Fighting the good fight: Lagom Chef on food waste

Ahead of Stop Food Waste Day, we interviewed Martyn Odell, founder of Lagom Chef. Here, we share how he tackles food waste.

“I’m not doing it because it’s trendy. I’m doing it because there’s a real f*cking problem.”

These are the words of Martyn Odell - a man tackling the problem of food waste head on. According to the UN, if food waste were a country it would be the third biggest greenhouse gas emitter in the world. Martyn’s message is simple: eat the food you buy. As is his business Lagom Chef: meal plans and video tutorials to help people eat and cook healthier, fresher food and simultaneously cut down their food waste.

Lagom Chef offers meal plans and free cooking tutorials

Martyn, 34, launched Lagom Chef in 2019, a few years after discovering the connection between food waste, which emits methane, and global warming. “When I was living abroad with my wife, we went to some incredible glaciers but we could see how fast they were melting. I didn’t know what I could do about it but when I started looking into global warming, I found that food waste was one of the biggest contributors. The more I looked at it, the more I thought, ‘F*ck, I can use my skills and passions as a chef to do something about this.’”

In the UK, 70% of food waste comes from individual households, according to the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP). “You can’t blame anyone else,” says Martyn. “We all know what we have to do but we don’t do it. I’m guilty too - we’re all idiots. But that’s why I continually drill this message into everyone: plan, buy, cook and eat.”

How can we help stop food waste?

Plan

The name Lagom Chef refers to the Swedish philosophy of living life in ‘balance and moderation’, an attitude that feeds into his meal plans. Lagom Chef offers two meal plans - one plant-based, one with meat and fish, both checked and approved by nutritionist Sarah Ann Macklin.

For Martyn, the more we plan our food, the less we waste. His meal plans roll ingredients through a number of meals, saving both money and space in the fridge. He also reminds people to put some planning into their kitchen cupboards so that dry ingredients aren’t pushed to the back and forgotten about.

In the last year, Lagom Chef has boomed. “People are spending so much more time at home which means more time in the kitchen. I think it has been a pleasant shock to the system and a lot more people are wanting to know exactly what is in their food.”

Martyn Odell aka Lagom Chef

The business has also been boosted by straight-talking, no-nonsense communication. In a recent Instagram post about his one-year-old son, Martyn wrote: “Although I get to spend every day with this kid he just gets better and better! Can we all stop chucking out food so he can share the same amazing experiences with his kids? Thank you for giving a sh*t and not being sh*t.”

Buy

Martyn likes to give people the choice of where to source their food, meaning that people can buy what they can afford. However, he does encourage everyone who buys their food from a supermarket not to focus on labels too much. “If you shopped in a market everyday, there wouldn’t be a sell by date or a best before - use some common sense.”

To calculate portion sizes and help everyone buy the right amount of food, he calculates each individual’s Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). “It takes out the guesswork, which is where we often go wrong,” he says.

When someone signs up to Lagom Chef, they enter their height, weight, age and sex which  calculates their BMR. This then links to a recommended calorie intake based on their exercise, which helps calculate the amount of ingredients required. There are nine recipes in each weekly menu.

Cook

Knowing how to plan and buy an accurate amount of food is one thing. Knowing how to cook it is quite another. But that’s where the Lagom Chef Academy comes in. 

Martyn has created free videos covering a range of cooking skills and techniques, drawn from his previous experience at the London Underground Cookery School and Joe Wick’s business The Body Coach, where he developed recipes.

“The academy turns Lagom Chef into a two prong approach - it provides meal plans and simple cooking videos on how to poach an egg or dice an onion.”

The Lagom Chef Academy is free for everyone to dip in and out of

He also covers cooking techniques for making certain ingredients last a few more days. For example, you can blanch vegetables (cooking them briefly in boiling water) and then plunge them into cold water. “You can then have them cold in a salad or warm them up in butter when you want to eat them,” he says.

Eat

The Lagom Chef mantra is simple: eat the food you buy. That may mean you need to put leftovers into a tupperware for the following day, or whizz up some vegetables into a soup. His website and social media channels are full of ideas of how to turn ingredients you thought were past it, into something delicious. 

When it comes to food, Martyn knows what he’s talking about. He’s been cooking since he was a child and has twenty years experience as a chef. We therefore couldn’t resist asking him about what he’d choose for a final meal if he were sent to a desert island. “For a starter, I would probably go for French onion soup. For mains, it would have to be Mexican. Probably a very rustic street taco with a tortilla wrap that’s a bit flappy and really juicy. With pulled pork or shrimp - lots of fresh ingredients. For dessert, it would be Affogato. And to finish - sherry and a bottle of whisky to send me off.”

We also asked him what he would change if he was all-powerful for a day. “I’d probably stop people cutting carrots into circles. And on a serious note, I’d love for everyone to waste less! You don’t have to be perfect straight away, just stop being rubbish.”

Words by Charlotte Lorimer