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intro

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Gemma Styles: Hello, I'm Gemma and welcome to another episode of Good Influence. This is the podcast where each week you and I meet a guest, who will help us pay attention to something we should know about, as well as answer some of your questions. This week we're talking about food waste: how much we're throwing away, why it's a problem and what we can do to save ourselves meals and money. Joining me this week is Max La Manna. Max is a zero waste chef, sustainability advocate, environmentalist and author. His award winning debut cookbook More Plants Less Waste was voted 2020’s 2nd most sustainable cookbook in the world. And he recently hosted a new series for BBC Earth, uncovering the UK’s food waste issue. You can also find him on social media providing recipes and videos on how to make exciting meals from food that might otherwise have been wasted.

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Gemma Styles: This is what I have to remind myself, just, I'm such a fidgeter. I'm just not allowed to touch anything. I might actually have to sit on my hands. [Max laughs] This is my biggest problem.

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discussion

Gemma Styles: So you're a chef by background... How did you get into cooking? How did you get into veganism? And how did you progress to low waste cooking?

Max La Manna: Well, my father bought his first two restaurants two weeks after I was born, and I grew up in his restaurants for 13 years. Working in the back, seeing how food was prepared and made in the restaurant, and even at home, we would always, we're always cooking at home, rarely ever went out to eat. So food has always been this, you know centrepiece in my life. It's very, very important, cooking, food, and family. And I worked nearly 15 years in restaurants. I've worked every single job in a restaurant from washing dishes and working my way up to even managing cafes and restaurants. And I was always pursuing another career before becoming a chef. And yeah, it was just about three years ago where I realised Wow, okay, it's taken me this long. I think I need to do something with food and the industry of food, and really applied myself with, okay, this is what I'm meant to do. This is what I'm going to do. I'm going to spend more time in the space, do I open up a restaurant, figuring it all out, ended up working with a Michelin starred chef in New York City. And I was both working as a bartender, and as a line cook. And I was splitting the time between the two in the same restaurant, still trying to figure out really, why am I doing this? And I noticed one day, well most days, a lot of the food in this restaurant was going to waste and I wanted to make a change, I started seeing ways to improve the kitchen and ways to improve our cooking and how that can change. And, you know, if you're working for a Michelin starred chef, everything needs to be perfect. It has to be this, you know, this has to be, has to fit perfectly in the dish, it has to be this size, it can't have any, you know, it has to be perfect. And I don't think that's how food is- food is perfectly imperfect. And you're going to have bumps and bruises and scars on food. And we should use those ingredients, we should champion those ingredients too, on the dish, they should be the stars of the dish, because nothing in life is, this isn't perfect, you know, and food is perfectly imperfect, like I said, and I think let's use the entire ingredient. So I started shifting and moving my myself out of the kitchen and finding ways to reduce food waste at home and started little by little putting things online. And so everything kind of has kind of lifted off and transpired from there but with vegan cooking I went- I was vegan about eight years ago, and then fell off because it was a little bit, it was difficult for me, and I had friends who were challenging me and it was all this, you know, it was just difficult to have that conversation with friends when you're so new and so at that start of being vegan. This is 2012. And now I've been vegan a little over four years and it's just like, for me it's every, it's, I don't even think about it anymore. It's- I'm gonna go to the shop gonna buy some fresh produce am I gonna have noodles tonight am I gonna have rice am I gonna have tofu. What is it you know? And so yeah, I don't think about it too much today but the real like the crux and like the focus of how I cook really, as you you are aware, is finding a way to reduce as much as I can, with little effort too.

Gemma Styles: So I feel like the first thing to lead into really is just- why is food waste a problem?

