Try premade meal replacements like huel lol.

Consider cooking it, then you have something to eat.

We cook and eat the food.

Yeah ...

Strategies against this include cooking for several people (well, that ain't happening), doing meal prep several days in advance / cooking larger portions that you can eat over a couple of days, and buying frozen ingredients (still better than buying entire frozen meals). Some non-frozen ingredients keep for a long time, too, e.g. dried rice or noodles, onions, pickled vegetables.

I live walking distance from 2 small super markets, I walk to those near every day and just get a few things and I also get hello fresh and I always cook those. So generally my fridge is pretty empty but I always eat well. Just in Time Home Economics you could say.

Here's a tip I learned so very long ago: Never shop hungry.

That being said, I'm really careful about what I buy anyway and plan my purchases so that I end up using everything. Fresh foods can still spoil because I didn't spot a moldy spot, but that's pretty rare. Dried foods are great.

Honestly I have little good advice to give aside from awareness and planning, since I am by nature perfectionist about my food and budgeting and can't relate to the meme.

This happens to us - if I cook dinner for everyone, two of us eat, if I cook dinner for two of us, everyone wants to eat. If I make enough for leftovers, nobody takes them to lunch. If I don't make enough, they ask why there is not enough for lunch.

Things that help on your question though -

Canned beans, canned tomatoes, canned coconut milk, canned pumpkin, jarred spaghetti sauce, spices - a lot of our staples are not perishable.

Do you live where you can stop by the store on the way home? Then don't buy perishables for the week, buy them for the meal you are making.

Some foods and meals freeze pretty well, freeze them and keep a list of what's in the freezer so you remember to eat it.

I hate meal planning but it helps a lot. I sometimes put a note on the fridge "we have food for dal with spinach, chicken & cabbage, sheet pan gnocchi with sausage and broccoli, eggs and potatoes" or whatever we have the food to make, and cross them off as they are made.

Some foods make other foods. So if I make a hunk of pork, it's pork, rice and beans then enchiladas then burritos, and so on.

I just hunt and eat the homeless. I work for the municipality so I just leave what I don't eat around park benches, bus stops and the front of stores to scare the rest away.

Bulk make your food. I find that making cooking an "event" you do every week or so is much more manageable than trying to cook your own food each night.

I'm a big fan of soups, stews and chili. I have a large stock pot and I'll basically make one of those to where it's almost full. It can take a long time to cook that much food, but it makes tons of servings. Then I'll freeze 1/2 to 2/3 of it for future meals. I actually find these types of dishes are even better once you thaw them out. Nutrition wise it's basically a ton of veggies/beans and some meat, so fairly cheap per meal made and super nutritious.

Bodybuilder style "meal prep" is also awesome if you don't mind having the same meals multiple times a week. I like bulk making brown rice in a rice cooker along with some kind meat or fish and finally then adding in a microwave steam pack of veggies. If you have an Aldi available to you their California blend is awesome and fairly affordable for the convenience of just popping it in the microwave. Shout out to Sam's Club and Costco who both have bulk packs of frozen meat and veggies to help on cost.

It can get more complicated if you live with others who have different tastes and preferences from yourself. Another hurdle is having the ability to freeze all the excess foods. But when I was single living in my own apartment I don't think I ever ate more simply and affordably than that. Sprinkle in the occasional "treat" of some kind of takeout and you're living the good life!

E: This is obviously from a US perspective, but I'm sure my non-us counterparts can substitute in their equivalents where needed.

I cook the food

Meal plan. Write what you're cooking for the week, buy only ingredients for that.

Anything uncooked goes in the freezer, you can defrost and cook/reheat a lot of food, stop throwing stuff away.

Be organized, have a weekly menu. I'm sorry this is the solution. My bad.

I sought an ADHD diagnosis.

I got a chest freezer for $200. I freeze everything before or on its expiration date.

Sometimes if its mushy veggies I make a stock and freeze it for the next meal. If its too far gone i have a compost jar in the kitchen and a bin outside.

I started a garden and an edible native hedge this year. I have tea herbs and squash for free now and working on a seed propagation.

I started a coop mushroom grow with my neighbors since he felled some hardwood and I had the plan. The leftover mushrooms we dont eat will be either sold at market or made into liquid cultures.

