Tom Hunt on reducing your waste and eating better
Tom is an award-winning chef, food educator, writer and climate change activist who believes in a world with a fair global food system. His approach aims to enable everyone to reduce waste, be more mindful of the food we cook and eat and take #ActionforClimate
Tom says his love of food began when he was very young: “I started cooking cakes and desserts – mainly as a way to increase my sugar intake! I had the Usborne First Cookbook which was full of recipes like carrot cake and brownies, plus Welsh Rarebit and stuffed potato skins. It’s an amazing book – I’ve still got it. It’s caked in cake, crusty and very well-used!”
“I studied fine art at university for five years, and during my time as a student I began working for an eccentric chef called Ben Hodges who had a wholefood, Soil Association-certified, festival-touring café called Henry’s Beard. His views on food inspired me. He became a best friend, someone to converse with, and started me on my mission to help people reconnect with nature and learn the true value of food.”
“It all became real when I did the Food Surplus Feast at the Thames Festival with Tristram Stewart, author of Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal. We turned Southwark Bridge into The Forgotten Fish Restaurant. It was an incredibly empowering event and a turning point for me – it showed that just through cooking one meal you can feed hundreds of people and save tons of food that would otherwise be wasted.”
Tom had also been working with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall at River Cottage in 2003-2005, and his experiences here inspired him to become an educator. “It’s the centre of food sustainability. Working with incredible leaders like Hugh, Ray Smith the butcher and John Wright the forager made me want to go out and do some teaching myself. I wanted to create a really simple, actionable message. Food sustainability can feel overwhelming and I wanted to create something that wasn’t daunting and that anyone could adopt.”
So Tom developed his “Root to Fruit” manifesto: Eat for Pleasure, Eat Whole Foods, and Eat the Best Food You Can. Basically, if you eat whole foods, you’ll enjoy them more and create less waste. And with the money you save you can buy better food, but you need less because you’re wasting less. It’s a virtuous cycle.
“Just by reducing your waste and eating better, you can save a huge amount of money,” says Tom. “Time is a big factor for many people, but good quality seasonal veg is very simple to cook and doesn’t need much manipulation to make it taste great. Just sautéing mushrooms and serving them on some wholemeal bread with a little olive oil only takes a few minutes but tastes amazing.”
“Our tastes have become so used to processed food – the author Michael Pollan calls it ‘the industrial palette,’” he says. “It’s full of salt, fat and sugar which tap into our primal drive to feed our bodies with energy-dense food as if we’re hunter-gatherers who don’t know when we’re going to eat again. Unfortunately, evolution hasn’t caught up with us! Less processed food is vastly better for us. I mean, you can still enjoy the odd croissant, but it should just be a treat.”
Tom urges others to reconnect with nature and he lives by his principles. This year he and his family have been living off-grid in a caravan in Newquay. “We didn’t have any mains electricity, plumbing, gas or internet. It’s been a wonderful experience – eating outside with a hedgerow as your dining room wall. Your body acclimatises to the elements.” Now winter’s coming, and Tom is reluctantly going back indoors. “My daughter is three and she loved it. Mind you, she loves living in a house too!”
Our Sustainable Food series features three superhero chefs - Tom Hunt @cheftomhunt , Xanthe Gladstone @xanthegladstone and Hannah Thomas @herbsandwild each prioritise the environment and individual farmers, growers and businesses throughout their cooking. You can follow along in our Sustainable Food series on our Instagram here.