Max La Manna: If we have to unpack this question, we can be here for days. Food waste is such a problem, because it's not just food that we're wasting. It's our money we're wasting. Essentially, we're wasting our money, we're throwing away money. 20 million slices of bread every single day in the UK are thrown away. And there's 2 million people who are starving, who are food insecure. And you can make five sandwiches, basically from those slices of bread that are thrown away to feed the people who are hungry the most. So it makes no sense. And the more and more I dive into food waste and see it in large scales at the supermarket, at home levels, the more and more I need to do something about it, or I need to talk about it, more I need to highlight and show people that there's easier ways to reduce their food waste.

Gemma Styles: So how long has it been now that you have been pretty much zero food waste in you're cooking?

Max La Manna: Yeah, for me? I think I've lost track now. But it's been over three years.

Gemma Styles: Oh, wow okay.

Max La Manna: Um, so I started, I started back in 2017. Actually, I think my anniversary just passed a couple days ago. So it's been a little over three years.

Gemma Styles: Oh congratulations!

Max La Manna: Yeah, thanks. I mean, it's I'm I'm by no stretch, you know, no means that a stretch of the imagination, perfect. I have to compost some scraps of food. I'm not eating every single thing. I recently posted a recipe video of banana skins, which are edible, but I'm not eating banana skins every single day.

Gemma Styles: I saw that one. I'm quite keen to try that one I have to say. Usually my old bananas are straight in the banana bread. But that doesn't solve the problem of the skins.

Max La Manna: Yeah, that's true.

Gemma Styles: And so we're talking about, well, you know, bananas, first example. But being a plant based, vegan chef, you think a lot about composting and kind of any of the rest of the scraps. But if you're not vegan, food waste is still a thing that you can tackle, right?

Max La Manna: Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, food that you bring home, fresh produce is it's one of the largest items of food that we throw away, that ends up going to landfill. I mean, even milk, eggs, those things are thrown away still, too. So those are that's contributing to to climate change, it's ending up going to a landfill unless you're composting and you're finding purpose for that food to go to use. So you're putting it back into like the circular economy. Whereas we're in a linear economy where we, we take or borrow or use we, we use it up and then we throw it away. And that away is some landfill that we never get to see, which is accumulating waste upon waste upon waste. So for example, a head of lettuce, I mean, most people eat leafy greens. So a head of lettuce will take 25 years to decompose in landfill. So over those 25 years, it's releasing CO2. And so that's going into our atmosphere. And so CO2, it's this greenhouse gas called- here in the UK, you say methane [me-thane], where I'm from, we say methane [meh-thane] that is going into our atmosphere, and that's heating up our planet. So one thing that always catches or always like shocks me, and this might shock you too Gemma is that food waste on a on a global scale, the amount of food that we throw away is six times more carbon emissions than air and ground transportation. So flying and driving and quitting, quitting all those things, and riding a bike and walking to work is fine and great. But it's food waste. That is a larger issue. And it's never talked about.

Gemma Styles: Wow, I had no idea it was that that big, actually, like I knew obviously I've like done some reading. And I'm interested in this kind of thing so I'd- I know a bit about food waste, and why we should sort of compost etc. But I didn't know it was that much. That's crazy.

Max La Manna: It's shocking. Yes.

Gemma Styles: I mean, so I did some reading around before we recorded the episode because I wanted to know what we were looking like in the UK on food waste. So looking at some stats, our food waste in the UK has actually fallen by 7% over the past three years. So going in the right direction, but I feel like especially given those climate numbers, we can definitely do a lot more. It also says that the amount of food that we're currently wasting for “an average family with children”, which is a phrase I won't get into, is £700 worth of food a year.

