Just Meals Sheffield: affordable meals made from food waste

Food waste is a huge issue in England (unlike in France, it’s still not illegal for supermarkets to throw uneaten food away). Yet with a cost-of-living crisis, we have many people going hungry, having to choose between eating and heating.

Not so in this pocket of Sheffield. Just Meals is a local organisation that collects uneaten food and if it’s still good and safe to eat, cooks everything up into delicious ready-meals, and sells them for £1, through local collection points (or pick up direct from Food Works cafes and their warehouse).

Why preventing food waste matters

Food waste is not just wasteful, expensive and quite shocking to throw in the bin, when people are going hungry. But if it ends up on landfills, it emits methane gas, which contributes to climate emissions. It also basically is an insult to farmers, who have spent all that time growing ingredients that are then just binned.

Same if you eat animal foods. It’s bad enough that animals are killed. But then not to eat them (and throw sausages in the bin) is absolutely awful.

How surplus ingredients become affordable meals

Obviously food hygiene rules have to be in place here, to keep everyone safe. But these people are experts, and know how to sort and check fresh produce and other staples, before cooking them into tasty meals. Food that is just past the date for sale, is not the same as ingredients  that are not safe to be eaten.

Obviously these meals cannot be enjoyed by people with allergies (like gluten). But for everyone else, it’s quite interesting, as a bit like an organic veg box, you never know what you’re going to get! Just Foods has special meals for vegans, and then they cook up other ingredients into the rest of the meals.

So what you get depends on what was going to waste. From a vegetable bean curry to a nourishing stew to an Italian-influenced pasta dish.

Local meals for local people

The big supermarkets tend to truck all their meals (even if ‘locally made’) to central distribution houses (this makes up a lot of our motorway traffic). Then it sits in chilled containers sometimes for weeks (obviously these are powered by oil).  Then it’s trucked back to a supermarket shelf.

Just Meals keep feed nourishing ingredients to local people. The ingredients are collected locally, cooked locally and then delivered locally. Which keeps prices low, food miles low – and means less traffic on the roads.

Why affordable meals are important

The ‘why don’t they shop at ALDI?’ argument doesn’t wash, even though some people in politics and media spout it out. Often the budget supermarkets are out of town (and people in poverty don’t have cars). You don’t just ‘cook a plate of pasta’. You need pots and pans, good oil and salt, and money to feed the meter.

And if you live in a so-called ‘food desert’ (a budget supermarket selling nothing more than chips and frozen pizza), it’s unlikely you are going to find cheap packs of pasta on sale (and online supermarkets have minimum orders, that many people on low incomes can’t afford – they live from hand to mouth).

So providing such meals is a real lifeline to people on the breadline. It enables them to eat nourishing meals for  themselves and their families, and also fosters a community spirit of giving back.

Such meals (made with vegetables, beans and wholegrains) are also nutritious, and better to fill hungry tummies than cheap ready-meals.

Many social enterprises across Engalnd now offer ‘pay-what-you-can models’. This means that people with a bit more money can pay more, and this helps to fund those who can’t afford to pay as much.

The General Store (York) is one example. Different to a food bank, people just arrive twice a week to fill a bag with a suggested donation of £1, to find ingredients that would otherwise go to landfill.