White Fox Talking
Talk About Mental Health & Well-Being… Why Not? Mark ‘Charlie’ Valentine suffered life changing mental illness, before beginning a journey to recovery and wellness; the darkness of PTSD transformed by the light atop mountains and beyond. Mark is now joining forces with Seb Budniak, to make up the ‘White Fox Talking’ team. Through a series of Podcasts and Vlogs, ‘White Fox Talking’ will be bringing you a variety of guests, topics, and inspirational stories relating to improving mental well-being. Find your way back to you! Expect conversation, information, serious discussion and a healthy dose of Yorkshire humour!
White Fox Talking
E61: Adam Smith - Empowering Neurodivergence Through Food Activism
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What if your greatest challenges could become your most powerful strengths? In this episode, we sit down with Adam Smith, the inspiring co-founder and chief executive of Surplus to Purpose, who shares his incredible journey from a troubled youth to a professional chef. Adam opens up about his experiences growing up with undiagnosed autism, facing childhood abuse, and navigating the vibrant yet chaotic nightlife of Leeds. His story is one of resilience and transformation, as he candidly discusses his past self-destructive behavior and how he turned his life around by finding a purpose in the culinary world.
We take a critical look at how societal norms and the educational system often fail neurodivergent individuals like Adam, emphasizing the urgent need for greater awareness and understanding. Adam's narrative not only highlights the overlapping challenges of ADHD and autism but also how these conditions were inadvertently protective during his darkest times. By sharing his experiences, Adam sheds light on how perceived weaknesses can become empowering superpowers, and how vital it is for society to support neurodivergent students rather than punish them for being different.
Adam's journey doesn't stop at personal transformation. He has used his experiences to fuel a powerful mission against food waste and hunger through the Real Junk Food Project. Our conversation explores his innovative approach to feeding 25 million people globally using surplus food, challenging the exploitative nature of capitalism and highlighting the power of community-driven initiatives. Adam's story is a testament to the impact one person can make when committed to a cause, serving as a beacon of hope and inspiration for future generations to embrace sustainable living and empower themselves through food choices.
Surplus To Purpose
Hello and welcome to the White Fox Talking Podcast. I'm Mark Charlie-Valentine and, as usual, seb is in control. I'm in charge of the controls. In charge of the controls? Are you in control of yourself? Yes, how are we doing? Very well. Is that a lie or are you up yet? It is a lie. It is a lie. It's a stressful day today, to be honest. Right, I'll be honest. It's a bit of an announcement, mate, a bit of a surprise, because I was in Springwell Academy, or I visited Springwell Academy in Tinsel yesterday, speaking to a group of young people just about mental health and the five pillars of mental health, and I just thought I've just told them about self-care and I'm here. I'm here to actually just juggle in too many burning potatoes, hot potatoes, you know what I mean. I was like, oh my God, we need to calm down, mate.
Speaker 1:Well, we were quite busy on Friday, weren't we? We were busy on Friday, yeah, so we were quite pleased to be our finalists in the Head Outside Awards. But, yes, I'm definitely clearing the decks. We're starting a new project. I don't know if you're involved in this on Sunday.
Speaker 2:Well, I might come down.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so a bit of a well-being project. We're getting a few people involved and we're going to run a half marathon. I'm not getting involved, but the idea is to monitor people and see how the training and with a bit of focus towards that, because it's in March 23rd, so we've got a group of about 12, I think, at the minute.
Speaker 2:If anyone wants to sign up let us know.
Speaker 1:No, we've got enough. Trying to get 12 people to meet up and do anything is ridiculous. So anyway, yeah, that's where we are. Who's here with us today? Well, I'm delighted. I'm delighted that we have Mr Adam Smith. The White Fox Talking podcast is sponsored by Energy Impact. Welcome, Adam Evening. Guys, Would you like to give yourself a brief introduction? Don't give everything away.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'll try.
Speaker 1:You don't have to, but it'd be nice.
Speaker 3:I can try. So I'm Adam Smith and I'm the co-founder and chief exec of an organisation called Surplus to Purpose. And that's it for now. That's it for now.
Speaker 1:The rest of you will have to wait so we were. We were just discussing, actually, where we'd first met yeah because of us. I've been on the. I was on the doors of leeds and I was out in leeds for quite a while and you've been around the area doing various things yeah so your background is as a employment background, would be a chef yes, chef for 20 years now, professional chef.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah in leeds and abroad. So done australia, asia, europe and uk. Mainly, mainly leeds right.
Speaker 1:So how did you get into that world?
Speaker 3:so I left school. I got thrown out of school. Actually that's another conversation, but yeah, I was only in school, I think, for around 18 months of my secondary years.
Speaker 3:One of the stories which we'll go on to is I held somebody hostage in a classroom and cut his throat when I was 11 or 12 on expecting that and I got sectioned and then I got put into section into hyroids at medston as a kid and then put on prozac I can't remember what they put put me on some kind of crap drug and then they released me into care. So I was in Shadwell before it became the Squirrel Way, which is now also knocked down, but it was like a dumping ground of a care place and then I basically just left school. I'm smart, I've got. I've got autism. But I was, I was very.
Speaker 3:I was always told by therapists I was smart but angry. The anger came from the misdiagnosis of autism until I was like I don't know 38, 39-ish when I got diagnosed. So I was like really undiagnosed. This was back in the early 90s as well, when it was cool for parents to get divorced and dads beat up their mums, kind of like you know times. So that was me as a kid. And then I, yeah, left school and basically worked in like shitty offices and I think I worked at william mill above st john's for a while all right I remember telling some guy who was an absolute arsehole.
Speaker 3:He rang up and put a bet on champions league, I remember, and I, I think I called him as c-u-n-t over phone like because I was like mate, you've been an absolute. And I got fired from that. So I was just in and out of offices I think I look at dam art catalog for a bit, selling cardigans to old people and just not really doing anything with myself and I got sacked from a job and my mate literally said to me do you want to come and wash pots for me at my restaurant? And this was tgi fridays at junction 27 at burstow, yeah, and it was boxing day. And I went yeah, it'd be a piece of piss washing pots. I was there till three o'clock in the morning. I was absolutely soaking wet.
Speaker 3:I remember it was horrendous this place. There were people just throwing shit at me and it was like I'd never done this before. I was like this is mental and I went back because I was like I love this, like yes, this is me. This is, like you know, a neurodivergence, adhd on acid. Like it fit without this diagnosis. It fit into me and who I was as a person, this kind of like very dysfunctional, toxic environment which had lots of drugs and sex and everything that was. You know, we were all very young people, very involved in every kind of taboo subject was going on. I mean, you used to walk into the toilets and there was everything you could witness, anything you wanted in these toilets for the staff room.
Speaker 3:It was an insane place, but it was the height of the tgi friday's life, you know lifespan, where it was busy. You know you used to go in eight, nine o'clock in the morning and you won't leave till one o'clock in the morning and you'd just be smashing it and you were so proud of smashing it and you know you were burnt out to fuck and that's that's what I did. And then eventually guys were like, yeah, come and help, you know, fry some shitty chips and some food. I did that and I did it about four years. I ended up becoming a master buddy fryer, which meant I could train people to fry food which, you know, looking back is like, what was I doing? And I think I got sacked the record amount of times from there. I got sacked four times I think, and they let me back.
Speaker 3:So again, this like toxic kind of behavior that I had was just following me within the professional life as well, as you know, for with because nothing was diagnosed, nothing was you know, there was no therapy or anything like that going on. And then, yeah, and then walked out of there, went into another place which I'll talk about in a minute because the next place is horrendous but I walked into a restaurant which was proper brigade. People had been there for decades, trained from scratch, you made everything from scratch and I got taught how to be a chef again. I walked out of there eventually, but I was there for a couple of years and I learned my trade, worked my way up, I became a head chef of a pub, left there and then, yeah, and then it, you know, for the next 10 years I was in and out of restaurants, opened up carlu shows on greek street I don't know if you remember greek street carlu shows opening.
Speaker 3:I was the sous chef there opened that up again, just smashing it. You know I was doing every drug available and smashing 12, 14 hour shifts out and thinking it was. You know this was cool to do. And then going out, you know, with the same people at evening, going straight into escobar, finishing at six, walking straight into work and just absolutely I don't even know what level I was on, but yeah, so that suited me. That's what I did, and catering did suit that type of person in the days that I was doing it. It doesn't as much now, but you won't get a kid doing what we were doing back then, no way.
Speaker 1:I was going to say well, there was quite a scene in Leeds, wasn't there at one point, where people would go out. They'd finish work, go out all night and then go straight back into work.
Speaker 3:It was the heyday of it, yeah, and obviously the same group of people all worked in the same bars or the same restaurants and even if they moved between bars or restaurants, you still kept familiar with those people. You set off on the doors. You didn't know the door guys. It was a good scene, if anything. It was a really, really buzzing place to be in. You felt safe and you felt secure. You felt part of something. But geez, it was toxic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, not to mention mint by the way Not to mention yeah, don't mention Mint were a different level, weren't it? Absolutely Good, though. Good, though, in its own way, you know what I mean that were like a family, weren't it? What I'm thinking is do you know these sackings that you went through, like with Wilt Mills and things like that? Was there anything else apart from autism, adhd or anything?
Speaker 3:I mean the ADHD has not really been diagnosed, but I clearly have. There's lots of overlaps. Obviously, a lot of people think when it comes to neurodivergence because I've studied it since I was diagnosed I know about how it's formed in the gut when a baby is formed and how it's formed in the gut and when there's trauma related to the gut, the brain protects it, and then for the rest of your life the brain protects it. So I know a lot of stuff around allergies and relationships to neurodivergence. Now you've got this thing called the autistic diet. So I have a lot of issues with like ibs symptoms and all the different things. I have got allergies and stuff like that. So, yeah, these, these, these behaviors, these traits, these characteristics that were associated with neurodivergence only came to fruition as such when I was diagnosed.