Max La Manna: Yeah, that's a holiday for some people. People may spend that that amount of money on a holiday on a trip, when they're not, you know, at home. It is, it's it's scary. But yeah, like you said the, I guess the needle, you know, the everything is changing and and we are seeing a decrease in food waste, especially during lockdown. We've seen less food waste being thrown away less food, fresh food edible food being thrown away. But that is I think climbing right now. People are just getting in this back into the routine of just taking, forgetting that they have it in their fridge and then they throw it away. I think if people can't get a wrap their minds around the the environmental impact that food has, when you're not using it and throwing it away. Get behind the idea that this is just money, like you said it's £700 for an average family. That's £700 that you could have had that you could have used to go somewhere else so or do something with that money. So it's it's baffling when you- I can't, it sickens me to know that, you know, if I'm throwing something away, that it's going somewhere and it's contributing to, you know, the these, you know, methane that is being released into the atmosphere. It's also the fact that there are people who don't have enough food to live a healthy lifestyle each and every single day. So it's so many different kinds of factors that come into play. When I'm deciding do I eat this? Or do I compost it? Or Yeah,

Gemma Styles: I think it's been a weird year food wise anyway, given, I mean, it's been a weird year in general. But what with all the lockdowns and kind of trying to think back to the beginning of lockdown times when there was the awful supermarket stockpiling and that kind of thing. And everyone was so aware of what they had and what they couldn't get, what they didn't want to waste, because they couldn't get more, they didn't want to do unnecessary trips to the shops that we usually don't think about. And also knowing because we've all heard in the media this year, how many people have struggled this year, and have been relying on food banks more than ever, and it feels kind of immoral now, I think it's sort of reframed the way we think about food. And we think about wasting things in general this year, a little bit. And then when you couple that with, with the climate change impacts that wasting our food has. I feel like there are a lot of people who are very keen to waste less, but maybe don't know where to start, especially when it comes to food. So you've obviously gone all in on this lifestyle change. What would you say are some of the biggest sort of behavioural changes maybe that you had to do or if you were talking to someone and they wanted to reduce their food waste, what are some main things they might want to think about to start doing that?

Max La Manna: Well, I think first and foremost is to make friends with your freezer. So I gave I've given my freezer a name. So when we associate something and we give it a name, we become you know, we end up using it more. So my freezer, his name is Felix, I put food in there and I end up I end up using the food that I've saved and the freezer is a great place to start because it can preserve the life of the food. And we all have busy schedules, we don't know what's going to happen next week or even tomorrow. So if we can save food, and that freezes that place, we can extend the life expectancy of food and the shelf life of food. So and that also coincides or that kind of brings me into like saving your leftovers. So if you're cooking and eating the food that you actually have first versus going out to the store and buying more food actually save the food and then and then eat your leftovers. Most people you know see leftovers as second best. But in my opinion, I think the flavours develop more and you have richer and more, you know more delicious food when it's the the spices and the herbs that you’ve used have marinated over time. It's the next day when you heat it up and you put it in a frying pan like the other day I heated up spaghetti in a frying pan with a bit of the sauce that I had and I added a little bit of like vegan cheese and it was delicious is better than the like just you know the normal spaghetti I had prior but you know you have to just change up the way you cook to when you want to waste less food. So frying it putting it in a frying pan and frying it up is another way- but saving your food using your freezer and again, using the food you already have. So don't go out and buy more food. Create a list when you go shopping, do a survey of your of your pantry and your fridge. Make sure you- okay I have this, I have that, I don't need to go out and buy more of this. And that helps you from stockpiling and having more food than you should.

Gemma Styles: That is one thing. I'm quite bad at being disorganised. Only in that, you know, I enjoy a supermarket trip more if I'm just wandering around the aisles and seeing what takes my fancy, but it's not always the best way to do it.

Max La Manna: It can be quite therapeutic to just go in the shop and you're going up and down the aisles and you pick and things and putting in a basket feels nice. But that, you know, sometimes, you know, you don't need to throw your money at things like that, you know. So it's better to, you know, do a little survey in your kitchen look and see what you have first, and then you can go on your merry way.

