Tristram Stuart

Author, historian and campaigner

Tristram Stuart is an English author, historian and campaigner for changes to the food system. He has spent the last decade living as a 'freegan', practising "alternative strategies for living based on limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources". He studied English at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, winning the Betha Wolferstan Rylands prize and the Graham Storey prize upon graduation. He grew up in Sussex where, as a teenager, he started rearing pigs and chickens on leftovers and food waste from his school canteen. He reclaims most of his food from the bins of supermarkets and other shops as a protest against the scale of food waste. In December 2009, Stuart organised "Feeding the 5000" in Trafalgar Square in which 5,000 people were served food and drink made from waste food that would otherwise have been wasted.

Stuart is the author of The Bloodless Revolution: Radical Vegetarians and the Discovery of India (2006), and Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal (2009), which reveals that modern Western countries waste more food than they consume and argues that tackling this problem is a simple way of alleviating environmental problems, including climate change. He regularly appears on the broadcast media to talk about freeganism and the environment.