Speaker 3:Because I went through about five years of ptsd therapy, because I was abused as a kid in different ways all the way up to about 21 when I tried to take my own life, like a serious attempt to take my life, and it was after going through the PTSD therapy that they were like there's something else going on here and then the autism basically came out. So, if anything, it was protecting me throughout my life for all these times where I run away from home and I was getting picked up by drug dealers, I got picked up by pedophiles and I had all sorts of really, really extreme stories that happened to me as a kid and every single time I landed on my feet. And you know, speaking to people close to me now it's like I had this kind of I call it a superpower with neurodivergence, because now I use it for good, you know, I use it in a good way and I'm really proud and positive about it. But then it was probably protecting my brain was like you know, you can't obviously look after yourself in this situation, so we're gonna use these characteristics and these traits that are associated with with autism to protect you. The adhd basically just came out of. It was the anger of like not fitting into school, not understanding, like orthodox structures, probably needing structure but not getting it, neglect, neglect, neglect as a kid, not being loved by my parents, being abused by my parents, you know, section put into care, ended up in prison, homeless, substance abuse, the lot you know.
Speaker 3:The ADHD it's probably come out because you know you're fighting against that and the system and everything that comes with it, including people.
Speaker 3:So I wouldn't necessarily have got it, because there is a lot of toxic characteristics that come with ADHD that I don't believe that I have.
Speaker 3:I'm really really conscious of it, especially like narcissism and those type of behavioral traits. But the autism part of me, looking back now and looking at times like when I did certain things or where I behaved in certain ways, I now realize more and more of it that these are things that I just I couldn't understand myself because for me the world is black and white. The gray areas cause me lots of issues and on maybe two occasions in my life one where I've mentioned, when I cut the kid's throat, and another time where I took my own life I went past the point of no return when I saw red, and not many people get past that point of no return and come back from it. And I believe that I've got those potential traits to do that, which is very scary, scary, but I've had to learn how to control a lot of that. But they are probably adhd kind of characteristics that I've had to kind of somehow realize that I could quite easily be that way if I wanted to be that way.
Speaker 1:My brain's got the capacity to do that, but I also think that I can stop myself from being that way as well at the same time, from what I've learned about myself with the PTSD, there's quite a lot of crossover with symptoms from PTSD and ADHD, because I've been asked quite a few times, mainly by Kirsty, if I've got ADHD. Do you think you've got ADHD and they're like? Well, you don't know, because I've got PTSD, it might be undiagnosable. Now Because of them impulsive things, something happens.
Speaker 3:it's an impulsive thing Also, it's that fight and fright mode, your brain survival mode, that thing. I've been in situations where I could have easily lost my life. Somebody could have quite easily killed me. I've been in those situations and my brain's protected me. So you've got that flight or fright kind of mode or fight mode. So it's quite easy to do those things in those situations.
Speaker 3:But it doesn't necessarily mean I've got the adhd, but I do have. And obviously with the spectrum as well, a lot of people don't quite understand. Everyone thinks it's a linear thing where you one end or the other, but it's not. It's more like a star diagram. You know there's bipolar on there, there's schizophrenia on there, there's like depression, there's everything on there. So I probably have got some traits on on account of, you know, adhd, but it's probably not as extreme as people who are adhd, yeah. But then there's the neuro divergence, there's the autism, there's the potential depression on there. That I've probably got a lot more of that moment. People don't. So the crossovers for me are so vague because we're still learning so much about neurodivergence.
Speaker 3:Obviously there's a generation of people that were not diagnosed. You know people like yourself and maybe my generation that were not diagnosed. But now younger people are getting really early diagnosis, you know they're getting a lot more support and treatment, especially in school environments or in work environments, where they can potentially not be as extreme as maybe, like I was or you know, maybe even yourself in some of these situations, because we just didn't have help or support. We just didn't know what was going on. We just got called bad or you know, angry kids and it was because, you know, he had an abusive dad. Or my dad used to beat me up and everyone was like, oh, it's because he's been a bad kid, it's like it wasn't, it's because I asked the question. Now I needed to understand it, and so you beat me up instead because, yeah, I mean, that was, that was my childhood basically yeah, I think I've got.
Speaker 1:I think I mentioned it before. I got thrown out of thrown out of one class because of my kept questioning things, because you want to know why this, why? This work trying to process it. I got thrown into a gardening club, which were absolutely amazing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so you're punished for doing a thing that you don't understand why you're doing it, and then obviously that becomes a behavioral trait and then obviously your brain then becomes a survival instinct to that. So then you either don't question, which obviously then has a build-up, which is what happened to me or then you question, knowing that there's going to be a consequence to this. So again your brain's in that survival mode of like I'm prepared to be punished here for potentially asking a question, whereas now, fucking, I'm asking questions like fuck, like I'm asking you to your face. I'm not, I'm not scared of these things. I proudly do it because I really need to understand and process a situation or information, or even you as a person. I hate, like it's a lying and deceiving. So, like these assholes that have robbed me today, that kind of deceiving behavior, because I've watched them on camera, I was like how can you do that? Like, because it's not black and white to me, because somebody said one thing but they mean another thing. I just can't do that I can't process that whatsoever.
Speaker 3:So that really, really really gets to me. My brain just can't function in those situations. So for me it has to be very black and white. So I might ask you a question which may be somewhat upfront or something a bit kind of blunt, but I'm doing it because I need to process that information. I'm not doing it because I'm being an arsehole to you and even though there's something that I might ask you is quite negative, and so I then have to prepare people now as well for it. So I say I'm autistic, I might say something or do something, but trust me, it's because I'm trying to process information. If you've got an issue, just tell me, because I'd rather you say adam, you've been a dick or adam, that's not right. Then you pretend to me that's okay. Then I could go away thinking that's even worse for me because I can't process that and it will play on my mind for years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think there needs to be more societal awareness of these neurodivergences because it's part of an evolutionary thing from what I've been taking in and reading about, and if we didn't have people that were now labelling it Some of the greatest people Darwin all these people.
Speaker 3:They kept themselves away from people. They didn't socialize. They were called freaks. You know they were. They were geeks in their, in their respective behaviors, and they were some of the smartest people that's ever walked in this planet.
Speaker 3:But, without a doubt, they were autistic, without a doubt you can even see people now I see it on tv and some of which, straight away, is like he's autistic. You know, you can see him the bill gates of the world there. You know the others that are, you know, very, very successful in what they do. Of course, they are well on the spectrum. You can't be that way. If you're not, it's, it's hard because you can't. I'm not the hugger, I'm not the person that puts the iron around person, I'm the light. Let's get shit done. You know everything needs to be black and white, everything needs to be done a certain way. So you know we do need those people absolutely and we have had those people, but they've been called certain things, legends and and inspiring people, but they're definitely, definitely on the spectrum yeah, what we do now, without me going on a rant, have people studying classrooms, trying to program people and then, if you ask a question, you're causing a disturbance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then people. You've been in isolation for that. Yeah, have you been in isolation, seb? I've told you before.
Speaker 2:It's all coming out about Seb when we've I've told you before I moved to about seven different schools because I could never handle my attitude.
Speaker 1:But you would have been one of these people that had been on the side of the tribe. Yeah, that would notice a saber-toothed tiger, whereas everyone else were just chatting away.
Speaker 3:This is the thing, because of the attention I think the one that goes there's shit about to happen. I'm going to make sure this is the case. Like you build something, you do something in this society. That's not. That's not how it works. You're seen as an outcast or a freak, or you know, you're different to people, you know, and I was called.
Speaker 3:What did my friend used to say to me? Used to say to me you've got a gift all my life. He used to say to me when I was a younger and I used to think he meant like with the women, do you know? I mean like because, like girls used to think I were cute and I'm like, oh yeah, I'm quite a cute kid, you know, like girls think I'm cute. So, getting in her jersey, I was like, oh, this is fucking great, I've got this gift. But he didn't mean that. He saw me as this person that was able to see situations, read things, deal with the black and white of the matter, see through bullshit, land on my feet all the time, always landed on my feet, no matter what situation I was in. Nothing extremely bad happened to me, even though I was in really bad situations. So I had this power to do that.
Speaker 1:Did you land on your feet or did you make good choices?
Speaker 3:I didn't make good choices. I definitely didn't make good choices. I'll tell you why I didn't make good choices is because I copy. So I don't know if you've ever seen a film by Woody Allen called Zelig. It's a mockumentary. Obviously, woody Allen being the person he is, I don't like to promote his work as such, but he did it live. So he was speaking to these jewish people. It's the best example. He just starts growing a beard in front of him as he's talking to him. Because he's fitting into that situation. He becomes them and for years and years.
Speaker 3:I mean I was like a little kid when I watched this and I kept thinking that's me, that's what I do. I copy situations. I don't necessarily make good decisions. I copy the people around me. Now, my dad was a drunk, a wife, beat, abused his own children. You know he was arrested on christmas day for raping and beating my mom whilst my little sister was in bed on her bed, and she was four at the time. You know, this man was a monster. So my only role model was this monster.
Speaker 3:So when I got to being a teenager young lad going out into leeds, you know, 18, 19, 20, 21 years old my decision making was based on what I knew, and I only knew this monster of a dad. So I was being a knobhead. I was being a knobhead to girls. I was being a knobhead to people around me. I didn't give a shit what I said to people because I only knew what I knew. So it's not necessarily that I made good decisions. It was like I only knew what I knew and I was copying people that were around me. It's only when I started kind of associating with people that were very different to me so maybe more middle class people, maybe people that had much more supportive family members around them when they were children, had good upbringings that I started realizing that I was very different and what I was doing wasn't right.