Gemma Styles: Got to make a plan. And so we talked about, or we mentioned bread earlier as being a big one that people waste. I'm curious to know, if there are any other things you could suggest that people waste a lot? So I was having I think about this small ways that you can waste less of your food. And something that came to mind was, it seems ridiculous now, but I would always used to, when I was cooking mushrooms, which I do quite a lot. I would just snap the stalk off the mushroom, and then throw the whole thing in my compost bin. And that was just how I prepared them. And I have no idea why, I think I must have just seen somebody else do it once upon a time. And that's always how I've done it. And then I was on a family holiday [laughing] and I was cooking dinner with my friend Chloe, and we were doing mushrooms and I snapped the stalk of the mushrooms and she went What are you doing? Yeah, like why have you done that? Like those? There's nothing wrong with that part of the mushroom. And I thought, why have I been doing this for so many years? It felt so ridiculous. So I'm kind of thinking, are there any other things that we get rid of a lot that we don't need to?

Max La Manna: Oh, absolutely. And I'm always asking my audience online like which which foods you throw away the most and people are just their minds are blown because it's just like how you and your friend Chloe, like Chloe cooks one way and you cook the other way and everyone's been brought up in different, you know, different parts of the kitchen to cook certain ways and broccoli stems, one the skins to your potatoes, parsnips or your carrots, the peels to butternut squash, even the skin to onions and garlics those skins can be used to make a veg stock so you can extend the life or the expectancy or that ingredient because we may not see it as edible but it can be used to create something else. Recently, I blended like the whole entire lemon including the skin, the pith, everything, even the seeds and blended it all up with some water and then placed them in the ice cube trays and placed them in the freezer and made lemon ice cubes.

Gemma Styles: Good old Felix.

Max La Manna: Good old Felix, doing his magic, freezing away. But yeah, potatoes and broccoli stems, even like the kale stem that sent the middle part of the stem too, people are just using the leaf and thrown away that stem. You could steam that up, blend it up, roast it. I mean, there's so many uses, I'm constantly just trying to figure out ways of use the entire vegetable and find different creative ways that are not like the traditional, traditional way of cooking. But yeah, use as much as you use everything. I always ask myself that question, what can I do with this? Before it goes to compost.

Gemma Styles: I feel like planning is probably the biggest barrier to reducing the food waste because this is- it is something that I try and do more. And even for example, I saw a video of yours recently, where you made I think it was a chocolate cake out of the aquafaba, is how you say, the water that comes in your chickpeas. And I was- happened to be using chickpeas in my dinner that night and I thought oh I'll save this, save this water and maybe I'll make that cake and then I just didn't get around to it because I just hadn't planned on making a cake that week or however I guess. So I think is there a particular way that you try and plan when you're shopping and plan each part of the vegetable or do you kind of just get used to doing it once you've been doing it a while.

Max La Manna: A little bit of both and I'm actually guilty of doing exactly what you do where you save something you put it off to the side and days go by and you go Am I really gonna make chocolate cake again or am I gonna make something with this this ingredient and you kind of forget about it and I did a clean this weekend and just got rid of like projects that I had like accumulating in the fridge. Yeah, it does. It does require a little bit of planning. Sometimes you can't do it right then in the moment if you're going to use the chickpeas for some you know dish and you're going to make hummus or roasted, you're gonna roast them to make something savoury. But then you're going to do you have time to make that chocolate cake with the leftover chickpea water? So it does require a little bit of planning. I mean cooking is a privilege and finding the time to cook is certainly a privilege in itself. So definitely does require time. Get creative find find the time to do it. I I love spending my weekends experimenting and finding different ways to to cook.

Gemma Styles: So at the moment, I feel like when I'm talking about food and cooking, all I'm thinking about is cooking and eating at home because I've been at home for so much of the year. Would you have any tips for people on reducing their food waste once they're kind of, back out in the world? Or reducing waste in general? If you're kind of out and getting lunch at work? Or if you're going out for dinner? How does, how can we kind of apply it when we're not at home and cook?

