The Wellness Scoop - Food Waste and Climate Change

Episode Date: September 18, 2018

Food waste is one of the biggest challenges facing us today, with 25 million slices of bread thrown away every day in UK households and over $1 trillion dollars of food wasted every year. In this episode we look at just how serious it is, the huge role we as individuals play in it, and how we can tackle the issue with Tessa Clarke, from the food waste app, Olio. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Welcome to the Deliciously Ella podcast with me, Ella Mills, and my husband and business partner, Matthew Mills. Hi, everyone. So today we're talking about food waste and we're going to jump straight in with a little list of pretty terrifying facts. So over one third of all food produced around the world goes to waste. The annual value of food wasted globally is $1 trillion. An area larger than China is used to grow food that is never eaten every day. 25% of the world's fresh water supply is used to grow the food that is never eaten. There are about 1 billion people in the world who go hungry. We could feed all of them on less than a quarter of the food that is wasted in the US, UK and Europe alone. And if food waste

was a country, it would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases after China and the US. In the UK alone, we throw away 25 million slices of bread every day. That's alongside 6 million potatoes and 1.4 million bananas. And in most developed countries, over half of all food waste is happening at home. So what we've learned from this is that this issue is so much larger than so many of us appreciate. And I think it's quite easy for us to dismiss it as someone else's problem or to focus solely on more visible examples of waste, things that are happening in restaurants or shops, for example. But actually, what we're learning is that as individuals, we play a massive role in this. So today's guest, Tessa Clark, is the co-founder of an incredible

company called Olio, who we've worked with for the last 18 months or so to try and eliminate any food waste in our deli. We'll get on to how the app works a little later, but let's start off by diving a little deeper into what's really going on with Foodways, its role in climate change and our worries about the health of our planet. So Tessa, first of all, thank you so much for coming on today. My pleasure. Can you give us a bit of background on the way Olio came about and how it was founded? Yeah, so three and a half years ago, I was living in Switzerland and was moving back to the UK. And on moving day, the removal men said that I had to throw away all of our food. And this was perfectly good, edible, non-perishable food. And I just wasn't

going to do that. So I packed up my newborn baby and my toddler and much to the remove men's irritations sort of abandoned them and set out onto the streets to try and find someone to share this food with and the lady that I had been hoping to be able to give the food to wasn't in her usual spot that day. I got a little sort of over emotional that I'd gone to all this effort to share this food and have failed I then contemplated knocking on my neighbor's doors but just thought that's really really inefficient and also it could be really awkward and embarrassing they don't know who I am they might not want what I've got and I'd been working in the world of digital for about 10 or 15 years before that and I knew there was an app for absolutely everything and I just could not

believe that there wasn't an app where I could share our food, which is sort of the most basic of things. And it was through that experience that I just wished there had been an app where I could share food with my neighbours. And so I pitched the idea to my co-founder, Sasha, and she immediately got it. And we decided that we needed to try and make this happen. Unbelievable. Can we start with talking about what's happening in the UK? Are we really throwing away 25 million slices of bread every day? Yeah, it's shocking and hard to believe, isn't it? It really is. I can't even begin to picture that much bread. I kept thinking, I was saying to Ella, is it, you sure it's not a year or is that not at least in a month for every day? I did some research to find out that that must be sort of shops and bakeries and

everybody included know that 25 million slices is us in households oh my gosh sorry that's not including what could be wasted in shops and that's simply at home and how that works so it's hard to get your head around but how it works is we have about 27 million households in the uk okay and so they're each throwing away you know about one piece of bread a day. Roughly, yeah. You know, so it kind of reaches the end of the week and you haven't quite finished off that loaf of bread, you toss it in the bin. And it doesn't feel like a big deal when you're doing it yourself. Of course, because it's one piece. It's one piece, it's two pieces,

three pieces. It's not a big deal, right? But actually, there are 27 million other households, and this is just in the UK, who are all doing the same thing and the UK isn't alone in this right we should not we shouldn't feel kind of like we're really naughty and everyone else is really good this is a worldwide issue it's a global problem yeah and what happens to most of this waste does it go to landfill or sadly yes at the moment the vast majority of food waste does end up in in landfill um and what's really really problematic about that apart from all the resources that have been wasted to to create it is that when food waste decomposes without access to oxygen which is what it does in landfill it creates methane

and methane is 23 times more deadly than co2 right so um and methane's a big problem for climate change issue right big problem for climate change yeah there is an increasing amount of food waste is being diverted to anaerobic digestion um which is great but in all honesty it's only slightly better than landfill because again all of those resources have been used and it's just a very inefficient way to generate energy and when that food waste is diverted is is that, I know, for example, like Hackney, they have a food waste as part of the council's waste collection. Is that what you mean? Yeah.

