Hello, I'm Jemma, and welcome to another episode of Good Influence.

This is the podcast where each week you and I meet a guest, who will help us pay attention to something we should know about as well as answer some of your questions.

This week we're talking about food waste, how much we're throwing away, why it's a problem and what we can do to save ourselves

meals and money.

Joining me this week is Max Lamanna.

Max is a zero waste chef, a sustainability advocate, environmentalist and author.

His award-winning debut cookbook, More Plants, Less Waste, was voted 2020's second most

sustainable cookbook in the world and he recently hosted a new series for BBC Earth

uncovering the UK's food waste issue. You can also find him on social media

providing recipes and videos on how to make exciting meals from food that might otherwise have been wasted.

Yeah, this is what I have to remind myself, just I'm such a fidgeterer, Ier and not allowed to touch anything.

I might actually have to sit on my hands. This is my biggest problem.

So you're a chef by background. How did you get into cooking? How did you get into veganism and how did you progress to low waste cooking?

Well my father bought his first two restaurants two weeks after I was

born and grew up in his restaurants for 13 years, working in the back, seeing how

food was prepared and made in the restaurant and even at home we would always

we're always cooking at home rarely ever went out to eat so food has always been this you know centerpiece in my life it's very very

important cooking food and family and I've worked nearly 15 years in restaurants I've worked every single job in a restaurant from washing dishes and working my way up to even managing cafes and restaurants.

And I was always pursuing another career before becoming a chef.

And yeah, it was just about three years ago where I realized, wow, okay, it's taking me this long. I think I need to do something

with food and the industry of food and really applied myself with, okay, this is, this is what I'm meant to do, this is what I'm going to do, I'm going to spend more time in this space, do I open up a restaurant, figuring it all out,

uh, ended up working with a Michelin start chef in New York City and I was both working as a bartender and as a line cook and I was splitting the time between the two in the same restaurant.

...