We've managed to eliminate a ton of food waste (and cost) by simply not buying frozen or bulk foods. Paradoxically, whenever we buy food like this, it always comes in boxes that are much too large to use at once and inevitably will end up forgotten at the back of the freezer or pantry until we throw it out later.

Now we buy maybe 2 or 3 days worth of food at a time and our fridge basically just has raw ingredients and a few condiments in it. Usually a package of never frozen meat (beef or chicken mostly) and a few fresh veggies and mushrooms for side dishes (many of them keep well or even better outside of the fridge). The most prepackaged thing we eat these days is on pasta night, and that's just for the sauce out of the jar and some premade noodles. The rest of the sauce is fresh chopped veggies and it makes a delightfully chunky sauce. A favorite side dish is mashed squash in lieu of mashed potatoes.

It takes time to cook a nice meal, and if it's possible to get the time (it's not easy!) I think everybody should do it. The frozen and bulk foods never resulted in a meal half as good. One nice side effect, if we increase the portions a bit, we get a quality packed lunch from the left overs.

Our meals also have dramatically increased the volume of fresh vegetables and are definitely much more healthy than anything we used to eat. Are we trying to reduce waste? Not really, just trying to cook and eat better, but the side effect is great (and much cheaper as well!) It's also a nice change in daily routine to stop at the grocery a couple times per week.

Our fridge went from slam packed full to mostly empty and we eat far better.