If spoiled teenagers really want to save the planet… why do they flat out refuse to eat leftovers and just order Deliveroo?

One of my favorite money-saving habits is batch cooking. Why make a meal of meatballs in tomato sauce when you can make a barrel of them? That’s two extra days of ‘free’ meals.

‘How very clever of me,’ I think. My kids, on the other hand, just roll their eyes and sigh. ‘Can we order?’ they wail.

The truth is, no one under the age of 25 eats leftovers. When I suggest to one of my offspring – I have three: aged 23, 21 and 16 – that they ‘eat’ yesterday’s curry or stir-fry, they are as horrified as a vegan being given a Scotch egg.

“Are you trying to kill me?” their shocked expressions say, to which I want to respond, “It was heated in a microwave, not a nuclear reactor.”

It’s all so different from my youth. I was raised to believe that reheated food is tastier than plain food, as if putting something in a Pyrex container over a gently simmering pan of water (the pre-microwave form of reheating) is an additional culinary trick, like using a gas burner on top of a crème brulee. Reheating sometimes hardened the food to the consistency of old shoe leather, but the price was extra flavor – or so I was told.

As a child in the 1980s, yesterday’s cold fried potatoes were a delicacy. My mother routinely served the same lasagna multiple times.

Only when the curly crust threatened to crack a crown did she give it up the cat.

Now my own refrigerator is filled with small plastic take-out containers containing tasty bits from past meals.

Still, my kids open the door, peruse my trove of vintage food, grumble about expiration dates and possible food poisoning, and start scrolling through Deliveroo.

What young people under 25 want is fresh food at every meal. I admit, it would be wonderful if a) it didn’t cost the price of a family car to do the weekly grocery shopping and b) they ate all the scrap at every meal so I didn’t have to spend half of it in the kitchen to throw. bin – a sin I can’t shake from my childhood programming.

They also want variety. For teenagers and twenty-somethings, I think eating now is like watching TV. They expect to be able to scroll through options and choose a different one each time.

My father ate about five meals in rotation throughout his life: roast lamb, pork chops, Lancashire hot pot, steak pie and fish and chips (he eschewed the dreaded lasagna). But my couple wants to be surprised and delighted at every meal.

The problem is that they grew up in a food culture that values ​​novelty and variety. Social media bombard them with endless oozing rolls of food on TikTok and Instagram. Furthermore, the cacophony of global cuisine now available on every high street in Britain has given them culinary ADHD.

They want Korean barbecue one day and Thai curry the next. They don’t want meatballs three days in a row just because “they need to be eaten.”

Then there’s the convenience factor. The rise of Just Eat, Uber Eats and Deliveroo makes satisfying food cravings too easy. You don’t have to prepare a meal from fridge leftovers when you can just order whatever you want.

My older children are pretty good cooks. But even if it is a homemade dish, they refuse to eat the leftovers the next day because they are already on to the next dish.

If I had a pound for every time one of my children is served leftovers and says ‘but I don’t have that today’, I wouldn’t have to serve leftovers in the first place. Since when do feelings have anything to do with what you eat tonight?

Apparently they do now.

I realize that not all young people are as spoiled as mine. There are many who go to bed hungry, a fact I point out to my non-remaining dining group. They really roll their eyes at that.

At least I’m not the one paying for Uber Eats. I refuse it. They pay themselves – or have their father pay for food delivery.

The irony, of course, is that Generation Z claims to be a generation of eco-warriors, saving the planet from extinction-level devastation wrought by generations of their unthinking ancestors. They mock our diesel cars and air travel, carry trendy reusable water bottles and coffee cups, and treat the inability to recycle with the same disgust as puppy killers. But even though there are now several eco-friendly ways to store your food – from reusable silicone lids for bowls to organic cotton lids infused with beeswax, jojoba oil and tree resin (cling film is far too old-fashioned, apparently) – there will be a cultural handbrake of Fast and Furious proportions are needed to change the under-25s’ feelings about leftovers.

Just think of the mountains of food waste or the fumes produced by the armies of delivery people on their mopeds.

To prove that, you only have to look at the financial fortunes of two companies: Pyrex and Tupperware. Pyrex, the glass company so beloved by my mother, almost collapsed last year, while Tupperware, the sine qua non for leftover storage space, also barely avoided bankruptcy.

However, there is a glimmer of hope. My middle son, 21, who is now at university and on a budget, had Deliveroo on speed dial when he was home. He recently WhatsApped me a photo of a batch cook he and his roommates had made: 75 Mexican burritos. He has already frozen most of them for future use.

I was tempted to send him my recipe for meatballs in tomato sauce, but step by step.