h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The cans of food and food in the freezer that we KNOW we will never eat, unless there is nothing else in the house. Why did we buy it in the first place?

So that you would have something to eat when everything else runs out. This way you have an alarm without starving.

It is a subconscious desire to feel good about not eating everything in the house. Imagine if the cupboard and freezer were full of really great things to eat -who could resist them? Not me that's for sure and certainly not the teenagers that lurk behind the doors and inside the cupboards of my home.
If there is some really crappy food in the cupboard there is always something to see and to remind you that yes, you *can* resist food! The tins are also good for keeping the doors open on a windy day or throwing at the teenagers as they make of with the last packet of M and M's.

A bit like the red bit on the fuel indicator, then. Slowly gets worse and worse til you are forced to do something..I have tinned cherries and pilchards in tomato sauce in mine... how did they get there? Who bought them?

I reckon it is a subconcious effort to be deal with Y2K hysteria. The world may collapse in a screaming heap around me, but I feel prepared knowing that I have a can of Lentil Hotpot in the cupboard.

I've often thought this would make a good episode of "Ready Steady Cook" (if such a thing is physically possible in this universe). After all, it's no "challenge" to make a meal out of lovely freshly bought ingredients, is it.

Much more fun to get someone to actually bring in the contents of their fridge (eg. half a three-week old green pepper, jar of mayonnaise, tomato ketchup, a crust of dry bread and a pot of golden syrup) and get the so-called celebrity chef to make something that qualifies as "even vaguely edible"...

I try to avoid processed foods, only buy tinned food when I have to.

Chalk it up to "seemed like a good idea at the time." Either you're hungry when you go to the store, and buy outlandish things, or you're bored, and start buying outlandish things with the strange idea that you'll eat them. Either way, the urge passes shortly after the groceries are put away.

Special offers on something never tried before..buy one get one free..then find out it tastes revolting..so the other tin/packet just 'sits there'..til..it runs out of it's best before date..

Emmily

Hmmm, yeah, piles and piles of pulses. Black eyed beans that I'll never use. Tins of strange things I'll never eat.

And I always seem to have excess cooking oils and brown sauce.
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So Peta, have you still got that stuff cluttering up the cupboard?