But most councils don't have that. Sadly, many councils do not have food waste collections. But that's actually not even that much better. Is there a period in between when the food actually goes off, say on a supermarket, it says it goes off on the 6th of September. But is there often actually a lag period where it still would be good to eat? And if we redistributed it quickly, people who are in need could still eat it. So in short, yes, absolutely. If you sort of dial back up a bit and look at the macro problem.

So globally, we have 800 million people who go to bed hungry every night and they could be fed on one quarter of the food that we waste in the Western world. So globally, we have more than enough food for everybody. And then if you take it to here in the UK, so here in the UK, households, as we've discussed, are responsible for well over half of all food waste. So the average

uk family throws away 800 pounds sterling of food each year that could have been eaten collectively that adds up to 15 billion pounds worth of food essentially going into into landfill sat alongside that we have over 8 million people in this country who are living in food poverty and the food that we waste just in our homes alone is more than enough to feed all of the people who are living in food poverty. And so that's why we're really kind of on a mission to try and sort of connect up that surplus food with people who want it or sadly even need it. And what's the single most impactful thing that people can do or households can do to cut down on their food waste?

I think the first thing to do is to plan your meals. And so at the beginning of the week or whenever is convenient for you, just to think ahead what you and your family are going to eat for that week, and then make sure that you go and shop to that plan because it's very easy when you go shopping um often you're tired you're hungry you're stressed you might have screaming kids you then see loads of great bargains and you end up just sort of you overbuy you overbuy and you haven't necessarily exactly planned out your meal so you just kind of toss it in the trolley you then get home and uh by the end of the, you discover that you've bought more than you need. And at that point, unless you share it on Olio, then it's too late.

And is there a tip? Is there a specific type of food that gets most wasted? Yeah. So you mentioned them sort of in your introduction, but bread, potatoes, bananas, milk, all of the sort of core staples. But the great thing is that many of those do have tips sort of associated with them to help you preserve them. So bread, for example, in our household, we never get through a full loaf of bread in a week. So we keep half out and pop the other half in the freezer. And you can then just take it out of the freezer and stick it straight in the toaster if you want some toast. As you mentioned, products such as chicken, actually often it's best just you meet to put it in the freezer, freeze it, and then to defrost it quickly in the microwave when you actually know that you're going to use it. Yeah, and there's so much.

What I found as well is that people are quite nervous about cooking. You know, I don't think we're confident enough about cooking or spend enough time maybe in schools things educating people and feeling comfortable in the kitchen and so what I've noticed is that people will buy a bag of carrots because the recipe calls for four carrots and then they'll let's say have two carrots left and they won't know what to do with them and so they'll get nervous and so I think it's also about helping people feel confident comfortable that you could roast those carrots alongside the other carrots and then you could put them in your hummus. You could blend them in your hummus or you could juice them or put them in the blender. You could do so much. You could just make a veggie stew, you know, with tinned tomatoes, coconut milk, something like that. With all your leftover

veggies, you could make a soup and then you could freeze the soup even if you don't want the soup that day. So it's just kind of encouraging people to feel more comfortable to adapt recipes as well i think i think you're absolutely right um and a big problem is actually sort of in schools we aren't teaching our children where food comes from so they don't necessarily know all the hard work and all the resources that's gone into producing it they aren't being taught how to cook food or how to preserve food how to store food again there are loads of great kind of storage tips and tricks that you can freeze almost anything you can freeze so so many things i mean i uh since i've had my eyes kind of open to just how enormous this

problem is google has become my best friend and so if i do have three carrots left over i will google recipes with carrots or breadcrumbs, for example, is something I had never made. I had felt it sounds a bit silly now, but, you know, I'd assume that there was something complicated to do to make them. I was absolutely stunned to discover how easy it is to make breadcrumbs, how versatile they are after that. And just felt very ashamed, actually, of all the bread that I've been wasting to date just because I didn't know that simple little yeah exactly and like any overripe banana you can either make banana muffins or banana bread exactly or slice it put in the freezer and it's so amazing in a smoothie you can like make a banana you could use your leftover milk or oats or anything like that and it's it's super simple I've definitely become now I've got young kids yeah um and I hate food waste smoothies