Max La Manna: Yeah, I what's gonna, what's going to, I think happen is that we're going to still be in that mindset of buying the same amount of food that we had the week prior, you know, months prior. And all of a sudden your schedule is going to change. And you're going to spend less nights at home cooking or days at home cooking and preparing meals. Again, I think, and you've said it, I think before I did, but it is planning, it is making sure that you know, this night I'm going to cook, I'm not going to be home on this day. It's just planning ahead like we do with everything, we have a calendar for everything. We figure out what we're doing the next day and the days that come after that. So it is it is all about planning and organising your fridge and your pantry knowing what you're going to cook. I'm not a expert at like batch cooking, I don't really typically like it. I like cooking my food fresh and in the moment. So I just find you know, at the end of the week, I usually have a clear out where I just take almost everything out of my fridge that I have and I have a really small fridge that sits below the counter. And I just take everything that I have ingredient wise I get a baking, a baking dish, now that we're moving into fall, it's you know, getting cosier and we're moving in indoors. I just whack everything into the oven, drizzle it with olive oil and some seasoning and just have like a roasted dish of veggies. But yeah, I think again, it just goes back to planning and making sure you know what days you're going to cook. If you're going to have lunch next day. Bring that with you. If you're going into work, whatever it is, but planning is going to be your your, your lifeline.

Gemma Styles: Have you found it a change moving from New York to London? Is it different, would you say, how we shop over here, how we shop for food, because I feel like in in different- depending on where you are in the UK, it's kind of a pattern of whether you are in the middle of a city and you shop every day, maybe, or every couple of days and you pop to a small shop near your house or whether you go and drive to a big supermarket and do a big food shop. I feel like that's quite a, quite a difference in the way that people do shop and cook here.

Max La Manna: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I living in a city. I mean, again, I have a small fridge. So I'm constantly, you know, kind of dipping out to the supermarket on a regular basis. But when I am visiting friends and family who are outside the city, it's you know, once a week, maybe a little over once a week where you know, we would drive to the supermarket and get ingredients. I don't think there is that much of a change in the way that people shop and cook. It's the same in New York and it's the same here. I definitely see though that the ingredients here are fresher. And there. It just feels healthier. The food feels cleaner. Dare I say it? It just feels better the food here versus the food that I that I've consumed in New York.

Gemma Styles: I mean, that's good to know. I have, yeah, one of my friend says that that's me before I think who was from New York actually. And it said she always if she ever comes over to the UK and comes to London, she always looks forward to the tomatoes because they taste so much more than the ones that she gets at home.

Q&A

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Gemma Styles: Every week, my guest and I will be answering your questions. And the first one comes in from Ryan…

Tips for how to waste less food or someone living alone. I waste so much bread, I can't eat it quick enough.

Max La Manna: So the for the person who's wasting a lot of bread, what you can do is save that loaf of bread. If it's half the loaf of bread that you want to use later, put it in the freezer, I mean, you're most likely will end up end up using it for toasts or heating it up or it'll just defrost to room temp and it'll be totally fine. I would keep some out and then again, keep the other half in the freezer. That is going to be a lifesaver. It's going to, it's going to be something that changes your world and hopefully people take on this tip of using their freezer.

Gemma Styles: We had a similar question from someone else as well actually who, again, was saying about being single and trying not to waste food when things come packaged for multiple people.

Max La Manna: For people who are, you know, single or living alone and they're shopping for themselves. Create a list write down what you actually need. Go on a website, go on Pinterest. I'm always constantly looking on Pinterest or cookbooks or even my cookbook and look at recipes and get inspired to actually cook those recipes. And then you can stick to those stick to that list when you go to the supermarket and you're shopping and then just get creative from there.

Gemma Styles: I think maybe part of it is just getting used to repeating your meals in a week because all I feel like that's when I kind of if I cook more, in the evening, knowing that I'm going to have the leftovers for lunch another day, I guess it's kind of similar, like, not necessarily expecting to eat a different thing every night and kind of getting comfortable with eating your leftovers, as you said.