Speaker 3:So landing I did land on my feet because in all these situations, even though I was making shit decisions based on really crap role models, I was getting out of these situations with very little harm, you know, even abducted by paedophiles. You know, nothing happened to me, but I was abducted by a paedophile. The guy tried sleeping with me in a fucking bed in Scarborough when I was a kid, but he didn't get to do it. I ended up in prison, 72 days on remand in a cat bee prison in Donca in Hull. Me is I had curly hair at the time.
Speaker 3:This guy came and flicked my hair and said he was going to cut me the next day. So I literally shaved all my hair off and then he couldn't do it again. He didn't recognize who I was again. So I got through the whole life of prison of basically just landing on my feet and not getting into situations that I could have quite easily got into, and it was only then, after the serious attempt to take my own life, that I decided to like I had this energy and all my energy was being put into kind of like self-destruct mode that I then decided if I did something, maybe positive, with it, maybe I could get more out of it, and so I just channeled my energy in a very different way, basically can I ask you and you don't have to answer what drove you to possibly take your own life after attempt?
Speaker 3:so I did. I was pronounced dead. I was. I was found in a car. I'd been sucking on exhaust fumes for around 16 hours. The police triangulated my text message to my friend. I drove into some woods, taped the exhaust to my mouth and they couldn't find me. I had to get a helicopter out and they eventually did find me after about 16 hours. They pronounced me dead at the scene. They missed my heartbeat because obviously the dumb cop had tried to take my heartbeat through my pulse on my hand, rather than you know, they're doing it the right ways and I'd the right ways and I'd dropped a load of ecstasy and cocaine into some bottle of water and then just nicked it. So the class a drugs were just keeping my heart beating, which is ironic because I'd need to come in order to speed up the process.
Speaker 3:Pronounced dead I was black. My skin was black because I'd been sucking these exhaust fumes. So none of my family recognized me when I got brought into the hospital and after three days I came around and so I I was, I'd gone. I'd gone to the point where I wasn't coming back. You know, that was it and, like I said, there isn't very many people that get to that stage and those that do get to that stage don't come back. So I know my situation. I'm aware that I'm very, very lucky to do that. Not many people get to speak about their experiences when they get to that stage, which also helps me to understand people that have got to that stage and going. I know what that means for you to get there. You know what it entails and everything around that. It's very, very scary and very dark place. The reason I got there it's completely self-inflicted.
Speaker 3:I was with a girl in Essex. She was an underwear model for Elle Macpherson. She was absolutely, you know, amazing person, had a family that was multimillionaires. I had a lifestyle. I was living in Hertfordshire. I was catering for Jade Goody's wedding. I was living literally around the corner from David Beckham's house in Sawbridgeworth. I was living a lifestyle which I was way above my pay grade. It was mental. I used to go into China White's with Lily Allen, professor Green, ed Sheeran In his younger days literally everybody and I was completely out of my place, completely out of my place, completely out of my place.
Speaker 3:And I lived in a mansion. In a hotel I was a chef and the mansion was a shed. Basically all the employees lived in this mansion together was about 12 or 15 of us and I did everything with everybody, like people used to knock on my door open door policy, anybody could walk in. I was doing everything Every debaucherous toxic act you can imagine. I was doing everything, every debaucherous toxic act you can imagine. I was doing it because it was just like this was her life. You know what I mean.
Speaker 3:And I cheated on her several times with several different girls. She found out and I just made up some absolute bullshit story. I was sleeping with a 16-year-old girl at the time I was about 22, 23, I think I was. There was this little kid, basically, and this pastry chef and I just ended up sleeping with her and then I was cheating on my partner with her. Everybody found out and then I just lost control, like I was, like I'm in the middle of Essex, there's all these people that are aware of me. I've got nowhere to go. I'm living in this mansion. It's a living position as a chef. There's no home for me. There's nowhere to go back. I was literally right at the edge of a cliff and I just drove all the way back to Leeds and then went to my sister's got some drugs off a boyfriend and the next minute I'm in a field in a forest and, yeah, pronounced dead at the scene hours later. So about 16, 17 hours later.
Speaker 1:Do you think these behaviours were you know this lots of drugs, debauchery and whatever. Were they escapisms?
Speaker 3:You chase a high, don't you? Whatever were they escapisms, it's a. You chase a high, don't you? You know drugs stopped working for me in the end. You know, I did everything except heroin pretty much, and when I was going out, I mean I referred to mint, unfortunately. But I remember going to mint club one night and my friends were, let's do some ease, and I just went. I just went and got eight and just fucking nectar in mint. Next minute I'm in an ambulance and stuff. And it was always like everything they did I was like I'll do the extreme of it because I couldn't chase that high anymore, because having a few drinks with your friends was great when I was like 10 and 11.
Speaker 3:But then when I got to 19, 20, 21 and I was losing my virginity, like 11 years old, I was in care and all the older girls used to pass me around, all the new girls that they had to sleep with me. So I was like literally doing like sleeping, having orgies and everything at like 10, 11, 12 years old. I mean, my son's 11 next, next in january, and he hasn't got a scooby-doo about any of this stuff. He knows about what I did, but in his life, yeah, you know, he's got a very, very, very supportive network and I'm thinking, fucking hell, the things I was doing when I was his age is absolutely crazy. So, yeah, I, I, I, unfortunately. I tried to chase it more and more but because I was so exposed, so young, nothing was enough. So, like I said, drugs were not enough. One occasion my friend said let's copy Jackass and do something fucking stupid. So I think he fucking took his clothes off and set fire to him.
Speaker 3:I went to HSBC, took out five grand, got a one-way ticket to Thailand and spent eight days there with 75,000 baht, obviously the exchange, and just blew it in eight days. One day I woke up in a hotel room. There was like 13 girls in my room. I'd not done anything with any of them because I completely passed out, but I had to pay them all to leave my room. They were all doing makeup, having a bath and all sorts of shit. I saw elephants.
Speaker 3:I met this guy called roy and he called it roy's magical mystery tour, and he was this old guy from australia who had a thai wife and he had a dairy farm, and every time I met up with him he'd like give me as much whiskey as possible and then he just disappeared somewhere with him in the most random, weird, messed up place you can imagine, and I just get myself into this completely fucked up situation. So I was always like chasing this, like never, never of. I remember being in a room and there were security guys. I mean, I'm in a restaurant in Thailand, it was completely closed down and I'm sat in a chair eating this like chow mein dish off my face and eventually I realized that I was sat in this restaurant eating this food and I turned to these guys. I was like where the hell am I? What am I doing here? And there were two guys on the door with guns in these holsters and I remember turning around and I was like what is going on? And they said if you go back out there, you're dead. Like what you said to those guys from new zealand, they're trying to hunt you down and kill you. So we put you in here to protect you.
Speaker 3:And I didn't have a clue what was going on. I'm just eating chow mein out his fucking bowl off my face, so much that I didn't even realize where I was. So I was saying and doing anything to the put to the extreme to anyone, even close people, because I just didn't care enough because, yeah, this high, this thing that you chase this, I don't know what it is, you know, I couldn't get enough of it. So the negative, the self-destructive path that I was going down eventually just came to a halt when it was just everything was out of control. My whole life was completely toxic. I had pushed everybody so far away, fucked every relationship up completely, taken every drug and alcohol and, you know, self-harm. I've got girls' names written into my leg from when I was a kid, when I used to let them die cigarettes out on my leg and cut the names into my leg with like glass. So I've got like heidi written into my leg and siobhan written into my leg and stuff like it's scarred when I was in care, like I just chased everything.
Speaker 3:Mate, you know what, thinking about and speaking to you guys about now, I'm thinking no one fucking stopped me. No one even said to me adam, what the fuck is she doing? Like nobody. Everybody was like, yeah, this guy, look what he does, you know, and my mates loved it because like, oh, adam will do it.
Speaker 3:You know, adam won't fucking do so much stupid. Let's get Adam to do it. Let's give him a few Stellars and he'll jump on a fucking plane somewhere. And you know, let's dare him to do it. Luckily, matt, that I did, mate. Imagine how extreme, mate. And this is the thing. It's so scary to think what I was doing back then and now it's terrifying. Like I said, I've got a kid and I was 11. It's scary to think that he, you know, doesn't have any clue around this kind of stuff. But it's just worrying to think that nobody even tried to dare to say to me you probably need to stop doing these things, mate, because it's not looking good for you do you think that no one actually said anything to you, or could they have sent something to you and you completely blocked it out?
Speaker 3:possibly both. Yeah, I think, possibly both. I think you know, even though that people might have warned me what the consequences may have been of something. I would try to find out what the consequences were, you know, regardless. So if someone said, if you do this, this might happen, I'm like cool, let's do it and see if it happens. And if it didn't happen, I'd be like, well, what else can I do then to you know, to either achieve that consequence or I'll find out a different consequence so that maybe I can come back to you and go actually, this happened, do you know? I mean.
Speaker 3:So it was more like, honestly, I've written a book, an autobiography. I remember sending it to this um ghost writer that helped me out. Even. He came back and messaged me and said are you all right? I said why? And I said I've just read your book and some of the stuff in here is so fucking dark and so deep. I said, and this is the thing I was like, I was not afraid of what was going to happen and the consequences were immaterial because I just felt like you were saying to me adam, don't nick that drink because you'll end up pissed. Well, let's get pissed and see what happens, and it was the next thing, the next stage. So I wasn't. Yes, maybe I got warnings, maybe people tried.
Speaker 3:I also think as well, though seb is that throughout my life I didn't have positive role models and the family support and the network that I needed, but in every situation I could tell you one person. So when I was in prison there was a guy called andrew, when I was in care and a key worker called maureen. There's always one person that helped me to get to the next part of my life. I needed to get to and I hung on to that person. Maureen was my key worker in care and she used to give me money out of a wage to get the bus into Leeds, to get like a day ride, and I remember one Christmas she gave me some money to go buy some trainers out of her own wage.
