Eating Out

Local seasonal food

Locally produced food is seasonal - it has to be - it hasn't been flown thousands of miles from sunnier climes. Seasonal food provides variety to your diet and brings excitement to your palate as the year changes.  Buying from local producers supports the local economy. What a shame to have to compromise when you eat out. Some places make the effort to have local seasonal food on their menu. If you're not sure what is in season, then have a look at Eat the Seasons website before you go out and make the point of asking the restaurant who their suppliers are.

Do you waste food when you eat out?

400,000 tonnes of edible food are thrown away every year by pubs, hotels, restaurants, and take-aways, that's waste from food left on plates and from food preparation.

Ever found there's food left uneaten when you're eating out and thought 'what a waste?'  You're not alone! Watch our short video to find out what people say about the food they waste when eating out:

• Ask for starter or child portions if the main course portions larger than you want.
• Any food left over will just be wasted, so ask to take it home with you - this request is happening more often and some places have the suggestion on the menu.
• If you regularly go to the same place and see that the portions are too generous then give them feedback.
• Oxfordshire County Council have launched the Too Good to Waste Oxfordshire campaign! The campaign aims to reduce plate waste in the restaurant and hospitality sector; and tackle head on the embarrassment of asking for a container to take home leftovers. It will provide 100 restaurants across the county with free ‘Take me Home’ boxes to offer to diners with food left on their plate at the end of a meal.

Bottled water

• People drink more bottled water when they’re out and about.  While only 17% of Which? members drink still bottled water at home, 68% drink it when they’re out shopping or travelling in the UK and 41% choose it in cafés and restaurants.
• Carry a reusable bottle with you and fill it up when you can. The Beanbag  at Witney stocks One Green Bottles.
• Ask for tap water when eating out rather than bottled water, it will save you lots of money and the tap water will often be filtered and served with ice and lemon.
• On average each person in the UK drinks almost 40 litres of bottled water per year. This is particularly unecessary considering our tap water is safe to drink.
• Most plastic bottles will end up buried in landfill sites, where they take hundreds of years to decompose. The energy cost of producing billions of plastic bottles from oil, transporting the bottles over thousands of miles and then disposing of the bottles in landfill sites or incinerators makes bottled water one of UK's most wasteful luxuries. Even if the bottles are recycled, the resources and transport involved with bottled water are incredible - it takes up to 12 litres of water to make one litre of bottled water and hundreds of times more CO₂ than tap water.
• Sales of bottled water in the UK   are expected to rise 28% to £2billion a year in the UK by 2016. Sales of mineral-enriched water is rising because people think it is healthier. People aged between 25 and 34 are the biggest consumers of bottled water.
• Bottled water consumption at the global level  reached 154 billion litres (41 billion gallons) in 2004 - an increase of almost 60% in five years. The United States is the leading country in total bottled water consumption and Italians drink more per person than any other country. However, the fastest growth in bottled water is coming from developing countries with consumption tripling in India and more than doubling in China over the past five years.
• 12/03/13 - RADIO: Roger Law and the Chinese Curiosities  (15 mins) He ends up in Beijing, making a visit to the city's 'Tap Water' museum to find out what's on display. He experiences the pollution of the public water supply which is why everyone there drinks bottled water.