Max La Manna: Yeah, eat your leftovers. But also just it doesn't need to be the, you know, the perfect dish where it's, I need three roasted carrots, and I need the the sauteed mushrooms here and the baked this over here, it can just be a pile of mush. And I know that doesn't sound attractive or delicious. But if you just put it in a baking dish or in a frying pan, season and put some sauce on it, whatever it is, and just throw it, you know, heat it up. It's gonna be fine. I do this all the time with, you know, with ingredients I have like that example I shared earlier with just throwing everything that I had in my fridge on a baking dish with some olive oil, some seasoning some fresh herbs put in, throw it in your oven, you're gonna be fine.

Gemma Styles: [laughs] We're getting it into roast season anyway. So I feel that this is definitely a good time to use up all the veg in the fridge. Okay, so next question is from Natalie. And she says-

How can I get out of the habit of buying fruit and veg? Letting it die in the fridge. And then throwing it away?

Max La Manna: Hmm. How can you get out of the habit of that? That's a great question, huh? What can you do? Well storing your food properly is the first thing you should do. And you should research like, potatoes shouldn't be kept in the fridge, they should be kept in a cool dark and dry environment, in your cupboard, out of sunlight and out of like plastic bags- that will help preserve food and give the food a longer life expectancy. Something like carrots and celery, you can place in water you can- so if the veggie is going a bit soft and limp, you can place it in water and the water will or the vegetable will absorb the water and it'll just become more crisp again. So those are ways of like hydrating your food. Because the refrigerators are cold, dark and dry environment and it's sucking the life, the air out of the food out or the life out of the food. So yeah, finding ways to store your food properly. And if food seems to be- even herbs, if your herbs are going bit soft, place them in water, they'll firm right up, and they'll crisp right up. And just plan out your meals. And I know that sounds boring. And it sounds kind of old school and like our parents might be doing that at home. Like they plan out their meals, they always have, you know, fish fingers or whatever kind of fish fingers. I'm trying to sound British. [Gemma laughs] They have something they have, you know, they have like a routine to their meals. But yeah, I think if you can pick out a couple days or even one day a week or two days a week where it's going to be this and it's going to it's going to be that stick to stick to that routine. Like I said my the last day of the week usually is like a big roast day where everything is kind of going to roast and all right, yeah, my vegetables look like they're going a bit soft and I need to use them and the potatoes are sprouting a little bit. So I'm just going to remove that sprout, which is another tip if your potatoes are sprouting, or just remove the sprout and you potatoes are fine. If they're a little green, cut off the green part and your potatoes are actually fine. So just plan out your meals, choose one or two days and you'll be fine.

Gemma Styles: Good tip. I had never heard that about putting vegetables in water. So I'm gonna have to try that.

Max La Manna: Try it, watch.

Gemma Styles: Okay, next question is from Jared. And he says-

I hate how much I cook chicken when I can't think of what to cook. What's an equivalent plant based alternative that a meat eater could easily swap to?

Max La Manna: Jared there are plentiful options out there. There's an abundance of you know, plant based meat substitutes and alternatives in supermarkets. Like there's the big one that's out there now with the hamburgers and Beyond Meat or Impossible Burger. Have you had them yet?

Gemma Styles: Oh my god, I have some in my freezer. They’re so good. [laughing] I love them so much!

Max La Manna: Incredible. Sometimes I have to stay away from it because it tastes so good. And it's like it's a treat for me like if I want I'll have a burger. And that is just- last summer I was I think I had them every single day. But there are an abundance of alternatives and if you're looking for something that is a bit more meaty in substance and is a bit more whole food go for mushrooms and walnuts sautéed in a pan, or lentils and broccoli stem, or chickpeas, mashed up chickpeas with sweet corn, it's going to have that texture that meatiness, it's not, you know, and season it up, of course, you're not going to eat alone by itself. But if you season it well enough with, you know, whatever, whatever tickles your fancy if you want barbecue sauce or, you know, smoked paprika, and, you know, a marinara sauce or something, you know, I think it's, it always comes down from me and my palate. And what I like is the seasoning if the seasoning is just like what I used to cook with, prior to being vegan and plant based. That way, I just feel, something feels good inside. I know this flavour, I know this taste. I'm going to keep using this and just tweak and add different ingredients to the recipe.

