for ability to survive a cross-country truck trip, but for flavor, local growing conditions, and so on. You support a local farmer, who can grow a variety of veggies rather than growing full fields of soybeans/corn/wheat and hoping that the market prices will enable him or her to cover the bills and keep farming. You also run the risk that weather and other issues may hurt your veggie delivery! I’ve been praying for rain now and then when it seems to be getting dry, and last year we’d occasionally get reports like one vegetable that was estimated to be in the week’s selection isn’t because the birds finished off the last of the crop, so your previous week was the last of the corn or whatever. Tomato blight had us worried that we’d be getting enough tomatoes - fortunately that wasn’t an issue here and I ended up makng the excess into salsa and hot-water canning it.
I get my veggies from Sandhill Organics in NE Illinois; I searched online for a well-reviewed CSA that had a convenient pickup for us.