Based in Perth, Western Australia, Lindsay Miles is a dedicated advocate for sustainable living, spreading the word through her website Treading My Own Path, as well as her blog, courses and events. The Less Waste No Fuss Kitchen was published in June this year and is her second book. Miles describes it as a menu, designed to be read in the order most applicable and helpful to the reader.
The book is split into five parts, starting with part one: the story so far, which gives us an overview of our current food system. Miles describes the complexities of it well, and therefore just how difficult it can be to make truly sustainable and beneficial changes to the way we shop and eat.
Here she describes the ‘three pillars’: plastic and packaging, carbon footprint and climate change and food waste and landfill and, more importantly, how these are all interconnected to impact the sustainability of the food we eat from the farm to our plates. Suggestions to help combat the three pillars are split into ‘fuss levels’ which break down things that can seem daunting at first, like switching from supermarket only to bulk or packaging-free shopping, into small, manageable steps.
Parts two, three and four focus on these three pillars in more depth, with part five full of practical changes that can be made in your kitchen and pantry. Also included are some excellent ideas for ‘lower footprint diets’, with explanations of how you can make various changes and swaps in your diet that won’t result in a loss of protein or nutrients.
A particular bonus is that the book is genuinely accessible. Early on, it acknowledges that we can’t make effective changes without first realising our own capacity for doing so and that this can vary for all of us due to factors such as time, accessibility and personal values. It’s up to the reader to assess this for themselves, with suggestions that make good starting points, such as working out your budget, keeping a food waste diary and assessing your current weekly shop. As Miles states, “Other people will have different priorities, and make different choices to us. That’s not to say these are ‘better’ or ‘worse’; they are simply different choices for different circumstances.”
Despite some shocking statistics, the focus is very much on the solutions rather than the problems and it remains upbeat and positive throughout. There are no dense sections of text and information is conveyed in a variety of ways, from tables and lists to flow charts. This, combined with the beautiful illustrations, make it a truly enjoyable read.
You can order The Less Waste No Fuss Kitchen by Lindsay Miles from your local bookshop. ISBN: 9781743795835 Publisher: Hardie Grant Books
Disclaimer: All views and opinions expressed are the author’s own and are not representative, nor are endorsed by, any other individual or group.
Kate Groves and The Team
