Flavour to the Max

Chef Max La Manna tells PRUDENCE WADE about waging war on food waste and why we should be cooking the whole fruit or vegetable... even the banana peel

WORKING in top-tier restaurants in New York really opened Max La Manna’s eyes to the realities of food waste.

“It wasn’t until I started working in restaurants – especially in the last job where I worked for a Michelinstar chef – you have to be very precise on how you prepare and how you cook food,” describes the American chef, who is now based in south London.

“So, 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.”

Max, 34, 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 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.

“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, as well as 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.”

Over the years, he’s tried innovative ways to use up fruit and veg. “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 Cook

This!: Simple,

Satisfying,

Sustainable Veg

Recipes by Max La

Manna is published by Ebury Press, priced £22

Max is fighting food waste