have become my best friends like the kids absolutely adore making them with me it's a great way to kind of sneak lots of fruit and veggies in and you can just bung anything in and they're half-eaten apples I no longer have to kind of eat them myself I just chuck them in in you know in the smoothie with the brown bananas and it's perfect yeah so one question i had is something we've actually talked about a lot at home not solely about food waste but about kind of what's going on with our climate change in general and for us a lot of that conversation has actually been about the plastic straw and the fact that our conversation around climate change has recently been so much around plastic straws and plastic bags as if those are the game-changing issues of climate change at

the moment and if i'm not mistaken plastic straws make up 0.03 percent of ocean plastic fishing nets are about 46 so it feels like we're potentially looking at the wrong areas and when i was reading up um on this interview and reading a lot about the work that you do and earlier does it just struck me a little bit that it feels that this is part of the same conversation i mean we've been sharing this 10 list of facts we read at the beginning with everyone and it's i don't think anyone knows no and i'm just curious on your perspective on that like is the conversation around climate change at the moment enough is it correct or is it that we actually are nervous to take responsibility as individuals in this

because it's so much easier to say this is someone else's problem? Yeah. First of all, I think the conversation we're having about climate change isn't nearly urgent enough when you actually look at the facts and what's happening. With regards to kind of our touch on kind of food waste role first and then go on to talk about climate change more broadly but with regards to food waste it really is one of the biggest problems facing humanity today and it's hidden in plain sight and we do but we never talk about it never talk about it

and there was a report released last year called Project Drawdown, where about 80 of the world's leading climate change scientists said, enough of the doom and gloom about climate change. Let's stack rank the top 100 solutions to the problem of climate change. Let's see what we can do to mitigate this. And in position number three was food waste. And that came above electric cars and above solar power. Wow.

So interesting. That. So interesting. That's really interesting. And then what's super exciting is that actually in countries that we live in, half of all food waste takes place in the home. So that means on the one hand, it's very depressing. Gosh, that means we are half of the problem of one of the largest sources of climate change. But flip it on its head. Wow, that's hugely exciting.

We don't have to wait for governments. we don't have to wait for governments we don't have to wait for businesses we can just take action and it's not expensive either right exactly 800 pounds a year exactly yeah exactly yeah whereas you're looking at lots of other stuff like installing solar panels or electric cars you know these things are incredibly expensive options for people who want to make a difference yeah and i think sort of sort of, again, what we've discovered through Olio is Olio is absolutely about stopping food waste. But it's also actually about something a lot bigger than that, which is community. And I think communities have an enormous role to play in climate change mitigation. So, for example, just a concept that I came across fairly recently that just absolutely blew my mind is this concept

of Earth Overshoot Day. And that is the day in the year in which humanity has used up all of the resources that the Earth can replenish in a year. And when it was first measured back in 1969 and 1970, humanity lived in equilibrium with the planet. So overshoot day was the 31st of december this year earth overshoot day was the 1st of august wow and so what that means is that every single thing that every single one of us seven seven and a half billion people have consumed after the 1st of august is net net depleted to the planet so back to your original question about you know are we framing climate change sort of in the right way um when you understand the severity of the severity of that you realize that actually what we have is we have a consumption problem um we are just taking resources out of the planet

we're using them for five percent of their life and then we're tossing them into landfill our landfills are are filling up our ocean as we know is filling up filling up it's going to be by 2050 it's going to be half plastic yeah um so actually we we do have a broader consumption problem and the solution to that is to do what humans have been doing for two million years which is sharing um so if i have something that i don't want or don't need it is quite literally the world's precious resources being wasted sat in my home where there is someone across the street around the corner who would love to use that and because they haven't got access to it right now they're going out and buying something brand new which is just taking

more resources from the planet that's then going to sit in their house and not do much and then end up in landfill yeah that's so much more than food isn't it that's fashion that's then going to sit in their house and not do much and then end up in landfill. Yeah, and that's so much more than food, isn't it? That's fashion, that's technology, it's everything, right? It's absolutely everything. Yeah, if you just look around your house and just look at all the stuff you have in it and then multiply that by the 27 million other houses just in the UK alone, you start to realise that we're sort of drowning in stuff. And we have another 2.2 billion people expected to join our planet by 2050. So in order to feed us all, how do we get around that?

