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This Saturday, environmental group Cardiff Food Alliance is giving away 500 free, freshly cooked meals made from the city's surplus food to highlight the 8.3 million tonnes of edible food that goes to waste in the UK every year.

The vegan dishes will be produced from ingredients sourced from local farms and food outlets that are good to eat but that would have been thrown away by supermarkets for not conforming with strict standards for size, shape and general appearance.

The 'Feed Cardiff' project aims to highlight the attraction of sustainable eating and draw attention to the sheer quantity of food that never reaches our plates. The meals will be prepared in the kitchens of the Salvation Army in Grangetown, south Cardiff and eaten from biodegradable plates and bowls from the Wholeleaf company.

Cardiff Food Alliance is a partnership between the Cardiff branch of the environmental organisation Friends of the Earth and Welsh environmental group Cardiff Transition Project. Earlier this year, volunteers from the charity organised a food fight in the woods, hurling pastries, cakes, quiches and fruit and vegetables at one another to raise awareness of all the food we needlessly throw away. 

Tim Fisher, one of the organisers behind the project, said: 'Feed Cardiff links two important issues - the amount of perfectly edible food that is wasted by shops and householders, and the environmental impact of factory farming. The Cardiff Food Alliance is calling for a more sustainable farming system and a less wasteful food production system.' 

Raoul Bhambral, project co-ordinator at Friends of the Earth Cymru, said: 'Intensive, factory farming is propped up with  over £700 million of taxpayer's money every year. Small, environmentally-friendly farmers in Wales are losing out. Not only do we need to eat less meat, but the government must also change the way it's produced so that it's of better quality and doesn't have such a damaging impact.'

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