Waste food feeds 5,000 a lunchtime curry in Trafalgar Square. Elona Grondona, a school nurse, came to Trafalgar Square in London for one reason – to eat curry.
But this was no ordinary meal, Friday's lunch was served as part of the Feeding the 5,000 initiative, to encourage households and business to reduce food waste. The Feeding the 5000 team – a coalition of Fareshare, FoodCycle, Love Food Hate Waste and Friends of the Earth, led by food waste expert Tristram Stuart– treated Grondona and 4,999 others to a free meal using food that would otherwise have been wasted, such as cosmetically imperfect fresh fruit and vegetables – in short, wonky carrots.
The misshapen ingredients were not salvaged from nearby skips but supplied directly by farmers who sell their goods to supermarkets. Tristram Stuart : Le scandale du gaspillage alimentaire mondial. WASTE. The scandal of Britain's free food. Good food for free has been the holy grail of foragers since our ancestors first climbed down from the trees.
How ironic, therefore, that it now lies heaped on every street corner, and the primary response it elicits is disgust. Every week, I heave open a supermarket skip and find therein a more exotic shopping list of items than I could possibly have invented - Belgian chocolates, ripe bananas, almond croissants, stone-ground raisin bread - often so much it would have fed a hundred people. A rummage in the bins of the local sandwich store yields another bewildering array, from granola desserts with honey on top to crayfish salad and tuna-filled bagels.
Venez au Banquet des 5000 ! L'homme qui n'a rien à gâcher.