Food Is... Podcast

In this episode I’m speaking to Pete Pearson – Director of the food waste campaign at the World Wildlife Fund’s US offices. WWF is an international NGO working in over 100 countries, and focused on conservation and minimising the impact we humans have on the environment and the animals with whom we share this planet. Since 2015 they have been devoting resources to a campaign to reduce food waste, resulting in initiatives both commercial and educational in focus. And since then Pete has been tasked with overseeing the campaign and its various elements. I discuss with Pete the evolution of the campaign, the willingness of business to engage with the them and the issue, the impact of government policy and much more. Since the interview was conducted there has been the launch of a series of pilot projects aimed at further reducing food waste in the hotel industry – being carried out in co-operation with The Rockefeller Foundation and the American Hotel and Lodging Association. If you would like to be kept up to date on new interviews and articles on the site, as well as discounts for the new shop – where I’m selling prints of my work - the profits from which will go to helping fund the project, and allow me to spend more time documenting the activities of organisations fighting to reduce avoidable food waste. So please check out the http://foodis.org.uk/shop and sign up to the http://foodis.org.uk/snewsletter

In this episode I’m speaking to Cristina Reni from Food for Soul – an organisation based in Italy, set up by the chef Massimo Bottura, who runs the number one restaurant in the world. The organisation aims to encourage public and private organizations to create community kitchens around the world, and was created after Massimo was involved in setting up a soup kitchen in an abandoned theatre during the Expo 2015 in Milan, feeding vulnerable members of the community using food left over from the Expo each day, rescuing it from going to waste. He was involved with a similar initiative at the Rio Olympics in 2016. Thanks to the work of Food for Soul, these soup kitchens – or refettorios - are still up and running, and it’s recently been announced that they will be opening a refettorio in London this June, during London Food Month. I spoke to Cristina, who is a project manager at Food for Soul about how the organisation functions, the impact it’s having, and much more. Just a say that this was the first time I had carried out an interview via Skype, and I was also starting to come down with a cold, so I’m not the most dynamic in this interview unfortunately, but Cristina more than makes up for that with her passion and enthusiasm for the great work that Food for Soul is doing.

In this episode I’ll be speaking to Sophie from Elysia – a new start-up social enterprise which buys food that would otherwise have gone to waste from various local, artisan suppliers at a discounted rate, and uses them to create meals to order, as well as catering for events. I caught up with Sophie during one such event, and she shared with me the story behind Elysia, how it functions, and the impact her company is having on reducing avoidable food waste. Then we met up a second time when she was meeting with chef Emily Roux, daughter of Michel Roux Jr, who has been providing Sophie with mentorship and support in developing her dishes. I spoke to Emily about her experiences as a chef in relation to food waste both here in the UK, and in France, and what she has gained and learnt about the issue from her work with Sophie. Sophie has been very kind to provide listeners of the podcast with a discount on their first purchase from Elysia, details of which I will share at the end of the recording. Elysia - http://elysiacatering.com Articles, interviews and videos on food waste - http://foodis.org.uk

in this episode I’m speaking to Margaret Ritchie, Member of Parliament for South Down in Northern Ireland, and a member of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. In the previous episode I’d said I would be publishing a second SOS NI podcast, which shared the stories of the staff and volunteers, and the organisations they support, but it’s taking me longer to piece together than I’d hoped, and because I’ve been recording other interviews at the same time I didn’t want to delay getting them published any longer. So that’s why you’ll be listening to an interview with Margaret Ritchie instead of the SOS NI crew, and there might be one or two more published ahead of that episode, but I will hopefully have it sorted in a few weeks time. So the background to this interview - I contacted Margaret after reading her conversation on Twitter with the organisation Feedback – telling about a grocer who had been told by a local official that he couldn’t sell cosmetically imperfect produce. Margaret sits on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee which is currently investigating the issue of food waste, and will be reporting on it later in the year. I will put links in the show notes to the recordings of representatives of the supermarkets and others giving testimony to the committee. It’s a brief interview, which took place in a busy MP’s café in the heart of the Houses of Parliament, and explores the work of the committee as well as what lies ahead, and the potential for new legislation. Shownotes can be found here - http://foodis.org.uk/?p=1537 And check out the Food Is... website for more on food waste - http://foodis.org.uk

In this episode I’m speaking to Pete Loughins from SOS Northern Ireland’s Food Programme, which gathers food and other goods from supermarkets that would otherwise go to waste, and redistributes them to other non-profit organisations which are providing frontline support to vulnerable members of the community. What distinguishes SOS NI from other redistribution initiatives is their focus on capturing fresh produce – collecting bread and other baked goods, fruit and vegetables, rather than canned and non-perishable produce which most others capture. They gather the food 6 nights a week, distributing it the following morning to ensure it is still fresh. This is the first in a two-part series – the second episode will be released in 2 weeks time, and shares the stories of the volunteers as they deliver the food, and representatives of the recipient organisations.

In this episode I’m speaking to a couple of people from Fruta Feia a co-operative with hubs around Portugal, that buys food from farmers that has been rejected by the retailers they supply, and would otherwise have gone to waste – selling this seasonal and locally sourced produce on to its members. I was fortunate enough to spend the day with Fruta Feia, as they collected food from various suppliers from towns and villages nearby Lisbon, and then took it to a community centre to create the fruit and veg boxes for their members. The recording took place as the produce collected that day was being unloaded from the van, during which I spoke to Miguel who works for the co-op and explains a little about how Fruta Feia functions, and then to a volunteer who explains how and why she got involved with the organisation – her opinions are of course her own, and don’t necessarily reflect those of Fruta Feia. It’s a brief introduction to what is a fantastic organisation, doing great work in reducing food waste, supporting local farmers, and providing people access to healthy, nutritious and fresh food at very affordable price.