The iron resolve I woke up with to keep all those satanic carbohydrates and sugary treats behind me always seemed to evaporate by mid-afternoon, usually just as the refreshment trolley arrived at work. What I needed was an injection of willpower.

I diligently swallowed the pills – Metformin, Levothyroxine, Simvastatin – and jabbed myself with insulin twice a day. Every morning I fought the battle anew, and often lost. Mine refused to cast off the memory of crunchy brown sugar melting on hot oats. If you persevere, they say your taste buds get used to anything. I put vegetables in my morning porridge instead of sugar. I was diagnosed with diabetes on my 40th birthday. The Gutter Gourmet was loosed upon the world. All around me were versions of my ward mate, coming out of shops with on-the-go edibles, and discarding them after a few bites or gulps. When I was discharged, I had an epiphany. If I stopped ordering my own meals, could I eat the ones he ordered and left untouched? It was a deal. In that hospital stay I gave up on education and plumped for action. And what business was it of mine? For a minute I thought he was going to ask me if I liked hospital food.

Did he not see a link between his behaviour and systemic waste? Why should he change, when it was the system’s fault? It was his right to do with his food as he saw fit. All he had to do was not tick a few boxes on a form.

I talked to him: how can you allow all these wholesome meals to go to waste, and all the effort that goes into producing them, and the nursing resources? It would be so easy not to order them every morning. A couple of years ago, when I was last in hospital with one of the many serious health issues I’d chalked up since that diabetes diagnosis, the bloke in the next bed would order his hot meals for lunch and dinner – and then ignore them when they were delivered, in favour of the grub his family brought in. According to my highly unscientific empirical survey, good food is binned in a third of these cartons, from Hawaiian sushi to garishly coloured meringues.īut I was also triggered by the “there’s nothing I can do” apathy of individuals. One telling survey by the environmental charity Hubbub estimated that our fast food habit generates a staggering 11bn items of mostly unrecyclable packaging waste a year, from cartons to napkins and plastic cutlery. But that’s before the consumers I clean up after get a chance to sink their teeth into the complacency industry. Yes, restaurants and cafes bin more than 300m meals a year. My particular harvest – restaurant plate waste and on-the-go squandering – is more difficult to quantify. Of that the household contribution is 7.3m tonnes. The government’s waste advisory body, Wrap, estimates a colossal 10.2m tonnes of annual food waste. When I repurposed myself as the Gutter Gourmet, it was fuelled by anger at the criminal excesses of casual waste all around me (not as a way to save a few bob, as some who know me well contend). Certainly a dose of indecency has been the most efficacious medicine I could have hoped for. They were worried about my mental health – this isn’t what decent people did. It wasn’t just that they felt I would pick up some dreadful lurgy. On a good day I often can take a surplus home – my very own weekly shopįriends dubbed me the Gutter Gourmet. But after adopting a diet that friends and family and experts had deep reservations about, I feel transformed. I’ve fought a lifelong battle with an urban environment that encourages unhealthy eating – the obesogenic environment, as it has now been defined – and, after being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, I seemed destined to be on the losing side. Park yourself in a central London square on a nice day, and the pricey rice bowls from eateries such as Itsu or Benugo, often still laden with dumplings and prawns and spicy vegetables, pile up alongside overflowing bins. From quinoa salads discarded at farmers’ markets to pub grub abandoned by fellow diners, it can be quite a varied regime.

Food montage meaning