Gino's war on waste
| Published date | 06 April 2024 |
| Publication title | Huddersfield Daily Examiner |
"In the last 30 years that I've been here, I've always been thinking: why do these people buy everything in a plastic bag? Why do they buy so much stuff they don't need?"
For Gino - who is a regular face on This Morning and fronts Gordon, Gino and Fred: Road Trip alongside Gordon Ramsay and Fred Sirieix - it's "crazy" to buy your fruit and vegetables wrapped up in plastic.
"It's crazy to think that anyone would go and buy a bag of peppers, without touching them, without smelling them - and without even thinking what they're going to do with these backup peppers.
"The majority of people need one or two peppers, but they go into the supermarket, they go into the corner shop and they pick up a bag where there are seven, eight peppers. They use three and then they throw away six.
"I'm thinking, do you really know what you're doing here? Do you know how much money you're wasting?"
Gino, 47, isn't one to hide his feelings and his outrage about food waste is clear - which is why he teamed up with Love Food Hate Waste for this year's Food Waste Action Week, encouraging people to buy loose fruit and veg.
According to Love Food Hate Waste, 60% of food waste comes from UK homes, which results in 18 million tonnes of CO2. It suggests that the average household of four is wasting the equivalent of £1,000 per year on food that ends up in the bin.
"And yet, we have people in the world who are dying of starvation... how wrong are we? Sometimes you just need someone like me to slap you in the face and go: Wakey, wakey! Don't you see what you're doing?" Gino says.
"It's insane to throw all this food away - I think it's a crime to humans, to humanity, to do what we do."
And according to Gino, the problem is getting "100% worse".
"In the shops, every single thing that you buy is wrapped in plastic," he says. "Where is the excitement, the spirit of smelling an apple or an orange?"
For Gino, the issue isn't just food waste - but home cooks could benefit from paying a bit more attention to the fruit and veg they buy.
"That's another thing people don't understand - I always tell them 50% of the job when you cook is about buying, it's not about cooking. If you buy the right ingredients, you're 50% there and the food is going to taste much, much better."
Gino's strong opinions around food waste stem from his upbringing: "I...
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