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With food prices climbing and the climate crisis impressing on us all to reduce food waste at home, the need to limit what ends up in our bins has never been greater. Individual households are responsible for the majority of the world's food waste, around 61% of the total, according to a UN Environment Programme report.
Fine Dining Lovers has been covering the topic of food waste and how we can limit it, in detail, and you can follow the tips and tricks for turning leftovers into delicious dishes in seasons one and two of our series Why Waste?.
We asked three leading chefs to share their tips for reducing food waste at home, here are their answers.
Andoni Luis Aduriz, Mugaritz
“In our grandparents' house there was no waste, because everything was used. We have to understand that there is waste, as soon as people's priorities change. In the last century, a family spent 50% or more of its income on food. Today, if a family throws food away, it is because they can afford it; in the past, if there was bread left over, they used to make garlic soup. To begin with, perhaps there were no breads at home and soups were made with parmesan rinds. That is to say, there has always been a vocation towards zero waste. All this has changed since the moment when what we don't have is time and what we can afford is to get rid of what bothers us. The biggest piece of advice would be awareness, to buy and plan properly, to be very conscious that any gesture we make has a tremendous impact on the future. At the end of the day we are talking about morality and ethics.”
Niko Romito, Reale Casadonna
“First of all, shop as sensibly and as often as possible. Of course, the ideal would always be to buy whole products, using all parts of them, and to be ingenious in using even the scraps – with which you can do wonderful things – but not everyone has the time or the familiarity. That's why I think it's also important to improve the quality of some of the readymade products. There are some incredible processing and preservation techniques, which allow you to have great quality readymade or semi-processed products, without using chemicals. Contrary to what we think, organoleptic and nutritional quality and large numbers can coexist if the right skills are put in place. For my workshop in Milan, we have developed a method that allows bread to be kept for a month in the fridge, without any preservatives.”
Jessica Rosval, Casa Maria Luigia
“Just pay attention. We always think that we need so much food in our kitchen or that we can only use the very best bit of something. Like if you buy a bag of spinach and you think, ‘well this will die in my fridge’, well, don’t buy it. Be honest with yourself. Take what you need and live like that. Get rid of all the extra stuff that we think we need. Be smart. We need to have a bigger sense of responsibility that what we do every night has an impact. Just one more plastic bag or one more plastic straw, just one more bag of spinach thrown away. Create good habits in the day to day.”
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