Gemma Styles: I think that's definitely good advice. I mean, I'm vegetarian, not vegan, but I have been for maybe four years now? And I definitely remember at the beginning it’s kind of a habit of, and I think a lot of people are like this, kind of meat and two veg people, and you think well, that's the main part of the dinner. So if you're not having that, what are you having? But there are so many alternatives now, in the supermarkets, even if you've not quite progressed to really having completely new meals off the top of your head when you just go and do your shopping. There's so many alternatives that are really quite realistic now anyway. So if you're kind of thinking you want to eat less meat, but you don't really know what to replace it with, do the stepping stone of replacing it with a fake version of itself, if that's what you fancy doing?

Max La Manna: Absolutely. The imitation meats are there. They're incredible. And it's just seeing which one tastes good to you. What texture you like, based on that. So yeah, there's so many options now. It's incredible.

Gemma Styles: Definitely. Okay, the last question I've got, I thought was quite a funny one, is from Sophie. And she says that when she thinks of a zero waste restaurant, she thinks of someone literally using [laughing] scraps from the bin to make a brand new meal. So she's asking:

What is the best way to market zero waste to make it more accessible?

Max La Manna: I think we need to remove, actually, the title of zero waste, because there's this perfection that kind of encapsulates the, the lifestyle of, of this movement. And I'm not perfect. And I use that term zero waste in like, my branding and my marketing, like in previous years- because it hooked people and it grabbed people and it pulled them in. But there are restaurants like here in London, I think there's one or two restaurants in London. That is a zero waste restaurant, they're using the whole entire ingredient. And then they're not [laughing] taking anything from the bin and scraps like that. I flip that question around most of the time now, saying low waste or not even mentioning that it is low waste or no waste and just cooking the way it is. So I used to host supper clubs and dinner parties all the time. And I wouldn't tell people what was in the food until it actually came out. And they would eat it or I tell them afterwards Okay, this was the broccoli stem or this was the skin of this ingredient or this was the part of this vegetable and people would- why, what, that's that. And it's all about reducing your waste as much as you can little by little, each day is a step in that direction. So I'm a big believer that I never tell, I'll never tell anyone to go vegan. I'll just tell people to eat more plants. And I'll never tell people to, to- I'll say waste less food. But I won't say you need to waste no food. It's, it's about doing these small things. There's bigger issues then in the world than wasting, wasting less food or eating vegan. They're bigger issues that we need to solve before we even get to this.

Gemma Styles: Yeah, I think I think you're exactly right, like, things like this can just be quite overwhelming for people when you kind of say like, okay, you need to be wasting zero food. Now it seems like such an impossible goal, which as you say, it is, but it just makes people not want to try and do it. Whereas I think we are starting to come round to the idea that actually any adjustments that you make are still adjustments in the right direction. So even if you say we've, you know, we've talked a lot about broccoli stems, like even if you eat a head of broccoli this week, and you save the stem and throw it in a soup, that's still waste that you've saved even if you didn't manage to save your chickpea water this week, if you know what I mean. Like it's still all progress and I think- we can all do something and none of us can do everything.

Max La Manna: Hit the nail on the head. Perfect. It's about, yeah, again, taking those small steps. And you are like it's one, one ingredient at a time, you know, and see how it goes and see how it works for you, you know, and then maybe you're saving that broccoli stem for one entire year and nothing else. You're going to use that broccoli stem and that's okay. Like, it's totally fine. I've just gone down a rabbit hole of finding ways to use almost every single ingredient that I have. And that that's, that's fun. This is I mean, my world is I was brought up in food. So it just makes more sense for me to spend more time talking about food being around food, and of course, eating food. So I find it it's, it's a challenge every single time I set a new kitchen, I look at it, I look at it as a challenge. Okay, what can I do today that's going to create less waste? or How can I find a different use for this ingredient? I made bacon out of carrot peels. Like sounds so crazy. And now? I mean, it doesn't taste like the real thing. But it's, it's just something else and it catches people's interest. Oh, how do you do that and you know, making chocolate cake from aquafaba, the leftover chickpea water blending up and you can make meringues, you can make so many things from that, that water that ingredient better than throwing it down a sink, you can use that and put it into something else. So small steps. Big impact.