Speaker 3:I just feel like there's one person this whole time. It's kind of I'll refer to it as a guardian angel at that point of my life when I was very self-destructive, whether it's in care or in prison that kind of allowed me to get to where I need to go to next, because everybody saw this gift in me, this smart kid that was just self-destructive and I could have quite easily end up in prison for life. I could have quite easily died, but I, you know, I delved into both worlds, but everybody saw something in me. I think that maybe that, rather than people trying to warn me that there was a consequence on my behavior, a lot of people believed in me, even now, you know, in terms of what I do, and I think that tiny, tiny little microcosm of hope that people had for me maybe helped me and probably kept me alive and then probably allowed me to do the stuff that I do now so on the flip side of all that you've, you are, you know you're a chef, so you are, you've got a creative mind.
Speaker 1:Do you think them two things go together? Absolutely, I'm not trying to take you down one, no, absolutely.
Speaker 3:The creativity obviously is a near a divergent quality. Absolutely, I was an artistic kid, you know. I drew everywhere. Everywhere I went, I used to draw on everything I could find, even stuff I wasn't allowed to draw on. I created things I remember I got.
Speaker 3:So, as a really, really great example, I was in year five in a school in beeston, just before all this shit happened with my mom and dad. So I think I I was about eight or nine years old and I got thrown out of my class for just being a little shit. I don't know, I have no idea what I did, but I got thrown out and got sent to the head teacher's office and this head teacher was just this random bloke and he came out of his office and he just went. Adam, there's a year six group over there and they're designing board game for road safety and it fucking won the competition. So me and this bunch of year 60s I didn't have a clue got to feature in the yorkshire evening post and they used to have like a mascot for the fire service which was like a red elephant, and we got to go to a mcdonald's for the day and there's just like me in the newspaper, this red elephant holding up this board game, because I was the only kid that designed a board game, because the rules said create a poster. Because I'd done something slightly different.
Speaker 3:And even now, you know, whenever I do stuff I'm thinking outside the box. I say to people I imagine there is no box and I just think, like what would I do? So even at that early age I was always in creative or thinking above and beyond. But you know now, if I'd have had the support and and the and everything that probably every child needs without a doubt, I could have probably done some amazing things as a kid and as an adult. I'm not saying what I don't do isn't amazing, but I probably wouldn't have experienced some of the things I've experienced if somebody just took me to one side and just channelled it into something a little bit more positive. But they didn't and they allowed me to go off and do the things that unfortunately, unfortunately, I did. Yeah, yeah, what school was it? Beeston? So I was at Greenwood Primary before it was New Buley. Yeah.
Speaker 1:No, I would have been at Beeston Primary A long time ago. We were all in black and white then.
Speaker 3:Then I did Low Road Hunts at Carr, all those schools as well, did one in Guildeson, went to Guildeson Primary School as well before I went to high school. Then I did. It was me that got it knocked down. I was in local papers and in Bruncliffe I ended up at Bruncliffe High School, bob Gettins, who was the mayor of Morley. I remember all the social workers were trying to get me back into schools and Roids turned me down, rodillion turned me down and they were like we're not having this kid in our school. Workers and therapists going no, no, it's fine. I remember bob gettings this big, you know unit of a bloke, big b and just looks like santa. Basically it gets me in this office. He was the mayor of morley and I sat down and he walked in behind me and he went are you gonna be abe smithy? And I went yeah, and he fucking whacked me around head. I went. I said yeah, and that was it. He let me at school and I got 10 gcc last year of school. Yeah, so you know again, it's what you know.
Speaker 3:This guardian angel person, this person just believed in me, just give me an opportunity. And then when someone did that, you know I thrived, I thrived and I achieved and excelled, and I knew I could achieve anything. I'd still believe now. You know, my thought process is that I can do anything I want to do. You know, I really, truly believe that I fed over 25 million people across the world with the project that I do. So I just think that if somebody at that younger age would have got me that, I think I could have, you know, gone on to do all sorts of amazing things and probably had a very different career.
Speaker 1:So shall we talk about? You know this? After the suicide attempt, oh sorry, after the attempt to take your own life? I don't like the word suicide because it was a fucking legal term on it. Did you know that? Yeah yeah, so, yeah. So you've attempted to take your own life. How did you get by that and move on and then rebuild to what, and then we'll to what you'll do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we'll talk about especially what you did it's a funny story because I woke up and my friend was there next to my bed and he went you might as well stop doing this, he's not very good at it. Obviously we laugh now. It's that northern sense of you yeah exactly.
Speaker 3:It was like what are you doing, mate? You're not very good at it, stop doing this. And he was right. He was right, but I think he was just like I'm fed up with you. Like you know, try to fucking hurt yourself. And all this self-destructiveness. And the only way I could get away from hunsley you know, I grew up in hunsley and and belial and middleton as a kid and baston I thought the only way I'm gonna get away from this is if I go like opposite side of the world.
Speaker 3:I remember carlou shows opened on Greek Street. They hired me to be a chef. I met a girl there which is my son's mother and we just said let's go to Australia. And then I was there for about a year. I had about a grand in my bank because I blew it all on every you know narcotic I could find in Leeds and didn't save anything at all. And then, yeah, just disappeared to Australia with a grand in my bank, run away from my problems, run away from everything you're not supposed to do, and got out there, said I'm not going to be a chef, I'm not going to do this anymore, I'm going to go find myself. And I've just got some incredible stories of again these people that I met across the way of inspiring me. I got there at 4th of July 2012. It was Independence Day and within about a couple of days I was back in the kitchen you know, cooking in australia they used to pay some mad wages became a head chef of a multi-million pound city center restaurant in melbourne. An italian restaurant was on 125 000 dollars a year as a head chef, so I was absolutely raking it in living on.
Speaker 3:I moved to sydney. I was living on the harbour in sydney. I was getting a ferry to work underneath the sydney harbour bridge and down by the opera house every morning, fucking whales and sharks next to me. Like it was absolutely bliss. Not like beaston, very different to beaston, yeah. Yeah, culture of the same, but yeah, it's very, very different in terms of flora and fauna. Yeah, and then I had to do my. So I got two stories, so I had to do my environmental work. You know the fucking. You've got to give back to the local economy.
Speaker 3:Go work on the farms, stay away from the city center type work where they exploit people who are tourists. Basically, you go on a farm. There's a bunch of the most racist farmers you've ever come across in life and they hate you because you're a pommy. And then they hate everybody else because they're not australian and it's like, it's so intense, racist, like it. Just I've never experienced like this before. I know I'm white, male, privileged, and yeah, I was. I was outcast massively by these guys but they work you on this farm.
Speaker 3:I worked on a farm in a in a north shepparton, so just outside north melbourne, about four hours north of melbourne, and I remember the guy had pigs on his farm and he had it as just as as as pets as anything. But he had quite a few, with about eight or nine of them, and these pigs were getting all this food delivered to him every day and we used to go and eat the same food as the pigs because they were getting like vanilla. I don't know if you ever seen vanilla before, but in its truest form it's a big green man. It's not this little dried black thing that people associate with fresh apricots from coming off trees and it were like. They were like this mate, they were like bloody watermelons, these things. We were eating it and then saying to the farmer like what on earth is this food like? Why is it getting fed to the pigs. And he just explained to me and said we're gonna basically share all the produce that we have on this road.
Speaker 3:This road was like years and years long and every farm on there basically harvest all the produce, get it ready for supermarket. Supermarkets would cancel it the day before and just reject it. They didn't want it, it was overgrown too big and didn't want it anymore, whatever reasons they made up for it. And this farm was like so we've harvested it and then we just share it around each other's livestock and we feed it to our livestock. So I was like naive at the time, which is something I don't do now. I was like why did you feed it to? Like poor people? And I'd just come from sydney, I'd spent the new year at sydney, so I'd seen all the.
Speaker 3:I was on the Opera House for about 17 hours, saw it all, had an amazing time Six, seven million people within the CBD area of Sydney and I watched social cleansing happening. I watched vans turn up in Sydney and there was this camp called Occupy where these young lads were just cooking food for anybody that turned up, especially homeless and those vulnerable people, and every day the local authorities would come and just clean them out and just get rid of everything. And within hours these guys were set back up again with like tents and camping stoves and everything and like just, I was so inspired by him going. This is like the 60th time these guys have been done in this three-month period and these guys are still smashing it and so I'd bought this farm in melbourne.
Speaker 3:I've just come from mel uh, sydney, where there's like guys who were sat in the street with like war and peace signs in front of them, explaining that the wife had cancer and had lost the house. And you're reading. You stood there for like 30 minutes reading all these guys' stories because they're not allowed to beg. But some of them was like this is insane, what's happening to people. But then these vans were coming, they were like ambulances which were playing and they'd take them off the street and disappear. And they were. And they were doing it because obviously during the the, the you know, the new year celebrations and all the delegates and people that were coming to the city, they didn't want to see this stuff, so they were cleansing the streets in front of me. These occupy were obviously trying to uh expose what was going on in a very kind of activist way, and I was just so inspired and this farmer just turned around to me and said well, I'm not a charity, so why? Why should I? I, I'm a business. It really really threw me back. So I was like he's got a fucking point. Why should he fucking solve homelessness? Why should he solve the world's problems? He's a farmer, he's a business. Why can't he feed it to his pigs? And then I was asking him how much of this food gets actually created and he was trying to give me numbers and stuff.
