‘Our parents were right – we all need to stop throwing away food’ Max La Manna

WORKING in top-tier New York restaurants opened Max La Manna’s eyes to the realities of food waste. This became particularly clear during his last job – working for a Michelinstar chef. “You have to be very precise on how you prepare and how you cook food,” says La Manna, an American chef who is now based in south

London.

“For instance, you have to peel the carrot, then you’ve got to take off the more bulbous, round sides of the carrot, and you basically just use the centre.

“So, you’re throwing away more than 50% of the carrot, and you’re just using this centrepiece that’s perfectly symmetrical.”

La Manna remembers thinking: “I don’t cook this way at home ... Why are we peeling the carrot? There are more nutrients in the peel.”

The self-taught chef, 34, soon moved away from working in restaurants to showcasing his skills on social media, where he’s made food waste a central part of his ethos. Though gregarious, but will often punctuate his sentences with more sombre facts about the realities of food waste.

“Potatoes are one of the most wasted foods – we throw away 4.4 million potatoes every day in the UK, 20 million slices of bread every day,” he says, adding that we also bin 920,000 bananas.

“Bananas, we ship from another country, such as South America. They take about 30 days to get here to the UK, then we just throw them away. So, all that labour, all that time, all that energy that goes into it makes me think: how do we be better and find ways to utilise these ingredients?

“We’ve all had our parents at one point in time say, ‘Don’t waste food, there are starving people in the world’. I always thought it was some faraway distant place – it’s right here on our doorstep. And with the cost of living, it makes no sense for us to be throwing away food.”

Looking back to his childhood in Connecticut, La Manna says with a laugh: “I thought I grew up in a foodie household – I didn’t, we pretty much ate the same thing over and over again.”

He grew up on a diet of stews, stirfries, and spaghetti and meatballs. “I thought it was so delicious and good, maybe because my father perfected the recipe,” he says.

The plant-based chef tells Prudence Wade why we should save money and the planet by cooking the whole fruit or vegetable – including the banana peel

La Manna only learned how to cook when he was 20 out of necessity.

“I was living in New York by myself and I actually had to cook. Now I’m drawing off the memories of tastes and flavours and textures, and figuring out how to cook this – but I wasn’t making any money. Money went to rent, and the little money I had leftover was for food.”

He continues: “It was then I started to learn how to utilise the whole ingredient. Why do we peel? Why do we cut off the broccoli stem and throw it away? Let’s use that whole ingredient.”

Over the years, he’s tried innovative ways to use up fruit and veg – from the flamboyant, such as grapefruit caviar, to the more everyday, such as lentil and broccoli stem tacos – which is a recipe in his second book, You Can Cook This!

“You can eat banana peel,” he continues enthusiastically. “Other countries, other cultures and cuisines do this on a regular basis, so what’s wrong with it? Why can’t we, here in the global north, do that? You can make ‘bacon’ from banana peel.”

La Manna is a plant-based chef – he first went plant-based 10 years ago, and did so again in earnest about six years ago.

While eating more veg and reducing food waste are central to his recipes, he doesn’t think the onus to fix climate change should be entirely be on us.

“We, as consumers, contribute so small to the grand scheme of environmental impact,” he explains. “The top 100 countries produce [nearly] 75% of global greenhouse gases. There are billionaires who are flying around the world in their private jets and producing CO2 endlessly, endlessly, endlessly...

“We’ve been told to walk to work, turn off the tap when you’re brushing your teeth, all these things – but we’re not seeing a change in the world, and we’re being constantly fed that we’re heading towards this crisis, we’re in a crisis.

“We shouldn’t have to put that pressure on ourselves to change that. We vote, we strike, we stand up, we speak up, we do all these things.

“But I think the emphasis should be on putting that pressure on those companies and our government to make better changes.”

La Manna spends a lot of time considering our environmental impact – does he ever suffer from eco-anxiety?

“There are moments,” he admits, “But I try to combat that through doing small things every day to lower my anxiety altogether, through meditation, mindful breathing and mindful eating.”

Plus, he can always go back to the kitchen.

“I love food – I think something chemically happens in my brain, and I know it probably happens with everyone. But for me, I can shut off, and I’m in the food. That’s why I enjoy cooking, because I feel like I forget problems. We all have baggage, we all have something happening in our lives – life isn’t easy. And sometimes, when I get into cooking, it shuts things off.”

You Can Cook This!: Simple, Satisfying, Sustainable Veg Recipes by Max La Manna is published by Ebury Press, £22.