Well, that is an enormous challenge. And the honest answer is that today, no one knows how we're going to achieve that. So to feed 10 billion people by 2050, we need to increase global food production by 50%. But today... Which we don't have the capacity to do. We're farming all the land that's available to be farmed. We've topped out on pesticides. We've topped out on GMOs.

And the deforestation and the wildlife extinction that would happen if we started to push further is really frightening. Yeah, so we are... Well, there have to be a fundamental shift in diet to their foods, certain foods that take up a lot more of that mass than than others that will have to shift towards what we argue is that if we need to increase food

production by 50 to feed all of us by 2050 a great starting point would be to stop throwing away a third of all the food we produce and what we've got to do is really is reduce consumption because for every ton of whatever substance we throw away from our households. And that's food, fashion, technology, etc. But when we throw away a ton of stuff from our homes, another 70 to 80 tons of waste have been generated up the supply chain before that stuff even got to us. Wow. So this is why when you are throwing away that one thing that doesn't seem like that much, you're actually throwing away another 70 to 80 times that amount that has happened before that product has even reached your hands. Yeah, not to think about all the imprint that that's had on the environment as well through, you know, transportation miles and things like that as well.

Yeah. And I think it's just about, it's about valuing food. And in our lifetime and in our children's lifetime, we are sort of looking down the barrel of pivoting from being in a world where there's far too much food to living in a world where there is not enough food for everybody. And that's a very scary thought. That is a very, very scary thought. Everything that we know and think we understand about culture and society

and countries and economies as they work today will be very very challenged when there's not enough food for all of us. And it's not just food though right as well as water that's looking like a scarcity and obviously there's you know 25% of all the water in the world is used for food that's not consumed. Yeah current projections if I remember correctly are saying that by 2030 our demand for water is going to exceed its capacity by 40%. Yeah. So, I mean, it's really interesting. We did a podcast with Holly Tucker, who founded Not On The High Street a couple of weeks ago. It's a totally different topic. But she said something about starting a business. And she said, if you're listening, then you've got a dream, like now is the time. And for anyone listening, it feels like exactly this message is like now, you know, from today, we all have to make this personal commitment that we will not throw away anything.

We share it. We freeze it. We repurpose it in some capacity because actually it's so easy to point fingers at other people. But we have a big, big responsibility as sort of sole human beings right yeah yeah and tessa what seems as we've talked about it's exciting about this issue so it's something that we can fix in our own homes it doesn't need governmental policy it doesn't need huge infrastructure maybe like electric cars do but what is actually happening on a governmental level to tackle this is is even close to enough being done or is it something that's just being

swept under the carpet at the moment i think um it sort of starts at the very top. So the UN has a set of goals, they're called the Sustainable Development Goals, that are goals for the world for 2030. And goal 12.3 is to halve food waste by 2030. Sadly... When was that set? Sorry. That was set, I think, back in 2015. Okay. I could be wrong, but I think it was that sort of time frame. So a couple of years in, have we made any progress so far? Well, sadly, just last week, Boston Consulting Group issued a global sort of state of play into the issue of food waste. And at the moment, we are on a

trajectory to increase global food waste by a third, not to halve it by 2030. So we are absolutely going in the wrong direction. So, but it's really important that an agency like the UN has set this sort of bold goal of halving food waste by 2030. And that is now starting to cascade down through countries and also through to cities. So the city of London, for example, has embraced that goal that's in the sustainable development goals. But has it, right? Because as someone that lives in London, other than through you and your incredible work, no one's advertising the power that I have as an individual. You know, it's interesting, like everyone's setting these goals,

but the conversation appears to be completely lacking. You're absolutely right. So that conversation has not happened yet. I think it's because, so a lot of retailers and businesses have a very important role to play, but they feel that they can't yet shine the light onto consumers until they've sorted out their own house. And that's completely understandable. But it is worth pointing out that retailers are responsible for retail stores generate less than 5% of the food waste in this country in comparison to us doing half but they're not wanting to yet um really talk to their customers about this problem until they've kind of sorted out their own their own supply chains but no no i mean not not nearly not nearly enough uh is being done we're not tackling this with the with the right level of urgency but we hope that through people you know

such as yourselves uh and the work that we're doing and lots of other amazing players um in the space like karma and too good to go and winnow rubies in the rubble snacked so these are all startups so again for anyone who's listening you know this is a super exciting space to move into with more than enough opportunity for lots of players to try and help solve it um and so i think it is thanks to sort of passionate entrepreneurs who are really trying to do our bit but it just feels it feels like such a new message you know it feels like something that there's been so many trends and hot topics it does feel like a it feels like a new topic to a lot of people and i think for

