As autumn blows in, we have some suitably nutty recipes, home cooking from Marcus Wareing, and Rachel Cooke reports on how the Real Junk Food Project is tackling food waste on a global scale
We don’t yet have a law in this country that bans supermarkets from destroying unsold food. It is bound to come, but heaven knows when. The figures for supermarket wastage, the perfectly good food that cannot be sold simply because it is past its sell-by date, are shocking and can only get worse with the onward march of the “local” small supermarkets, spreading across the country like STDs.
But this is changing, partly due to the Real Junk Food Project, a system where waste food, not just from supermarkets, but from allotments, shops and well-wishers is given a second life at schools and at pay-as-you-feel cafes around the country. The idea is growing, and growing fast, with spaces from Brighton to Leeds where you pay whatever you can afford for a meal or just a cake and a cup of coffee made with perfectly good food that would otherwise have gone into landfill. Carole Cadwalladr has tracked down the busy Adam Smith whose idea it was to turn waste into good, cheap food.
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