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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 12, 2018)
News Page 10 Street Roots • Jan. 12-18, 2018 being fed - beautiful squash, apricots and courgettes that had been wasted on neighboring farms. The whole thing just came together. There was no epiphany moment, it was just the whole journey of going to and being in Australia was a very eye opening experience. I knew I could go back home to the U .K . and do this.” Smith is so utterly committed to his aim that, when he gets going, he can speak for 10 straight minutes, without interruption, about the problem he has set out to eradicate and the work the project is doing to achieve this. “I created The Real Junk Food Project as a single café that was created in order to question and expose the reality of food waste in the modern world, but also poverty and the classist approach that we have to poverty.” P H O T O BY LEE B R O W N In four years, the project has grown from one café to 127 across seven countries throughout the world. In Leeds alone, its city of origin, the project feeds 35,000 people a week. The first Real Junk Food café is about to open in the U .S. and, thanks to Fuel for School, a partner program which diverts food waste to BY TO N Y INGLIS resource but also value themselves. CONTRIBUTING WRITER schools, feeding children as well as “There’s a huge stigma around food educating them about how to cook, handle waste and it’s attached to people who are hen Adam Smith, founder of The and save food, Smith has reached 20,000 poor, needy, homeless and vulnerable. To Real Junk Food Project in the school pupils in Leeds. He has ambitions try and break down those stigmas, we’re United Kingdom, speaks about his that the program will go nationwide within trying to stop pigeonholing people into stand against food waste and poverty, he is 18 months. these groups. People are human beings.” passionate, unstoppable and completely Smith knows connecting with young Smith picked up the concept after unequivocal. people is essential if his project is to have a working as a well-paid head chef at high-end “We should be deeply embarrassed and positive, long-lasting effect. “For me, when restaurants while living in Australia. ashamed as a society that we’ve got it comes to tackling issues around poverty “I was working on a farm trying to gain children going to school hungry, food banks and homelessness, I Australian and homelessness on the rise in the U .K ., want to deal with it at citizenship,” resources being wasted all over the planet, the bottom end of the Smith said. “I and food being unnecessarily thrown away spectrum. I try to go had witnessed Ms eoasumers^ we Itaw been when it’s still perfectly edible. right back to the extreme poverty manipulated t® loot the blame by “There are empty buildings all over the beginning, and that and country when people are in need of homes. the big corporations wb@ benefit means teaching homelessness in Give them these homes. The answers are from people retaralng to their su people not to be Sydney and the all staring us right in the face.” wasteful with their demolition of the permarkets and buying more and For those who do not know - and, food. Occupy protest more food, They say this is what considering its meteoric rise, it should be “We should be camps on a daily we want. Bat we don*t really h a w hard to miss - The Real Junk Food Project basis. I had come empowering and was established by Smith four years ago in a eholee, We"w been exploited and across the pay- educating these a bid to end food poverty. The nonprofit manipulated I® feel responsible what-you-feel young people. organization does this by gathering food for the way onr food Industry Is concept in a Because at the point and other produce that would otherwise be ran/" restaurant run of trauma, it can take considered waste, past its use-by date, and by a Buddhist up to 10, 15 years for feeding it to people in cafés where monk in people to end up in a customers are encouraged to pay what they Melbourne. And position where they feel. This latter point is crucial to the ethos then one day, I was in the middle of the are in need and vulnerable, so I say let’s of the project. “I am more into an desert, on this farm, and it all just clicked - empower this generation. If we don’t tackle empowerment approach. People should be I’m going to feed the world with food waste. it right now at the grassroots, all these treated as human beings, and be valued the That was it. problems - food waste, homelessness, same as everybody else regardless of who “Who knows where it came from,” Smith malnutrition - are going to continue to they are, where they come from or the continued. “There was nothing around me exist. situation they find themselves in. People except for almond trees and a caravan on “We could go to supermarkets and ask should always be given the opportunity to this horrible farm where the owners treated them to stop wasting food, but they don’t give back. us terribly. I’d been a chef; I knew how to care, they’re raking in too much profit. We “It should be a basic human right to have cook food, I knew how to handle food. I was could go and give food to people access to food. We should allow and teach eating the same food that the pigs were people to not only value their food as a Food junkie After witnessing pigs being fed perfectly edible food that had been branded as waste, U.K. ’s Adam Smith established The Real Ju n k Food Project, the goal o f which is to take food deemed inedible and cook it up into delicious meals. W See FOOD JUNKIE, page 11