Speaker 3:It was the 22nd of February 2013. I was still on a farm and it was an almond farm. So I'm waiting for nuts to ripen and I'm watching nuts in a tree for three months. That's all I did. And this guy was like right now, they're ready. So you put a net under the tree, you get a stick and you bash the tree and you collect them in the net and you move to the next tree. If they're not ready, you stand and watch. Watch for free, moms, mate. You just watch these fucking nuts ripe and it's. It's grueling shit. And I I was stood there and it's around the farm was a desert. So I'm in the middle of a desert, not four hours north of melbourne, and I just turned around to his farm and went I'm gonna create the real junk food project. I'm gonna feed the world, literally. Just said it fuck knows where it came from, didn't? I mean? Everything around me was my inspiration and I said I'm gonna feed the world with this food. I'm a chef, this food is beautiful and I'm going to expose the problem. I'm going to show people what's really going on and I'm going to just feed everyone. And he said go for it. So then I moved to another farm in north queensland. It was a harry krishna farm.
Speaker 3:Again, I had a terrible experience. I got absolutely battered by these brogans they call them at the time. They beat me up to death pretty much. I don't know why. I must just be an easy target sometimes and I probably said something I shouldn't have said to them. But yeah, this kind of kid's beat me up.
Speaker 3:I was on his farm and I remember the leader at the time was a guy, a Croatian man, called Madre, and he sat me down on this hill and he said you know what are you going to do next? I said Madre, I've had this idea. They want. I'd seen some page of field cafes in melbourne. There's a concept called lentil, as anything that does page of field, where you go in and they suggest what you donate back for the food that you get given. And I was like I've got this idea and I'm going to take it to the uk and I'm just going to. So I'm going to take it back to melbourne where I was working as a head chef in this restaurant. I'm just going to set up restaurants and people are going to come walls I don't give a shit what they do so that I can value people and value food and connect it back together. But I'm going to use food waste. I'm going to make some incredible food for them and show them how the fuck have I just made this incredible meal out of stuff that other people call waste?
Speaker 3:He turned around to me and said you can't feed the world unless you feed your hometown first. And then he fucked off off and left me on this hill in the middle of this harry krishna camp after I'd literally just been beaten up by his kids and I couldn't even stand up because they beat me up against an electric fence and they burnt on my back and I was. I mean I was, I was in so much pain and he just left me on this hill and I must have sat there. I must have sat there, mate, for a good six to eight hours just watching the sunset and everything. I was like fuck, he's just summed up his whole life in one foul statement before he fucks off like he's some fucking walking god or something. I mean that's how he acted. I was like it's completely right, I've run away from all my problems. I shouldn't be doing this here. I need to go back home and do this. I need to go face my problems. I need to go, allow myself to be vulnerable, man up you know the old term of manning face my issues and and deal with the shit that I've caused and then do this project, because I can't do it here whilst I'm still running away from all my shit in my life. So that's what I did.
Speaker 3:I created the real jumper project, which was a project I had for around eight years. I didn't. I set it up in melbourne on this little barbecue. There's a picture of me you can find online of me like smiling next to this barbecue. Used to get 30 minutes of free heat at the barbecue. Anybody could do it. It's public use. So I used to get all the restaurants food and then make it on this barbecue and just let people come and pay what they wanted. So I set it up there, just doing it on a random basis and I'm like, fuck it, I'm doing it, I'm just going to go back home and set up a cafe and just fucking doley and that was yeah, yeah places.
Speaker 1:I mean, why not armley, to be fair, because it's one of the same?
Speaker 3:it got nothing bad to say about the place. I knew every street drinker, every homeless guy, every thief. I knew everybody in that town. I could walk them down that town street and everybody knew me and I could knew everybody's name and I was respected for what I did, but I respected them as being human beings. I knew everybody's problems and we didn't get any issues whatsoever.
Speaker 3:And we did some incredible things at that cafe absolutely incredible. We changed down and we put it on the map. I had Hugh Finley, whitley all there. Jamie Oliver was there. You know everything that happened to us, that was negative, we turned it into a positive, put it online and we got global attention. You know I was plastered all over the world 50 most influential men in the world, 100th most influential men in food and drink in the telegraph. You know I was doing ted talks, everything. We had every camera, every newspaper at that little tiny cafe in hamley and we literally put it on the map. And it was just because we went out and said we're going to use this food waste and instead of feeding feeding poor people at home, I'm just going to feed it to anyone, and not only I'm going to feed it to anyone. And not only am I going to feed it to anyone, but anyone can pay whatever they want. And we got some incredible stories and incredible people coming and doing it. And then, three years later, everybody I mean I think it was the Telegraph came two years later. Sorry, the Guardian came and Guardian, this guy filmed me for about two days and he put it online.
Speaker 3:I think we had to shut the cafe. There were seven of us in the cafe on laptops just replying to everybody going. Thank you for your support. No, it's kind of fucking. Woman sent me a video from argentina, I remember, with the kids crying, saying come and feed my kids in argentina, like I love what you're doing. I was like what the fuck is going on here? And then people were like can we copy this, can we do it? And I just turned around and went yeah, just call it real jumper project.
Speaker 3:And then brighton or sheffield or south Korea or Israel, and after three years I had 126 projects in seven countries. Franchising it Social franchise, yeah. So we give them the concept, we give them the name, we show them how to do it, we empower them to go off and just get food waste. I wrote to the South Korean government asking permission? Could this cafe be set up using food waste?
Speaker 3:I had to go to all these different governments and different local authorities and different rules and different cultures. And you know, in some asian countries, volunteering isn't a thing, you know, especially in places like qatar, for example, where homelessness is illegal because if you're homeless you get given land and fucking house. You know they don't want to see people like. You know we've got in fucking leeds.
Speaker 3:I sprawled all over the floor and so I had to go and like, respect and understand cultures and go everything that you've been taught for the last thousand years. I'm just gonna throw it out the window and say again, this rebellious, this kind of like nature of me, going, I'm going to take food that you guys have deemed waste and I'm going to make you eat it and then pay whatever you want for it as well and create this circle economy concept, which circle economy wasn't even a thing back in 2012. You know it wasn't as well mentioned as it is now. So we were completely off the charts, radical, completely new in terms of what we were doing and we were doing it all in Harmley, which was mental.
Speaker 1:I mean, when you think about that, it is daft. That well, it's not daft, it's criminal, isn't it? All this food goes to waste and then wonky fruit and all that lot. And then I spoke to someone recently and their friend works at a name tesco, that probably john stuff to stop people getting out of skips.
Speaker 3:No, it's easy toilet blocks, coffee grains, everything. They will spoil the food because they don't want people going through it to feed, because they're worried about the repercussions. And most of the time in the last 10 years of doing this, most of the time it's the lawyers. The lawyers have stopped me from doing it. The lawyers have contacted me saying don't say this. I'm not allowed to mention kfc and nando's online because if I do mention them, the legal team come at me. So we've got to say on social media we've got mcnando's or fernando's chicken in our dead frozen birds in our freezer because they they won't allow us.
Speaker 3:Because when you go to these restaurants and you associate their food with you know, half a chicken and all the sides that come with it, the way that we get it is a frozen, packaged, you know cooked product, which isn't what they get. So it technically isn't what their brand like. So there's like brand recognition, brand values, but it's the lawyers that determine all this. So I'm constantly, constantly battling with lawyers because they don't want the comeback, they don't want to see homeless people going through tesco's bins. Yeah, it's not Tesco's, it's the fucking lawyers that are saying we don't want your brand associated with homeless people eating your food because somebody will take a picture of it on social media. It goes viral and it devalues your brand, and that's all it boils down to. That's mad.
Speaker 1:I thought Seb were going to explode. Then Baffles me.
Speaker 3:And rightly so. Why does it baffle you? Can I ask you honestly, why does it baffle you From a humanistic point of view? What upsets you most about that?
Speaker 2:Because we're all humans in this world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, apart from animals.
Speaker 2:Apart from animals, but you know, everyone's the same. Why would someone be better than someone else? Absolutely. Being a lawyer, absolutely.
Speaker 3:It's pure profit, mate. That's all it's about. Everything in this world is down to profit. You think children go to school hungry because Money and greed that's all it is. They can make a decision tomorrow that can change all the laws in schools and they can make free school meals for every single child, so every single child gets a meal. But they don't. Because it's politics. It's just all down to what we do is all down to profit.
Speaker 3:I have food in my warehouse right now which is costing you as a consumer more than you've ever paid in your life. So, for example, a very well-known butter, for example, that was costing eight, nine quid a tub. During covid times we had pallets of it in my warehouse going to waste, so people were coming and going on a minute. I'm paying nine quid at supermarkets for this stuff and you guys have got it here for nothing. You're giving it away Because what they do is in this country is they overmake. Well, we overmake across the world. It's 6,000 calories per person per day is made on this planet, which is three times more than any human being can eat. Half of it goes to animal feed. The rest of it goes to biofuel. The rest of that goes to. So it comes down to about six of all the 6,000 calories a day actually makes it to human beings. And then a billion people on the planet don't get access to food, so it's completely like there's more than enough to feed absolutely everybody.
Speaker 3:And then it comes down to the fact that, because of capitalism, what will happen is they'll put the price up. They'll say, oh, it costs nine quid for a pack of butter. They're wasting it, so they need somebody to pay for that waste cost, which I know there's places in Leeds right now that are incinerating and burning food all the time pallets and pallets of it. And then you stand in a supermarket and go oh, this pack of butter costs nine quid. Oh, it's war in Ukraine. Oh, it's cost of living crisis and all these things that you can't control or do anything about. But you don't realise around the corner they're burning this shit or they're donating it to people like me Because it it value, because if they put all of that butter into the market and lowered the price, it devalues that brand. Yeah, so they keep it here and then waste loads of it.
Speaker 3:And then you pay for the waste. And then they give you some narrative and everyone comes to me oh, you're a conspiracy theorist for saying I'll say, like, do you want me to show you pictures and videos of places that I've been where they're burning this shit? I've got it all because I I go there and they tell me not to film, and I fucking film it and I see it. It's in my warehouse right now and I've got it in my bag right now, like broccoli and kale that I, you know, I brought for for mark as a gift, because I know it's vegan but it's fresher than anything you can ever find in the supermarkets.
