About a fifth of the fresh food the UK imports comes from areas threatened with climate chaos, putting people’s health and diets at risk, MPs have found.

The environmental audit committee called on ministers to set out a clear plan for how the UK’s food supplies could be protected from the climate emergency and to publish information on how food may be affected by Brexit.

Currently, 40% of the UK’s food is imported, according to the report published on Tuesday. In the very near future, people would be at risk from sudden lurches in food prices if a no-deal Brexit resulted in trouble with imports, including higher costs, delays and shortages.

Mary Creagh, the chair of the committee, said: “We are facing a food security crisis, exacerbated by uncertainty over the UK’s future trading position with the EU and the rest of the world. Ministers must now publish all the information they hold from Operation Yellowhammer on food security and likely costs in the event of a no-deal Brexit.”

Beyond the immediate effects of Brexit, the climate emergency and changing trade relationships may put the British diet in jeopardy. The MPs called for a national food council that would cover food production, nutrition and public health issues, and for stringent annual targets to reduce the UK’s high levels of food waste.

Water consumption across the UK should be set at 100 litres (22 gallons) per person per day, the MPs found. This would require changes to water availability and potentially to metering. Sustainable cities should also be made more resilient to the effects of the climate crisis, and town planners should be more involved in improving the design of cities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, for instance through more efficient transport networks.

Ivan Tisdall-Downes, who runs the restaurant Native in London’s Borough Market, makes a squirrel ragu by slow cooking the meat from its hind legs. His wild boar supplier happens to help with grey squirrel culling, and sends the carcasses down to the restaurant.

He said that customers are increasingly interested in eating cruelty-free wild meat and minimising their carbon footprint, which makes squirrel a popular choice.

He told The Sunday Telegraph: “Squirrel is one of the most sustainable proteins you can cook really. It is almost exactly the same in taste as rabbit.

“It’s tasty, it’s not as gamey as rabbit, it’s nice white meat. It’s good to cook down slowly and make stews from and ragus for lasagne.

“It’s very good for you, it’s quite lean.

“There are 5 million gray squirrels and only about 150,000 red squirrels at the moment, a record low. Because there aren’t really any predators left for the gray squirrels the population is booming and they are taking over the red squirrel habitat.

“I think sustainable eating is becoming more popular now. More and more people are more conscious of their carbon footprint and the damaging additives that get put in their food. I grew up in South East London and hadn’t heard of wild food. Now wild food is everywhere.”

Kevin Tickle, who runs Michelin-starred restaurant The Forest Side in Cumbria, uses the fact he is in a red squirrel conservation area to his advantage.

He has had a “critter fritter”, a grey squirrel croquette, on his acclaimed tasting menu since the restaurant opened in 2016.

FareShare currently redistributes about 13,500 tonnes of surplus food every year to nearly 7,000 charities including hospices, homeless shelters, care homes and women’s refuges (including a record amount last Christmas) but its annual target is 100,000 tonnes. Demand for surplus food has soared against a background of growing dependence on food banks and rising homelessness in the UK.

FareShare says it has the capacity – and a waiting list of charities wanting help – but needs access to more food. Its solution is a government fund that would cover the costs of storage and transport. Available to any charity or producer that incurs the costs of redistributing food, it would also save charities and other beneficiaries £150m by making free food available to them.

“It’s completely wrong that we have a situation where it’s cheaper to send thousands of tonnes of good edible food to anaerobic digestion plants or to animal feed when there are millions of people experiencing food insecurity and regularly skipping meals across the UK right now,” said FareShare chief executive, Lindsay Boswell.

The bulk of food waste in the UK comes from households, making up 71% of the total. But manufacturing contributes 17% and hospitality and food service 9%. Seasonal weather fluctuations, order cancellations and overstocking – all unpredictable – create surplus food which manufacturers, distributors and farms were not always in a position to redistribute.

Environment ministers are understood to have held informal discussions about giving farmers and food producers financial incentives to encourage them to get waste food onto tables. But FareShare says these need to lead to a level playing field so it’s not cheaper to waste food or turn it into animal feed or energy.

Nearly half of the edible fresh potatoes bought by UK householders each day are thrown away – nearly 2.7 million of them per day, and at a “staggering” annual cost of £230m, figures show.

The humble spud is the second most wasted food in the UK, behind bread, according to new official figures released on Wednesday. The new research was offered in support of a government campaign to encourage consumers to reduce their domestic food waste.

Half of us chuck potatoes in the bin because we don’t get round to them using in time, yet once wrinkly skins, green patches and “sprouts” are removed they are still edible, said Love Food Hate Waste, which is run by the government’s waste advisory body Wrap.

The UK churns out 15m tonnes of food waste a year – of which 7m tonnes come from households. The estimated retail value of this is £7.5bn, and Wrap calculates that a typical family wastes £700 of food a year.Its new Save Our Spuds campaign aims to raise awareness of the vast scale of potato waste and its impact on the environment and our pockets, as well as offering top storage tips, potato rescue remedies and recipe suggestions to use up potatoes before they go bad and are inedible. Correct storage can keep potatoes fresher for longer, it said, giving more time to come up with meal ideas to use them.

Britons throw away 40% of the bagged salad they buy every year, according to the latest data, with 37,000 tonnes – the equivalent of 178m bags – going uneaten every year.

The figures from the government’s waste advisory body Wrap are being published on Wednesday by the supermarket giant Tesco to highlight that prepared salads are still among the UK’s most wasted household foods. Past studies have shown that the average UK family throws away £700 of food each year.

Shoppers do not always buy bagged salads with a specific meal in mind, which can lead to them being forgotten about and then binned, according to separate research carried out by Tesco. Flimsy packaging can lead to delicate leaves spilling out, being damaged and then going soggy.

After a two-year programme finding out why shoppers waste so much, Tesco is aiming to reduce the volume of salad waste with resealable bags. This week it will start selling its own-brand salads in bags with sliding zip locks and made of a thicker film than usual to prolong the fridge life of the leaves.

UK supermarkets throw away at least 115,000 tonnes of perfectly good food every year – and this new ‘food waste’ supermarket is working with stores to put this food to good use.

The Real Junk Food Project has opened its first warehouse in Leeds, which acts as a food waste supermarket, so the needy can take food which would otherwise have been thrown in the bin.

The supermarket has deals with supermarkets including Sainsbury’s, Morrisons and Ocado, and also works with local allotments, cafes, food banks and caterers.

A report published today by the House of Lords EU Committee concludes British retailers are shifting the blame on to customers by luring them in with Buy One Get One Free offers, a practice it says should cease. Farmers are also unfairly scapegoated by supermarkets cancelling orders at the last minute, the peers said.

The committee, which has been examining the impact of food waste in the UK and the EU, said Britain’s inability to reduce the amount of unwanted food it produces was “morally repugnant” and costs the economy at least £5bn a year. Industrialised countries waste 222 million tons of food a year, just 10 million tons short of the net food production of sub-Saharan Africa, peers said.

The report turned its fire on Britain’s retailers, saying they had the power to “influence the behaviour of producers, manufacturers and consumers but, thus far, have failed to take their responsibilities sufficiently seriously”.