Doing Good Through Food

Katy Franklin is the Operations Director of ReFED - the only U.S. non-profit wholly dedicated to food waste reduction. It is a think tank that works with decision-makers across the food system to reduce food waste.

ReFED’s work provides data-based insights and guidance on food waste and solutions to it.

They identify both systems level changes to improve outcomes at a national level and also practical measures to help individuals, businesses and other stakeholders make a meaningful impact on the problem of food waste.

Our conversation focusses for some time on ReFED’s 2016 Roadmap - which laid out a route to a 20% reduction in food waste within a decade - and also the online platform that will supersede the Roadmap, the Insights Engine (launching October 2020). If you are interested in the topic I really recommend you download the Roadmap for yourself to look into their findings further.

We cover lots of other ground, including:

• The competitive advantage for businesses who adopt reduction policies
• Why the benefits of reducing food waste are still as available to brands as ever
• Why education has the biggest positive effect of all on the problem of food waste
• What businesses serving food can do to educate their customers and other stakeholders

Katy has spent her career working on strategies and systems to effectively reduce food waste at all levels and has authored industry and academic research on food waste and opportunities to address it. I found it really interesting and informative talking to her and I’m sure you will enjoy listening to the conversation too.

To take any of the points we discuss further, the best place to start would be the ReFED website:

https://www.refed.com/

This episode my guests are Alyson Parkes and Chiara Gianusso.

Together, they co-founded The Food Waste Project – a consultancy service dedicated to preventing and reducing food waste from workplace catering operations.

They focus on preventing food waste at source, rather than on recycling waste that has already occurred. Their approach is to measure what is thrown away in order to understand where food waste can be reduced...

and so prevent the larger environmental damage that recycling does not solve.

https://www.thefoodwasteproject.com

Naomi is Chief Executive of Chefs in Schools - a charity working to improve the health of children through better school food & education.

They realised that the closure of schools would have a disproportionate serious impact on those children for whom free school meals are the main or even only food they receive.

Now, Chefs in Schools are working to prevent children living in food insecure households in the UK from going hungry. They are providing free school meals to eligible pupils who are now at home and they’re helping schools to feed the children of key workers too.

Please enjoy they episode... if you want to find out more about their current focus and what they do under more normal circumstances please check out their website:

https://www.chefsinschools.org.uk

And if you are in a position to donate anything to help them continue their vital work please consider doing so here:

Chefs in Schools - Crowdfunder

Mark MCC is one of the leading Food, Drink and Hospitality brand and marketing minds in world. He has a huge amount of experience as a marketer within major companies, as the founder of the leading agency WE ARE Spectacular and also as the founder of C-Suite brand and marketing consultancy Supersonic Inc. He’s a successful podcaster too - his Mark McC Supersonic Food Marketing Podcast has reached number 20 in the iTunes business charts and is a regular Top 100 podcast.

He has been putting out a lot of free content since the pandemic first started to affect us here in the UK and has now ramped things up with the Pub and Restaurant Rebirth programme - a free series of in depth videos on Youtube to help operators make the most of the enforced downtime and be in the best possible position when they can start to trade again after the lockdown.

Check the free programme out now

The conversation is really intended to help all those who run a cafe, bar or restaurant and are having a hard time at the moment. We cover loads of stuff, but in particular:

• what operators can focus on right now
• how to market and run a delivery/takeaway service if you haven’t done it before
• what the best operators are currently doing
• how you can avoid making marketing or PR blunders that will hurt your business

If you know someone who runs a food and drink business and could do with some help please share this episode with them.

You can follow and engage with Mark on all the channels below:

• Instagram
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Spotify
• Supersonic Inc website

This episode my guests are Hilary Quartner, Nina Mullen and Lily Galef. Together, they co-founded Hilma – a company producing natural remedies backed by science.

They wanted to know why though most products in their homes had changed over the last few years (so they could pronounce the ingredients, read about their sourcing and so on) when it came to the medicine cabinet things were still very much the same as ever - brightly coloured tablets, sugary syrups, and so on and opaque labels.

They looked for the products they wanted, but found that the natural options weren’t backed by science. And the products backed by science didn’t hold up to their clean label standards.

So they decided to take natural remedies into the lab. What they created was not a drug or a vitamin, but a new standard – which they call the Clinical Herbal.

The conversation covered a lot of ground and I found it fascinating. Among other things we discussed:

• The gap between medicines and natural remedies that they are working to bridge
• How their idea became a reality
• How they got backing from the scientific community
• Their approach to ingredients and sourcing
• What their clinical trials aim to show
• What “backed by science” means to them
• How the industry suffers when people use such labels unethically

To look into what they are doing in more detail check out their website or their Instagram feed.