Speaker 3:And these guys are just incinerating the shit out of it and keeping the prices where they need them and then creating a narrative so that you've got no control over what happens. So it's nothing to do with anything that you thought of. Then the humanistic part of what you said out the window, because it's down to pure profit. That's all it boils down to and it's scary, really scary them, them kind of people must not have hearts.
Speaker 3:There's one percent of them, we know it is I could name you right now the elon musks of the world. You think they think they give a shit, like it's the one percent mate. It's as simple as that and it's scary. The sainsbury's family, for example. One of them we know how much power they have in the world of retail there's a family that are lords. They own estates and property. They don't want poor people going in and buying food cheap. They want middle-class people going in and paying over the odds for food, and then you'll just keep doing it and then we're in a cost-of-living crisis supposedly, which I don't believe exists.
Speaker 3:There's a war in Ukraine, which, again, you know, has an impact on the world, but it really doesn't have an impact on what goes on in Leeds, but they say it does. You think that any of this stuff here is actually, you know, affecting us or we've got any control over it whatsoever? There's nothing we can do about it, you know. So these are all materialistic things that we know about in the media, but they use it as a narrative to control prices and it's just a market mate. It's just pure capitalism.
Speaker 1:It's sickening yeah, I mean cost of living crisis and bloody. Tesco's profits went up by a billion or something.
Speaker 3:Explain to me how, in a cost of living crisis, supermarkets are making record profits year on year, every year. They've got to make year on year record profits. How is that even fundamentally possible? Because they're just exploiters. It's as simple as that. They're retailers' exploiters and everyone says, oh, it's a conspiracy, oh, you know, you don't really talk about it. I was like, well, I've got pictures on my phone. I can show you a picture right now of a yard in Leeds, completely covered in a very well-known drinks brand which is known across the world, and they destroy 26 pallets of their drink every four hours because they make too much of it and they can afford to just send 26 pallets to be incinerated just in.
Speaker 1:Leeds, is that drink probably better off incinerated than ingested.
Speaker 3:It's probably better good in a toilet. Yeah, I know which one you're talking about A very good toilet cleaner.
Speaker 1:I've got this thing in my head and it's recently because of Children in Need, basically Children in Need, people putting money in it. It's a sign that society's I've got a story. Yeah, it's a sign that society's ghosting it when we've got to have charities looking after kids in my hair day I got invited by children in need comic relief.
Speaker 3:Sorry, comic relief I've seen this one to go down to hertfordshire and I was in my hair day when I was all the media. I was like, yeah, I'll just fucking grab anything and go down and do it. And I went down to this place, this airport hangar, where they were doing a world record attempt of the longest line of cupcakes. And I went down there and they were like, yeah, we're going to interview about how cool this is and we've got the WI and local schools and all these people to make the world record longest line of cupcakes. So there's an airport hangar, there's loads, know, you can see there's like groups of people have done certain things. So I'm stood behind this barrier, bbc Hertfordshire. There they get me down. Everyone's like, oh, adam Smith's here. You know the guy from Real Jump Free Project, et cetera. You know we'll get him to one side, we'll do an interview with him. He'll say how amazing this is. I'm stood there with my fucking autistic head on going. This is wrong. Like all these people have spent all their time cooking all these flour and eggs and sugar in their ovens and these guys are just lining this up and at to take them away. And if I didn't take them away it was going in a skip. And this was for children. It was for children in need, and behind this barrier there must have been about 50 to 100 kids with Pudsey Bear, because children need Pudsey Bear, whichever one it is. And Pudsey Bear is there and I'm still there going. There's something fundamentally fucked up here, because they're raising money for children in need stood right next to me in front of food which could have been fed to these kids.
Speaker 3:So I said it to this fucking journalist and she came over with this little microphone. I was like I've just got a pre-recording to do with you checking you know things. I'm gonna ask you a few questions. And she just asked me a few random questions and I just went this is fucking wrong. Like I don't know why the fuck you've invited me down here, because I see everything here in a black and white way and it's. And she's like I've just got to speak to somebody. And she came back and she went they're not going to interview you, but you can still have all the cupcakes. And I was like why are they not going to interview me? She said that they're a bit worried about what you're going to say on camera live, because we're going live. I was like so why the fuck did you get me down here? What did you think I was going to say? Like this is great, well done for fucking throwing away all these a film. He came. I'm really, really sorry. We just didn't have enough time so we didn't we didn't interview you, but you know, really thank you for coming down, but you can still have everything.
Speaker 3:And I brought down this shitty little van that I had and I thought there's no way I know if I'm gonna get all these cupcakes in my van and how am I gonna get them in my van, like stack them up, like they're all just cupcakes on the floor literally. So I turned around and I said to these kids I went, kids who wants cupcakes? Loud, move the barrier. And these cooking kids just went wild off of this able hanger and there were kids stuffing them up with jumpers and they had cardboard boxes and they're filling them up and there's kids walking out like there's more cupcakes than you can imagine. And all the TV execs and pudsy bears just stood there going what the fuck has he just done? And they're moving cameras out of the way and stuff going. No, no, no. This isn't part of us. I don't know who's done this. Nobody didn't know what I'd done.
Speaker 3:And then the girl came up to me and I was like I'll fill my van up, it's fine. But these kids were coming up to me with boxes filling cupcakes up, so I was just putting the box in my van I mean my van, there's a picture of it a long going to say. She said I wanted you to say it, but you know we were really worried. She said you don't want to know what they're doing next? And I was like what they're doing next? She said they're building the largest structure out of cake and then they're going to demolish it as part of, like, raising money for kids in need.
Speaker 3:I was like what the fuck is wrong with people in this country, like they just don't connect the two together. Yeah, yeah, you know. Like I said, I've got a friend who lives in qatar. When the covid was happening, there was one registered charity in the whole of qatar and it was run by the state of qatar, because they're deeply embarrassed about charity. You know, in this country you fucking fall over. And there's a charity, do you know? I mean, there's a charity for everything in this country and there's millions of charities doing the same thing and you're thinking is anyone actually doing anything for the problem, or is this just charities that need to run? And you know, I'm really really against charities. I'm very vocal about it because I believe that we don't actually tackle the root cause of problems in this country. We just create charities and then we skirt around the edges.
Speaker 2:The CEO of charities usually get paid an expulsion amount of money More than a Prime Minister.
Speaker 3:Every major charity in the UK is paid more. How is that right? And you're encouraged. You see a homeless guy in Leeds and you get charities that come up to you and go don't give your money to a homeless guy. Give it to a charity and they'll help. I was like why can't I give my? I'd rather give my money to this guy, knowing that he's either going to go buy drugs, keep himself warm, get pissed and fucking have a, and probably a penny out of the pound is going to make it to him at some point. But you've got running costs, overheads, expenses, salaries, your business rates everything to cover before this guy even gets a look in. It doesn't make any sense to me.
Speaker 3:At one point in 2012, there was 14 registered homeless people in Leeds. The Leeds City Council came out We've only got 14 homeless people in Leeds. The rest of them are like rough sleepers and couch surfers and all this stuff. So there were 14 registered people that didn't have a fixed permanent abode and there were 15 registered charities at that time and I went to do a deposition at the council and straight away I said someone explain to me why there's more charities than homeless people dealing with homelessness in leeds and every single one of them was like didn't say a thing, just complete silence. I was like, exactly, you know exactly what I'm getting at. So, yeah, I have a big issue with it. That's why I don't do charity. I'm not a charity, I set up as a social enterprise. So I mean I can try and tackle the problem, but we're not going to solve this problem because far too much people make far too much money out of it.
Speaker 3:We're not allowed to solve this problem. We're not allowed absolutely not allowed to solve this problem because we can. We can do it tomorrow. Mate, somebody can make a decision quite easily. I met jeremy cor in 2017 and said to him about food waste. He turned around to me and said food waste isn't on the political agenda. He just turned around to me and said it's not on the agenda, so no one's ever going to tackle it. No one's ever going to face it. For me, it's one of the fundamental issues of what's happening to us as a global climate. We produce too much food.
Speaker 1:We waste too much food and doing now with Surplus to Purpose and what we spoke about earlier which fits in? I mean, this podcast is not all to fit in with my thoughts, it's only seven, but we spoke about how many meals and how much fruit and veg you deliver to colleges and universities. So if you could just tell the listeners how many pieces of fruit and veggies I mean we've just filmed today with a college that we delivered to.
Speaker 3:So I met with one of the senior managers at Luminate Education, which oversees Leeds City College and Kefley College and quite a few other campuses across West Yorkshire, and he said to me he wanted to change the behaviours of students in college to have their go-to snack of being fruit and veg when they leave college. So to try to integrate fresh fruit and veg into their diets. But also change their behaviors away from fast foods and crap food into instinctively going to have fresh food in in further on in life. And the way that I wanted to do that was simply by offering them free fruit and vegetables and for the two years of their college life whilst they were at the leeds city college. So, yeah, got together, said yep, I'll do it. So I deliver 20 000 pieces of fruit and veg twice a week for free to leeds city college. I mean I've got pictures today to show you, but you know we built them today with the college because they came to film with us. So the actual guy who I met, graham, he came today to build the crates of fruit and veg. They get delivered the next day and then the school at the, the campus at printworks delivers it to each different campus across west yorkshire and the fruit gets given to the students for free. So it's their go-to snack, so they can have whatever they want for free.
