leftover

Leftover food or leftovers is what is not eaten from a prepared meal and can be eaten on another day. Scraps is also leftover food, but usually not for eating. It is food that is thrown away or given to the dog.

Surplus food is a term usually used when there is too much food for a person/family/organisation/country to use. It can, for example, be traded for another good.

sidewalker wrote:Scraps is also leftover food, but usually not for eating. It is food that is thrown away or given to the dog.

Hi sidewalker,

Could you please give me examples of scraps?

Thanks a lot.

Scraps are also often the bits you don't want to eat but can use for another purpose (as Sidewalker says, perhaps to give to the dog). For example, when I'm cooking chicken for my husband who must only eat lean meat, I cut all the fatty bits off before I cook it and put them out for my two tame crows who visit the balcony every day. The same with the skin of poultry and fish. I'd call those scraps. I also use vegetable scraps to make compost for my plants - I cut up bits of potato peel, banana skins, apple cores etc etc to compost. The important thing is that, as the name suggests, they're small pieces.

An important use for surplus food these days is to donate it to organisations which provide meals for the poor or homeless. Here in Italy there are organisations which will collect food that has not been used but is still edible from supermarkets, restaurants etc and distribute it to charitable organisations for this purpose. Supermarkets might donate food that has almost, but not quite, reached its sell-by date. Restaurants might donate cooked food, bread etc which they'd prepared expecting customers who didn't come.

Hi susan,

If a little food is not eaten from a prepared meal and it is thrown away after the meal rather than eat it at a later time, is the leftovers called scraps?

Thanks a lot.

Yes - eg at the end of the meal someone might say: Let me throw the scraps away and put the plates in the dishwasher, and then we'll go out.