Whisk stirs up leftovers debate with new search platform
THE online shopping list tool set up by Birmingham-based entrepreneur and former contestant on The Apprentice, Nick Holzherr has launched a new search function that helps users make better use of leftovers.
Whisk Leftovers, Whisk’s leftover search engine sources more than 250,000 online recipes from leading publishers to try and inspire people with recipes that help turn leftover ingredients into great meals instead of landfill.
The award-winning start-up built the leftover recipe search functionality in collaboration with Unilever’s Project Sunlight, which recently launched its #ClearAPlate campaign to raise awareness of the issues of Food Waste and Food Poverty in the UK. Unilever has supported Oxfam’s work in the UK to provide over 2m meals to families in need, while highlighting the steps we can take to waste less food at home.
According to WRAP, the UK government’s resource efficiency body, the average household throws away six meals a week – a huge contributing factor to the more than 4.2m tonnes of food and drink that are being thrown away each year in UK. WRAP estimates that 24m slices of bread, 1.4m bananas and 1.2m yoghurts are thrown away every day in the UK.
Whisk Leftovers targets meals that use highly perishable and frequently wasted food items like herbs, dairy, vegetables and eggs. People can simply enter leftover ingredients, such as ‘chicken’ + ‘basil’ + ‘cream,’ to see a range of recipe ideas like chicken stroganoff, risotto al verde and creamy chicken pesto pasta that use up items that might otherwise be thrown in the bin.
The Whisk app is designed to simplify the process of finding, shopping and cooking meals. Users click through to a shopping list that can be uploaded to online grocery baskets – Whisk has secured partnerships with Tesco, Asda, Ocado and Waitrose – or viewed on mobile devices so users can tick off items as they shop. These shopping lists can also be printed to bring into the store, or emailed to others for collaboration.
From its own analysis of users’ purchases versus recipe ingredient amounts, the company identified the possible food wastage occurring and began creating a leftovers recipe site. Whisk went on to calculate the cost of this wasted food and as one example, found that parsley was one of the most wasted, as well as one of the most expensive items people buy. Parsley is often sold in 31g packs, but the average recipe calls for 20 grams, meaning 11 grams of each parsley pack goes to waste – a wastage totalling upwards of £1,000 each month in the UK alone. Whisk’s recipe search engine includes more than 17,000 recipes to use up the fresh herb.
Holzherr said “The sheer scale of ongoing food wastage is an urgent problem with the average family throwing away the equivalent of six meals a week. We hope Whisk Leftovers will help reduce food wastage in every household, allowing users to be creative with their cooking while having a positive impact on the environment and also their wallets.”