Amanda is CEO and co-founder of Ambrosia, a New York-based company that combines waste management with closed-loop manufacturing. They noted that the largest component of food waste is water and that inside the 1.3 billion tons of food wasted globally each year is 45 trillion gallons of water. So, using their specialised biorefining process, they take food waste, recover the water and upcycle the residual components into an array of products.

Ambrosia is currently launching their first product, Veles - a multi purpose cleaner made with ingredients derived entirely from waste materials. They are able to say it is the world’s first closed-loop cleaning product and that it is actually resource negative, which is quite amazing.

We really delve into the fascinating and creative approach Ambrosia are taking to address our massive food waste problem. The conversation covers loads of areas, including:

• How the idea to takle food waste in this way started
• Issues getting funding
• How the first product has been brought to market
• The accidental discovery that lead directly to Veles
• The types of food waste they are able to treat
• The costs involved in making a truly ethical cleaning product
• How they could partner with other producers to reduce the impact of their products

To look into Ambrosia, the cleaning product Veles, and the issues discussed in the episode in more detail have a look at the following:

• https://veles.com
• https://www.ambrosia.io
• Instagram
• The cost of a truly sustainable cleaning product

This episode is a conversation with Dr Lilly Da Gama – AKA The Food Waste Doctor.

Lilly is a Food Waste Consultant for the United Nations and an Associate Practitioner with the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment. As The Food Waste Doctor she operates an online platform for the discussion of food waste, its impacts, and tips for reducing waste in the home. She is an expert in the trade-offs between food packaging and food waste, and how the overall environmental impact of our food choices can be minimised.

In this episode we discuss:

• The attitude towards food waste she inherited from her family
• The environmental balance between food and packaging
• Why the modern food system uses packaging as it does.
• Why the energy levels used to produce food are FIVE TIMES larger than the those required to produce the packaging which preserves it.
• Which are the best/worst types of food in terms of environmental impact and what this means for the way they should be packaged
• Where packaging decisions take place in the supply chain
• Why focussing on the impact of plastic without considering food waste is a mistake
• How food organisations can improve their environmental impact
• Best ways to reduce wastage in the home
• How diners can reduce their environmental impact in restaurants

Solveiga is Founder & Director of Mimica whose company mission is to radically reduce unnecessary waste, starting with the food industry. Their first product, Mimica Touch, is a patented label that tells you exactly when food spoils inside a package. It is calibrated to degrade at the same rate as food and adjusts to conditions along the way.

Solveiga describes herself as an industrial designer who had a big idea and started Mimica entirely by accident. She has won a number of awards such as MIT Technology Review's Inventor of the Year and the UK James Dyson Award for her work.

In the episode we discuss:

• How the big idea and company came about
• What exactly Mimica Touch is and how it works
• How a biologically accurate food spoilage indicator could reduce food waste
• What inclusive design means

Serena is a Wellness Coach, Certified Yoga Teacher and Plant Based Nutrition Consultant who has studied nutrition for over ten years. She is the co-Founder of Whole Shift Wellness, which specializes in bespoke programs for time pressed professionals who want to look and feel their best. Their programmes are based around the 3 pillars of FOCUS, FOOD and FITNESS because, they believe, if one of these pillars is weak you simply can’t achieve your health and wellbeing goals.

In this episode we discuss:

• The most common wellness issues, what causes them and how they can be addressed
• The importance of taking a holistic approach and the role diet plays in wellness
• How they tailor their programmes for different clients and what that might look like when it comes to food
• Tips for someone thinking of reducing their meat intake
• The results that are possible when clients take ownership of their wellness

Paul is Director of the Sustainable Development Goal 2 Advocacy Hub. He worked for many years with World Vision and the UN’s World Food Programme.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs / Global Goals) are a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity. Goal 2 is Zero Hunger. Specifically, the goal is to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture by 2030. Paul believes it can be done, but only if enough people join the conversation, think about the problems and become part of the solution.

The Advocacy Hub coordinates global campaigning and advocacy to achieve SDG2. It brings together NGOs, advocacy groups, civil society, the private sector and UN agencies to share expertise, ideas, and to collaborate on campaigns so that overall impact is increased.

In this conversation we discuss:

• Paul’s view of the UK’s attitude to food and sustainability
• What setting the goal to end hunger by 2030 has achieved
• How the Hub coordinates the conversation around ending hunger
• What the Hub actually does
• How it works to get distinct groups to engage with each other and work towards achieving zero hunger
• The guidance coming out of the Hub to help people in the food industry do their part towards ending world hunger
• What the Chef’s Manifesto is, how it came about and what it aims to achieve
• How people can get involved with the community working to achieve SDG2

If you would like to investigate the Hub’s work further, please check out some of the links below.

http://sdg2advocacyhub.org

http://www.sdg2advocacyhub.org/chefmanifesto#&gid=1&pid=1

www.chefsmanifesto.com

https://www.instagram.com/chefsmanifesto/?hl=en