when we were talking to some friends and family about this episode and people back in our office I don't think people have any idea the scale of the problem this and it's actually I think it's really opened our eyes as well to the severity of this problem it's absolutely terrifying I can remember when uh Sasha and I were starting Oleo and the first thing we did was obviously sort of desk research to check so earlier was very much born from my own personal experience but then when we did the desk research to look into the size of the problem I felt like as we just uncovered horrific stat after horrific stat it felt like you know when you have a nightmare and you're screaming and no one can hear you it really did feel like that I just could not comprehend that this was really happening because

no matter which way you look at it it's utter madness so we have worked with you guys since april 2017 so almost 18 months now because we were so passionate obviously we're a tiny tiny business and drop in the ocean but we were really passionate about not having food waste it actually found as a business it was quite challenging you, there's lots of rules and regulations and Oleo kind of completely saved the day. And in the first nine months alone, your volunteers at Oleo collected 4,442 items, which is roughly 888 kilograms of food or 2,115 meals, which you calculated for us meant that 3,832 kilograms of carbon dioxide was diverted. I mean, to me, that was so crazy because we're very, very small. And the idea that if we achieve that saving, you know, that's a fraction of the picture of the work I was doing. So obviously

working with big players like Pratt, Sainsbury's, Morrisons, etc. You know, how much have you guys done as a whole company? So that is what's really exciting because, so as of today, actually we've just passed 600,000 users. Congratulations. Thank you. And they have together shared over three quarters of a million portions of food. Wow.

And that is the environmental equivalent of taking 2 million car miles off the road. And what's so exciting about that is we are doing about 0.001% of our full potential. Because if you can imagine a world where hundreds of millions or even billions of people are using oleo, we're sharing our most precious resource, which is food, then the impact we can have is just absolutely phenomenal. And the impact also, it's food, then the impact we can have is just absolutely phenomenal. And the impact also, it's not just an environmental impact. So taking 2 million car miles off the road is amazing. But equally as powerful is connecting neighbours to share. And so our users tell us that... And it creates community as well. It creates community. Yeah. Our users tell us, when I first heard about Oleo, I just,

I believed like you guys that food should be eaten, not thrown away. You know, I hate food waste. Once they've used the app, all they talk about is how amazing it was to meet a neighbour, how they feel connected with their community, how they feel safer in the neighbourhood

because actually their neighbours are no longer strangers, they're friends. And every single day we get emails and tweets and uh other stuff on social media of people sharing just these incredible stories of just small acts of kindness that are taking place on a local community level and it's really lovely and especially when we hear stories where um someone might tell us that you know thanks to oleo my my children are getting to eat this weekend um that that's of, I'm getting teary. I'm just saying that, sorry.

Yeah, it's just incredibly powerful. And I think the other exciting thing is that for real change to be made, it needs real backing. It needs real financing. Olio has raised a lot of money to this point. I have to just celebrate a second because I know we're talking about food waste here, but Tessa is the most unbelievable female entrepreneur as well. So for any women listening, she's an amazing inspiration. She raised, her and her partner,

Sasha raised $6 million for Olio this year. I mean, this is not a small little company. This is doing some serious stuff. And so what's the money going to be used for and what are the investors excited about with with oleo yeah so um we've been a very small team of nine for two and a half years um nine people for 600 000 users yeah incredible unbelievable yeah um and this money is going to be used to double the size of the team so we are so excited to bring on our first ever product designer bring on someone who can help us with analytics bring on lots of people to help us really grow the Food Waste Heroes program. So that's where we're rescuing and redistributing food from retailers.

I think the investors are excited by our vision of the future. And it is an unashamedly bold vision, but it is one that we need to have. So what's the vision? Well, we're aiming for a billion users in 10 years time. And we are aiming one in every seven people in the world. Yeah, I think at the moment, many people feel very disconnected from their local communities. And we want people to feel like they belong and for sharing to be actually the default way of consuming. So when I think i need or i want

something i want to eat something or i want to buy something actually my first thought will be what can i find from my immediate community around me and then we shop afterwards um and buy sort of brand new what we can't find from our immediate community so really it's about taking us back to our roots as humans and it feels great because sharing just sort of it just gives you a real endorphin hit whenever you sort of share something with someone who wants or needs it it's just a really fun experience and so for anyone listening first of all download earlier right now it's a free app um it's going to change the world will you give you give our listeners just a little overview of kind of exactly how it works as soon as they have it on their phone? Yeah, absolutely. So you might be going on holiday, moving home, going on a diet, perhaps you're a keen garden, you've got a

