There is simmering panic in the aisles of supermarkets across the land: wheat prices are soaring, the cost of rice has gone through the roof and the average family's food bill has taken a substantial hike in recent months. Yet, it was revealed this week that, rather paradoxically, the British public wastes a staggering £10bn-worth of food every year. The figure is £2bn higher than that suggested by a previous survey and the most startling finding is that some 60% of this discarded food is untouched.

Fresh fruit and vegetables, meat and fish, bread and dairy are the main food types that end up lining the nation's bins, according to research undertaken by the UK government's Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap).

While most of us are familiar with the grim task of having to dispose of a soggy, festering bag of vegetables or a forgotten, half-finished jar of sauce, the survey highlights just how wasteful we have become. It suggests that on a daily basis, as a nation, we bin 4.4 million apples, 1.6 million bananas and 1.3 million pots of yoghurt. We also discard some 660,000 eggs, 550,000 whole chickens and 440,000 ready meals every single day.

Wrap point out that this equates to throwing away one bag of shopping for every three that we buy. In terms of hard cash, it costs the average British home £420 a year, rising to an average of £610 for families with children. In Scotland alone, more than £889m-worth of food is wasted each year.

The main reasons given for such seemingly reckless behaviour, according to the 2000 or so participants in the survey, are cooking or preparing too much food and having to discard the left-overs; letting food go past its use-by date or simply forgetting that it is there, lurking on the bottom shelf. The report's authors also believe that supermarket bulk-sized packs and a profusion of two-for-the-price-of-one deals are also encouraging people to buy more than they need in the belief that they are saving money, only for the extra food to be discarded.

Most worrying of all is the fact that, of the total wastage, around £1bn-worth of binned food is not beyond its use-by date. One of the reasons for this could be confusion in terminology. The research points out that many consumers are unaware of the difference between best-before date, which is merely a recommendation, and a use-by date, which does refer to food safety.

Entitled The Food We Waste, the report is believed to be the most comprehensive study of its kind and involved rummaging through the dustbins of 2138 people who signed up to have their food rubbish audited. Wrap's chief executive, Liz Goodwin, who described the findings as shocking, says: "People aren't really aware that we are wasting so much food; do we think it's acceptable to throw so much away when people are starving? As individuals we are all wasting food. By class or age, there isn't much difference in how much we waste."

The report came hot on the heels of the news that food prices in Britain have risen by 4.7% in the past month. In the past year, prices have risen by a total of 11%, driven in part by the soaring price of wheat. In addition to the financial concerns, however, there are the huge environmental implications of getting rid of these mountains of food waste. Local authorities in the UK spend £1bn a year disposing of food waste and in Scotland around 587,000 tonnes of food waste is thrown out by householders. Currently, most of our food waste is sent to landfill, where it emits greenhouse gases such as methane which contribute to climate change. According to Wrap, around 20% of UK greenhouse gas emissions come from producing, transporting, preparing and storing food and drink.

The organisation has calculated that stopping such waste could reduce the annual emission of carbon dioxide by 18 million tonnes in the UK and by 1.6 million tonnes each year in Scotland, the equivalent to taking one in four cars off the road. Food for thought, indeed.