Brits should eat more offal to cut down waste and save the planet, Michael Gove says

BRITS should eat everything from noses to tails to crack down on food waste, Michael Gove said today.

He urged households to take inspiration from the invention of Britain’s traditional dishes such as shepherd’s pie, bubble and squeak and oxtail soup to make sure they eat every last scrap.

In a major speech to supermarket and restaurant bosses the Environment Secretary urged people to take inspiration from the English chef Fergus Henderson, who is famous for his use of offal and other neglected cuts of meat.

It came as he laid down the gauntlet to grocery companies to halve the country’s food waste by 2030.

Yesterday the Government’s food waste tsar Ben Elliott warned them that they could be slapped with new laws unless they help hit the target.

He warned grocery companies were in the “last chance saloon” over food waste.

But the Government published encouraging figures that revealed the amount of food waste that has been redistributed has doubled over the last three years.

That is the equivalent of 130million meals, according to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

In his speech at a special Step Up To The Plate summit at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London yesterday, Mr Gove said nose-to-tail eating can also spark creativity.

He said: “If you look back at the history of food – shepherd’s pie, bubble and squeak, oxtail’s soup – all of these are the consequences of past chefs, past cooks, taking food waste seriously and being determined to use every aspect of what the earth has created.

“Nobody can say that Fergus Henderson, the Chef at St John responsible for nose to tail eating – nobody can say that he was a joyless individual, who didn’t communicate the sheer savour and relish of someone who loves their food.

“To visit that restaurant, to hear him speak, is to know he is someone who is a natural communicator of the joy that food can bring.

“So it’s also the case that taking food seriously, and taking food waste seriously, is also a way of celebrating human ingenuity, of celebrating culinary originality, of celebrating the great chefs so many of whom played such a wonderful part earlier in showing what we can do with the ingredients that others would throw away.”

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