Eat the peel: the parts of fruit and vegetables we throw away hold up to five times the fibre

King's College London researchers weighed and tested 12 everyday fruits and vegetables — pineapple, watermelon, butternut squash, broccoli, peppers and more — and found the throwaway parts are nutritional treasure. Skins, peels, seeds and stalks make up 25% to 48% of each item's weight, and pineapple skin and core carried 453.7% more fibre than the flesh — about five portions' worth in the part that goes in the bin. Butternut squash skin and seeds held 9.25 grams of fibre per 100 grams, nearly a third of the UK's 30-gram daily target, in a country where only 4% of adults hit that target and about 10 million tonnes of food are wasted a year. The team is clear that safety checks on residues come first — but the bin, it turns out, has been eating better than us.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being