Gemma Styles: I think it’s fun as well, honestly, I mean, this is just me sounding like a fan girl now, but I have seen a lot of your videos, and I tend to watch them and I think like, it's stuff that you haven't thought about wasting before. But then once you see that there is an alternative to wasting it you think? Great. It's almost like there's a puzzle that slotted into place. I'm trying to think of one that I saw recently, it was something you did with that outside of a watermelon. And I thought, I hadn't even thought there was a possibility that you could eat that because- how do you eat that! But what did you do.

Max La Manna: I made pickles from watermelon, the water, the rind of the watermelon. So just I took off like that thin layer of skin on the outside. But that that part, that meaty white a part, that white part on the inside of the watermelon that our parents said, don't eat that part. As a grown up ever, my parents don't eat that don't eat that, which is totally fine to eat. It's just a bit rough. And if you keep it in a pickle brine for a couple days, you can have pickles.

Gemma Styles: I mean, just I just never would have thought of this kind of thing. This is what I think is so fun about it.

Max La Manna: Let me challenge you- what what ingredient do you waste the most? Because I I'm always asking people and- this isn't my podcast now. But I'm asking you, which which ingredient do you waste? And maybe I can come up with a recipe.

Gemma Styles: Maybe spinach, sometimes, because it always comes in such a big bag. And it seems to wilt quite quickly that maybe I'm not storing it properly. Maybe this is one of the things I need to change. Yeah, spinach, also... I mean, if you're telling me I can make something out of the top of an aubergine, then you're gonna blow my mind, because I've never thought of anything with that.

Max La Manna: I haven't. Whoa, challenge.

Gemma Styles: Challenge Max!

Max La Manna: That's my challenge.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Gemma Styles: Remember, if you want to get in touch with us or have any questions for future episodes, email me at goodinfluencepod@gmail.com. At the end of each episode, I like to ask our guests for some recommendations for something to read, watch and listen to, if you want to learn more about what we've discussed today. So Max, if you don't mind, could you recommend us something to watch?

Max La Manna: To watch. It's on Netflix, and it's called Patriot Act. And there's an episode called How America is Causing Global Obesity. And it talks about food deserts. And it talks about a lot about food and it wraps it up into like a 15 or 20 minute episode. Easy to digest, but it gives you everything you need to know. And it's brilliant. And it looks at like the wider issue around food and the problems we're facing and why America is like instigating, and they're like really causing the problem, and it's spreading around the world.

Gemma Styles: Okay, great one. Thank you. And something to read?

Max La Manna: Yes, this is one of my favourite books, and it might feel a little bit dated in terms- because the scientific reporting of the book was in like 2007, 2008, but it's called waste by Tristram Stuart is the name and the book is called Waste. And it's just everything you need to know about food waste, and the problems around the world. And it's just opened my- it opened my eyes and he's, he's like the person I look up to in terms of documenting and becoming like a journalist in the in the food waste world.

Gemma Styles: Cool. So if we're really wanting to dig in, that'd be a good place to start. And then finally, a recommendation of something to listen to?

Max La Manna: Yeah. I love podcasts. And the one I listen to right now is How to Save the Planet from Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. It's a goldmine. Go for it.

outro

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Gemma Styles: Thank you for listening to Good Influence. And thank you to Max for joining me. If you've enjoyed the episode, please take a moment to subscribe to the podcast on Global Player or wherever you're listening. And if you're feeling generous rate and review us too. It's really appreciated and helps others find the podcast. See you next week!