How do I stop throwing food away?

Start by noticing what actually gets thrown out. It's almost never the dinner you cooked — it's the second bunch of cilantro, the chicken that was for Thursday, the half bag of spinach behind the milk. Most spoiled food was bought with optimism about a week that didn't go the way the shopping list assumed. That isn't a character flaw; it's the whole reason cooking has a schedule.

The fix is smaller shopping, not better willpower. Buy for two dinners, not seven. Cook the most perishable thing first: fish tonight, chicken tomorrow, beans and cabbage whenever the week collapses. If you know by day two that you won't get to the chicken, freeze it that day — a freezer is a fridge with the clock stopped, and it costs nothing to use.

Then treat the fridge like a pantry with a clock on it, not a graveyard. The things with the shortest life go in front at eye level, where you'll see them every time the door opens. Herbs stand in water. Leftovers go in as parts, not plates, so tomorrow they can be a different dinner.

And once a week, plan a clean-out dinner on purpose. Fried rice and the fridge frittata exist precisely for this: they're not what you make when you failed to plan, they're the plan. What still gets thrown out after that is tuition. Note what it was, buy less of it, and move on.