Were talking about going in on a local half cow or pig. He says if my garden keeps growing we can buy the plot behind us together and start a farm. Would cut grocery costs a lot.

My wife and I have pantry weeks where we dont go grocery shopping, we eat whats in reserve, soak dry beans, thaw last weeks on sale chicken breast and pressure Cook em, make a flatbread and have some curry.

Instant pot helps too. Thinking about getting coturnix quail to feed good scraps to and get eggs out of. I can plant cover crops for em on the last strip of lawn I have.

It doesn't have to be wasteful forever.

This is probably intended to be tongue-in-cheek, but meal planning is the answer. Block off some time (Sunday evenings are popular), to figure out all your meals for the week, make a list of everything you need to make all the dishes on the menu, go to the store and buy all that stuff and nothing else, make ahead and freeze any meals that you can and do any prep work ahead of time that you can.

Viola: intentional eating, less waste, and always something on hand to eat.

It changed my life in a lot of positive ways.

Perishables take more planning. Get just enough and have a plan to use it. Use canned and frozen food to account for uncertainty. Be aware of expiration dates of your food and plan accordingly.

Freeze stuff

Walk yo and from the grocery store

Buy stuff that will last a while

Grow your own produce

Planning.

A freezer and a pantry full of canned and dried foods.

Only buy fresh meats and veggies when you are actually gonna cook.

Freeze leftovers in single portion sizes.

Eventually you’ll have a bunch of homemade frozen dinners to choose from.

with pen and paper

Cook in bulk for the week. Grocery shopping on Saturday, cooking on Sunday. Then all you have to do is heat things up at meal time.

*I should clarify that you only need to refrigerate, not freeze, the type of stuff I'm talking about. Works better if you're vegetarian

This is actually a real issue for a lot of people. The solution that I found is that you should sit down and write out a meal plan for the upcoming week. Like actually sit down and plan out your every meal and include snacks as well. Then write down the things you need to buy for those meals and snacks. Make sure you only put down things that you actually like eating.

When you go shopping take that list with you, and only buy the things you wrote on there and only buy amounts for the meals you're planning for. If by the end of the week, you bought too much, then that means there are meals in your planner that you don't really like. From there, you can refine your list and make improvements every week.

A slow cooker helps. You can use random ingredients before they go bad easily enough, and you will have left overs so cooking one time results in not having to cook for multiple meals.

Meal planning is overwhelming to me, so I made a habit of rotating a selection of staple meals with fewer, more stable ingredients. PB or eggs scrambled with cheese on toast for a breakfast. A salad of chickpeas, carrot, broccoli and avocado with a whole-wheat roll, or a lentil/rice bowl, for lunch. Precook larger batches of freezer-friendly staples like chickpeas, lentils, rice, turkey burgers, meatloaf, tomato gravy - reserve 2-3 days' supply and freeze portioned batches of the rest. Allow yourself less experimental ingredient buys per grocery run - so if it turns out they don't synergize with your staples, you're not accumuating a lot of dead-end ingredients.

Meal planning is number 1.

Being strict with what you buy then so you don't buy something you have no plan for.

Learn a couple of meals that you can throw anything into so you can use up veg that are just about to go off. Eg ratatouille, stew, curry, etc.

Buy a recipe book with easy one pot meals for inspiration. I find the Internet just has too much and you need to know what you're doing, plus there's just too much distraction. Sitting with a recipe book and a pen and paper to plan is way more relaxing, IME.

i didn't start cooking until I got a big enough kitchen to store plates, forks, knives, spoons, glasses, cooking pans/pots&utensils, cutting boards, leftover food storage, dish towels, and food cupboards and pantry.

rentals rarely have enough for that.

but once i got enough space to have that stuff, and then saved up to buy that stuff little at a time then cooking became a lot more sensible. (middle aged bachelor)

i have recipes that i don't have to think about that create leftovers.

And that is the goal: LEFTOVERS

Leftovers are your bread and butter of saving money and not having to cook.

Buy freezer or shelf-stable microwave meals? You have food that way but it shouldn't really just "go bad". At least, not quickly.

Alternately: I can cook 4 iems at once and have a weeks worth of food!

Day 2 update: I ate it all.