Speaker 3:And it's again it's to try to change their behavior, improve their well-being, improve their health, focus on waste, you know, make them feel like they're actually contributing back to a problem, rather than trying to force them to eat fruit. It's like if you eat this fruit, it stops it from going to waste. You're helping us, you know, to make them feel like they're part of something. And then all the vegetables. If they don't eat them for whatever reason, you know, if it's stuff like, you know, kale or broccoli or whatever things that need to be cooked, the campus cooks it and then offers it to the students for free. And the whole point of it is that, no matter what, they get access to free fruit and veg. And it's to change their mindset and their behavior towards fruit and veg, their relationship towards that, to try to move them away from crap food. And then, obviously, when they leave college, it's, you know, it's programmed into them that your go-to food is fruit and vegetables. To try, you know, to improve everything about, you know, mental health and well-being and general health and everything associated with that.
Speaker 3:So we started in september.
Speaker 3:We've been doing it every week since, twice a week, you know. Up to now it's been a roaring success to the point where now the school have come today and and filmed everything, because they want to capture the journey of all the fruit and veg coming into the warehouse and the the process of volunteers, quality control in it and all the crates of food that we get laid out. Tomorrow morning it's in the van with my driver, shiram, and he's gonna he's gonna deliver it, so they'll capture the other end of it and then it goes out to all the students and they're gonna capture all that and then get their actions from the kids of like, you know, what do you think about this? Do you understand why it's happening? Has it helped you know, etc. Etc. And then hopefully inspire every single college and secondary further education school across the uk to then take part in this, because I could probably feed every single child in this country with free fruit and vegetables that's going to waste and still have more food left over than you can imagine.
Speaker 1:That's just ridiculous, isn't it, when you try and put that at the scale of it. But also that you know. I suppose it's great that the colleges are getting involved in schools because of the education side of it. And again, I suppose this brings us sort of full circle to neurodivergence.
Speaker 3:That's possibly I'm not a scientist, scientist but possibly influenced by the crap options that are there for and temptations and these quick sugar hits yeah, because obviously, as somebody who's got autism, I have foods that I know trigger me and foods that I have relationships, good and bad, with. So pizza, you know, I could eat a pizza and then eat another piece. I was out in wax bar not long ago with my friend christian and we went down to sell a bar and got a piece and I'd already been and got a pizza just before and eat a pizza. And all the guys were like you've just been at the pizza. I was like, yeah, but I can just eat another one, like it doesn't affect me whatsoever. I could just constantly eat pizza. It's my go-to food. I'll get a vegan piece, obviously. I had a really nice mushroom pizza.
Speaker 3:They're not obviously trying to sell it to yeah, yes, but um that's celibate by the way, yeah, it's open on these things and I I have those foods and I know speaking to other people. So I have a lot of young adults that are autistic or neurodivergent that volunteer with me that I speak to him one of my guys, etty, you know he's schizophrenic and autistic and he volunteers, being volunteered for a year. Lovely, lovely man and his is kfc chicken. You can just eat it constantly. He never, ever stops eating it and, no matter what situation, that's his go-to food.
Speaker 3:So there is a real serious link with food, diet and neurodivergence and, like I said earlier, there's a lot of papers that are coming out in the last year or so that are linking neurodivergence with the development of the gut in the womb, which then obviously they reckon that the gut is formed before the brain and then the gut links to the brain and if there's trauma, the brain then protects the gut and usually when that happens it forms things like allergies or neurodivergence and diets related to neurodivergence.
Speaker 3:It's really, really interesting. I love all that kind of stuff because I'm into, obviously, food. So, yeah, I think that there's a lot of negative and positive relationships. So it's quite easy for people young people especially, that are on that spectrum, that are neurodivergent, to simply have a very negative relationship with certain types of food, where you know certain people can't have food touching on a plate, or certain people can eat certain color foods, or you know there's all these things that are materialized in the last couple of years around people's behavior to food. So not only are we fighting against the system, but we're also fighting against people's upbringings and stereotypes and everything that's associated with relationships with food and trying to encourage them to go. I know you've eaten a piece of your whole life with cheese, but can you eat this broccoli as well, please? Yeah, or this sweet potato.
Speaker 2:I was listening to something on the radio today and everyone is on about these ultra-possess foods and that we do need to change the mindset of the young people, because we're not breaking out the circle, but all we're doing is we're basically poisoning the young ones manipulating and controlling.
Speaker 1:Yes, control people with food, exactly so what we're doing is we're putting the emphasis on changing the mindset of the young people, but what we're doing is the supermarkets are poison. It's what's on the shelves, isn't it? It's a manipulative tool.
Speaker 2:We're doing it the other way around. We're changing the mindset.
Speaker 3:But it's not just supermarkets. I mean, we live in 2024. You can sit at home, download an app, press a button and food will arrive at your house. And there are stories online of kids doing this, where kids will use their parents' phone to order food, takeaways, pieces and get stuff delivered because they only associate themselves with the McDonald's of the world, the Deliveroo, the Just Eats, so kids are only associated with that food, so they crave that food, so they're literally able to then just order it. Do you think these apps and these hospitality industries and retailers care? They love it, they're loving this, they're absolutely loving it. A fucking child is doing this on a parent's phone.
Speaker 2:There's kids that don't even know what chicken're eating.
Speaker 3:It looks like something like from KFC. Yeah, Because it's the brand. They're associating it with the brand. They're associating it with the obviously the products that are coming with that food. So everything that's in those foods is designed to make that person feel full and then to want it again. So you know all these chemicals and you know e-numbers and stuff. All these are used in a manipulative way to make the brain crave and want that product again. And then you've got the branding which then is associated with it. So the kids see a, a golden m, see a golden m on an app press it are able to order food and get that craving.
Speaker 1:And and it's all about manipulative control and it's aimed at young people- yeah, we had this right at this, one of the first podcasts, didn't we with Dave? Dave Stacker was a nutritionist and saying you know, like you've heard of McDonald's, I got banned from McDonald's in 1988 for ranting about stuff like that. Good, walls were covered in milkshake. But you know, the big screens and all this like it's manipulating young people's brains, people's brains, boom, boom, boom.
Speaker 3:You know, press this, press this I've got a five-year-old girl and honestly, we're watching stuff with her, even stuff on disney. You're watching it and the adverts come and you're like, what fuck are they trying to advertise my daughter? You know, violence is one thing I mean, I know it's off topics, but you see it and you think, fuck me. I see it more as a parent now going why they're showing this. But the foods mate, and the manipulativeness like she watch we're watching some Disney and so on, netflix the other day and started doing adverts and they were watching the kids' programme. Every single thing that came on was kids' food, kids' toys and it was just constant. You know, bam, bam bam and it was like really overwhelming for her because she's obviously a neurodivergent like me. Bam, bam, brainwashing. You're brainwashing me. It's expertly, it is. There's no two ways about it.
Speaker 1:Of course there is Seb's going on a rant here. There's some making out.
Speaker 3:It's usually me, isn't it, but it's true and obviously, what does that kid then do? That kid then grows up, is manipulated by these extremities and that's all they know. So these kids are then going to university. I get kids coming from university as students coming down to do work placement, with me lunchbreaker, having like pot noodles. I was like, what the fuck are you eating here? It was like, oh you know, but I love pot noodles. Like you don't love pot noodles, you think you love pot noodles but you don't eat anything else, because this is all you've ever known.
Speaker 3:They can't cook, they don't understand about food. You know, I show them a sweet potato. Like what the fuck do I do with this? You know it's like do you know? I mean, that's, that's what's happening. So if you can control a whole demographic of people into believing and thinking in a way you want, you can charge them whatever you want and go down the profit route we talked about earlier. You can charge them whatever you want, make money out of them. It's just, they're just cash cows, it's easy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do think there's more people aware of it and people like yourself are bringing an awareness to it and by offering like fruit and veg, either like super discounted or for free, like you're doing there, I mean, that's got to be amazing work on it, really. Rather than people spending the money and getting this, getting out of this um easy, convenient reach for a yeah I don't know, I can't call it rte now ready to eat food?
Speaker 3:okay, you know that one day shelf life convenience where you've got like onions that are diced in a little packet, so you can just take the diced onions home because you don't have to cut them.
Speaker 3:It's called RTE food because you don't have the knife and can cut an onion, because you're not capable of doing that and you just spend 20 quid on a bag of diced onions and you can do just buying an onion for like 10 pence, or you can grow it in your garden, or you can grow it from seskos, because everything goes through as loose onions.
Speaker 1:That's one for rob hallister I.
Speaker 2:I get my quick fixes because I work in the. Apart from my nine-to-five job, I work in the hospitality industry and event work. Yeah, it's difficult and you need to get quick fixes because you don't have time to cook or anything. But as soon as I'm at home, the only thing that I do is I prep my food, I cook my food, do everything from scratch. How did you learn that? Grandma, mother passed it on. My dad and my mum always cooked, my grandma always cooked and I always loved home cooking. Yeah, but when I went to uni I didn't know anything because they never taught me. Yeah, that trigger was there, was it? The trigger was there. I was like I'm eating so much shit now.
Speaker 2:So you knew, and I was like I need to eat something properly yeah so I started, like you know, messing about and like following a few videos or getting a cookbook and like doing really simple things, and now basically all my meals are cooked from scratch. Yeah, absolutely, and I enjoy them so much more.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it's the best thing thing you know as well as I do like when you're on the going events and you're doing a 12, 14 hour shift and you're doing a double or a back to back, or you're doing an overnight shift and you're flat out at one two o'clock in the morning, you stop and you think I've not fucking eaten yet. What do you do? Because you go into leeds and it's just shit after shit, shit. So I used to get it all the time. You know the bad guys. I'd finish work like the guys at mojo's and stuff at workplace. I'd be shit everyday pieces, kebabs, burgers, because there's just nothing else. So then the industry manipulates that market as well. Because there's nothing for you to do. You can't go get a salad, you can't get something healthy. I mean, you can barely eat vegan food after 6 o'clock in Leeds. There's very few places like you had Thai food, but you don't need to be just eating Thai food all the time. But it's very, very hard for you to to go and eat something healthy.
