Of the estimated 10 million tonnes of food wasted each year in the UK, around 70 per cent is thrown away by households. Perhaps this is not the time to be complacent; Then again, a 2025 survey by the charity WRAP found that 80% of us think we waste less food than the average household.
The Slow Food movement, born in 1986 in protest against the opening of a McDonald’s near Rome’s Piazza di Spagna, helped turn nose-to-tail into a culinary status symbol, with bad boy chefs feeding tasty nuggets of spleen and gizzard to wealthy diners who would struggle to tell the difference between these and a hamburger in a blind tasting.
The plant-based version – from root to tip – took a little longer, but eventually so-called “Trash Cooking” was adopted by trendy chefs such as Mads Refslund, co-founder of Noma and author of Drops, wilts and weeds; New York restaurateur Dan Barber, whose WastED pop-ups served dishes made from kitchen scraps; and Wasted Kitchen in Faversham, winner of a 2024 BBC Food and Farming award.
We’ve been here before: Patience Gray’s Honey from a weed (1986) is a captivating account of the “frugality and liberality” of peasant cuisine in Catalonia, Puglia and Naxos. Many of his recipes were inspired by absolute necessity – notably a method of cooking fox “given to him by an old anarchist from Carrara”.
Gn Health