glut of courgettes or marrows, perhaps you've had unwanted gifts, Airbnb, guests leaving stuff behind, you've worked late for whatever reason. You've got some food in your home that you're not going to eat on time. You just snap a photo and upload it to Olio. Then your neighbours who live nearby get an alert letting them know that food's available. And what's the radius that it goes out to those people? Generally about two kilometres. So the vast majority of sharing, it really is kind of hyper-local. Proper neighbours, yeah.

It's sort of walking distance and operate all over the uk all over the uk and all over the world actually now um but yeah so you sort of someone then messages you to request uh what you've added to the app and then they pop around and pick it up and that can either be pop around to your doorstep or or a public location whatever you feel most comfortable with and it is worth, I think it's very easy sometimes to be sat in your home looking at a head of broccoli thinking, no one will want this. Or, you know, two lemons. Who on earth is going to want two lemons?

I can assure you there are people who desperately would like that. So half of all our food listings added to the app are requested in less than two hours. Wow. So we always try and say to people just give it a go um give it a try and you'll probably be sort of pleasantly surprised and perhaps if you're someone who hates food waste and doesn't generate any food waste then maybe have a declutter we have a non-food section as well so if you've got toiletries or cosmetics or picture frames or light bulbs bubble wrap all the way through to toys, clothes,

furniture, etc. can also be shared with your neighbours for free. So everything on Olio is for free. We feel very, very passionately that the future of business has to be profit with a purpose. And at the moment, we're considered a little bit strange. And it certainly makes our lives very difficult when we're trying to raise funding, for example, because the concept of a business that's doing good is sadly quite an unusual thing. But the reality is that we have an enormous number of problems in the world they need to solving yesterday. And business is just an incredibly powerful, scalable way to do that. And so we... But it's true, there's just such a wide stakeholder in businesses now, isn't it? It's not just the people who own the business, it's the consumers, it's the people who are affected, it's the people all over the world who are affected

by all the activities that we participate in each day. And I think we will increasingly see sort of different types of businesses. So something that's quite unusual at Olio that we haven't touched on yet is our volunteering model. So normally you associate volunteers with a charity, but we have 22,000 volunteers and these are people who are passionate about our mission. They believe like us that just it's criminal that food's being thrown away when people want it or need it. So if anyone's listening and they want to learn a bit more about food waste they're listening to this like lots of us they're really kind of shocked and depressed about it and they want to be a bigger part of this conversation you know do you have any resources or something that people could go away

anything you've read that you thought was particularly interesting any books or websites apart from obviously the oleo app to actually start making a practical difference is there anywhere that we can learn a bit more about the issues yeah so there's um if you want to sort of a deeper look at the problem of food waste there's a great book by tristam stewart um i think it's called the global scandal of food waste um that's an absolutely amazing read and that really was i think the first kind of expose into the enormity of the problem of food waste if you want a more light-hearted take on it go to youtube and look at john oliver's rant about the problem of food waste he's the american comedian yeah um does a

great take on just the absolute absurdity um of the situation and then of course on our website which is www.oleoex.com we've got a whole section of kind of facts and figures about the problem of food waste. Okay, that's brilliant. And then we have one final question that we ask all our guests. So what's the practice or mantra that you live by every day? Certainly one of the things I think speaking from personal experience, from someone who has only found their passion extremely recently, it's been absolutely transformational. And I think it's very, very easy to be very risk averse and to stay doing sort of the job that you have or living in the place that you currently live. And I encourage people to just look outside that.

Because on that, you left a very successful career in the corporate space and that's a brave move yes it was and took a pay cut of down to you know a quarter of what I was being paid before um and everything about my life and my lifestyle changed dramatically but it was just the most amazing thing I've ever done. Are you happier now? Absolutely. That's incredible. Honestly, this has been inspiring on every single level. Yeah, Tessa, thank you so much. I've sat here in awe.

Thank you, Tessa. Honestly, it's been really incredible. So we hope you enjoyed today's show and tune in next week where we'll be interviewing Dr. Hazel Wallace. And we'll be talking about lifestyle medicine, changing our diets and what's happening in our NHS at the moment. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn ads.

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