where does it ego to then?

how about waste food from restaurants at the end of the day?

bin bags?

is those food not edible? does it deserve to end up in bin bags?

is it reasonable to throw those 'waste food' away, in the world that billions of people live in poverty and many starve to death?

around one third of all the food produced ends up in bin bags, a lot of fruit and vegetables are thrown away even before they reach supermarkets because they don't meet the company's standard

and this is where adam smith comes in.

adam is a chef from leeds who, after spending a year working in a farm in australia, realised how big this problem is. he wanted to do something about it but a guy who worked in the farm told him;

"you can't change the world unless you change your hometown first."

that was probably what made him came back to leeds and started the real junk food project.

what this project does is going around to restaurants and supermarkets in town and 'rescue' food that would otherwise end up in bin bags, take them to the cafe where volunteers turn those food into healthy meals and serve people on a pay as you feel (PAYF) basis, which is basically pay whatever you feel like for your meal with whatever you have, be it money, skills, time, or jet a simple 'thank you'

i was lucky enough to live here and have a chance to help out at the pop-up cafe in trinity kitchen and see how this place works. the amount and variety of food donated to the cafe was unbelievable, and most of them look just fine! the food ranged from loads of brown-ish bananas which weren't even ripe enough for banana bread yet, boxes of apple which looked really normal, loaves of bread that was expired the day before, to chicken, beef, lamb, venison and whole salmon!

how can anybody be so stupid and throw a whole edible salmon away? i just don't get it.

conor, one of the co-directors, told me that some of the regular donators are nando's chicken from the restaurant and food bank (an organisation in england which encourage people to donate dry food through them to give to poor people. people donate too much food to food bank that they can't even manage to give away all of them and end up throwing those food away instead...) other things i saw quite a lot were from waitrose, a posh-ish chained supermarket which they got a lot of bread, vegetables and organic yogurt from. they got a lot of broccoli the other day simply because the supermarket had a new delivery which they needed to sell and there wasn't enough space on the shelves, so the olds ones needed to go.

and those are only food which didn't sell in time. don't forget that there's also food that doesn't even get a chance to sit on shelves and food that people bought and later throw them away.

the real junk food project is now a bigger network which is expanding across europe, and possibly the world. when i was talking to adam, i could hear all the time and energy he put into this project and it was so inspiring. and it managed to inspire other street food traders in trinity kitchen to come together and organise a PAYF day when all the street food vendors will sell their food on a pay-as-you-feel basis for a whole day (on saturday 7th february)

it was very interesting to see how people react to the concept while i was volunteering. there was a mum with his son ordering a kid portion of rice salad and explaining to her 5-year-old son what this project is all about. it felt so great to see parents who care to teach these things to their child. 

cinnamon stewed plums with yogurt, my favourite!

many people felt a bit weird to take food and donate and were trying to give us money instead of putting it in the box. some felt bad to just take it without giving any money so they didn't take anything at all. adam said that many people don't understand the main purpose of this project, which is to lower the amount of food waste. if nobody takes those food then it would have to end up in bins, the last thing he wanted to happen. so better take the food for free than going to buy some more from the supermarkets and generate more waste. of course donation is what keep this place going but the important thing is to reduce food waste. 

he hopes that one day, the real junk food project will disappear because there's no more food waste to intercept.

that's the aim of this project after all.