Speaker 3:I badge cook and that's the way forward.
Speaker 2:I put it in the freezer. That's the way forward if I'm hungry. Exactly, I've got something there.
Speaker 3:You've seen it all these things, but like it's just like cheaper, more cost effective for you and you're eating good food and you're making sure you're getting nutritious food into.
Speaker 1:I'm like I'm a women food food Nazi yeah. Yeah, yeah but it is. It's about you know if you want to eat healthy. There were a clip on recently about someone in America were talking to Congress or something and he said if that's a healthy food section, what is all the rest of the shit in your supermarket? Exactly, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3:I saw that picture. I've seen that picture as well. Yeah, Life's such a bitch as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in fact I was talking at Springwell Academy yesterday. I did, you know, because they go back to that five pillars of mental health and nutrition's one of them, and they were saying, well, what do you eat? And I went well, I'm not going to tell you totally what I eat, because people do have this stigma about a plant-based or a vegan diet.
Speaker 2:But if you pick something up in a pick a packet up, and you can't read, you can't pronounce it, and surely it's not a food well, they always say like if you pick something up and if you, if you don't have it in your, kitchen.
Speaker 3:Basically, well, if it's got an advert, don't buy it. Yeah, simple as that. How many adverts do you see for apples, carrots?
Speaker 1:broccoli, exactly.
Speaker 3:I bet you'd all be subsidized not the thing to relate to is really, really quickly, is obviously that encompasses all this. For me is alcohol. You know I'm 40 next year. I know I've got a lot of friends similar age to me and I see the destruction of of alcohol and how, how dependent so many people are on alcohol. You know in the industry that we've all worked in. We know exactly the effects it has. I was part of that model. I've gone times where I completely total.
Speaker 3:I have a drink now, but I feel like I'm in control of it so I can stop if I want to stop and I can have one if I want to have one and I can go without for a long time if I can't. I see people who are completely teetotal that will count their days and I'm like it's still controlling you. You're like you're still aware of, it's still manipulating everything that you do because you it's so you've got a tight grip over you. But I see the volunteers that'll come in and they'll go. Oh, I'm feeling a bit puffy today, I'm feeling a bit down and I'm like well, what have you had? And they're like oh, you know, I'm plant-based and stuff like I was like did you have any thing to drink last night. They're like I had a couple of glasses of wine. You know it's absolutely fine. I was like your body. You look fucked, like you know your, your face is a mess, your body's inflamed. This country and I see so many people's lives destroyed.
Speaker 2:Not just this country, I think in the whole Western society Globally.
Speaker 3:So we talk about food, but alcohol definitely, and it doesn't even need to advertise it. You probably see deals in supermarkets. You might see whiskey being advertised, but alcohol doesn't need to be advertised the same way as food. And yet we're so controlled and manipulated by it. It's unbelievable. And and yet we're so controlled and manipulated by it. It's unbelievable and I've seen it. I've seen it.
Speaker 3:I've seen everything about it, what it does, how it's destructive, and I see it in people like my age and I'll be like you know people will do things at work because obviously with autism, I can't guess people's emotions or ages. I'm fucking terrible at it and I just shit. Even the police today and I went. He had a red jacket on. I was like did his face look like the other beard? I was like I don't fucking know. I don't process faces, I'm shit at it.
Speaker 3:But we have a joke at work about guessing how old some volunteers are. I've got a volunteer that's 75 years old and I was like I think you're in your 50s or 60s or something. And she's like I'm 75, adam. I was like I would never have, whereas somebody my age who does drink and are looking like fucking 50, 60 years old, because it just ages and fucking kills you. So I see the destruction of it and I just see.
Speaker 3:Now I feel like, because I've been through that journey and because I'm in such control of my own body and my own thoughts now, because of the person I'm becoming or I'm trying to become, I see I see alcohol as probably one of the most destructive things you know and I'm terrified of my son starting to drink. I've even talked to him about it and he's only 11 years old, thinking fucking hell. The things that I was doing at 11 with drink, you know, and the demons that I had at the time and what it was doing to me. It's scary. But then obviously, food is probably just as toxic and just as manipulative, especially the sugars and the high processed foods. And then add the alcohol into that as well. You know people are going home eating a piece and having a beer. Fuck, it's no wonder we're all sick.
Speaker 1:Yes, exactly, it's been pretty cool hasn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel like we could talk forever. We could and we would still not put the world right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, but we are trying. I reckon we know the answers though.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that's the thing you know. You look at. I mean, I'm inspired by people like greta tunberg, for example, and people like what she does. I think she's an amazing human being. She's also near a divergent name, you know. She said we've for years now, we, everyone knows the answers, we know what's supposed to do, but we're not going to do it until 2035 or 2050, because we've set these fucking bullshit net zero targets and you're going, but we're fucked now. Yeah, like there are record temperatures, sea rising levels, there are floods happening in places that just shouldn't be happening. There's fires happening in places that shouldn't be happening. The Amazon's on fire. This place is fucking on drought. This place is flooded. Spain just got fucking wiped out from here.
Speaker 2:But don't worry, elon Musk is still going to build a rocket and we're going to go to Mars and then destruct that planet. It's insane, isn't it? It's insane, isn't it.
Speaker 3:It's insane, isn't it? It's just insane.
Speaker 1:But, like I said, we know the answers. Yeah, we know the answers. But, to be fair, Adam, while there's people like yourselves, yourself, making movements to change all this, this is where it's going to start, isn't it? And it has to, because people at the top are not interested, because they're all either being paid or they're all earning money through it here's a little thing.
Speaker 3:At the end then a little snippet is you know, elon musk could have all the money in the world, but can he boil an egg? I mean shit, it's the fan. And we're fucked as a, as a race, because we've just destroyed the planet in half. I think the people that can probably survive you know, you know as well as I do it's the things that you do those that probably can go back to prehistoric traits, are probably going to be the ones that lead us on into the future than the ones that have got the billions in the bank Because they're fucked. What are they going to do? Go hire somebody to cook for them.
Speaker 2:There's no one left, you know what I mean, and money won't mean anything.
Speaker 3:Money is completely invaluable and irrelevant and, yeah, it will become those that have those skills. And that's why I believe that in educating people about those skills and really, you know, I'm not going to stop food waste, I'm not going to change the world but I might be able to inspire somebody, I might be able to empower somebody, I might be able to give them some skill sets so that, when shit does it to find my kid, my grandkids you know, their kids, whatever they'll have the skills to be able to survive. Because I think that's what we're where we're headed, because I have seen things that will bring you to tears. I've seen how fucked this world is and all this narrative that comes out about sustainability and net zero and how good things are. There is some really, really fucked up things on this planet. I've seen graveyards with cars in it. I've seen things being destroyed en masse and you're thinking people don't know about this and they're all cozy and going around going.
Speaker 3:Well, just, you know, boil a little bit of water in my kettle to try and save the planet. Fucking. I boil fucking full kettles of water for one cup of tea. Who gives a fuck like? These guys are burning shit left, right and center. They're gonna fuck whatsoever. Your little fucking thing at home isn't having any impact on the world, I promise you right now. So, yeah, I feel like my role is to kind of empower that next generation and teach them the skills to survive, because that's what's effectively it's going to pull down to yeah, and also, I think this big thing you're doing with the colleges and schools with a fruit and veg, that's's got to be good, hasn't it?
Speaker 1:And if the students start to realise that they're getting an option of some fruit and foods of different colours and different nutrients, rather than reaching for that ready-to-eat and having that and then maybe feeling shit after it, it's the choice, isn't?
Speaker 3:it, it's the choice. Yeah, if you don't have a choice because all you know is shit food, then you're just going to eat and having that and then maybe having feeling shit after it. Because it's the choice, isn't it? It's the choices. You don't have a choice because all you know is shit food, then you're just going to eat shit food, but you understand the difference between shit food and good food and you can make a choice. Some people will make the right choice. They might not always make the right choice, but they'll have a choice. Yeah, at the moment there's a generation of people growing up that don't have a choice. Yeah, it boils down to that.
Speaker 1:it's as simple as that. Is it a choice without opening another, without opening another? What's it called Another Pandora's box? Is it a choice between shit food and food, or is it a choice between food and shit? It's not food.
Speaker 3:I mean, we mentioned McDonald's. Mcdonald's once offered me a little bit of surplus and I turned around to them and said I intercept surplus food. And they said, yeah, we're offering you this. And they said, yeah, we're offering you this. I said, yeah, that's not food. And the guy laughed at me. Some guy in some branding team was laughing at me. I was like I'm not joking, Like this is what you serve to people, is not food. So therefore, I'm not intercepting food, I'm intercepting whatever chemical shitstorm you guys have created in a teacup and then you're trying to give it to me.
Speaker 1:I'm not with you there right on that note. So thank you for coming in, adam, and being so open and talking about, obviously, your own background, your neurodivergence, your mental health, how this can I mean it's a victory, isn't it for yourself, if you want to see it as a victory, from where you were to where you are and that's journey of self discovery. So I hope this inspires, I think it's a victory to yourself, I from where you were to where you are and that's the journey of self-discovery.
Speaker 2:So I hope this inspires you. I think it's a victory to itself. I think it's a victory for everyone. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 3:I don't say that because obviously I'm very headstrong in terms of what I do. Sometimes I do take a step back and think, fucking hell, I fed 25 million people across the world with waste. It's pretty fucking cool, ain't not many people that can say that. So you know, I'm on my deathbed, I can turn around to my son and say I tried, and my daughter obviously.
Speaker 1:And it won't be a deathbed through shit food, no, or alcohol. Oh, that's it Right. Thank you very much, adam. Thanks, adam Cheers. Thank you. Then you can go to buy us a coffee, or you can click that on our website, whitefoxtalkingcom and look for the little cup. Thank you.
