Eve, here. I’m sure most of you are careful to avoid wasting your personal food, but in this post, we’ve explained how items that are frequently thrown into meal preparation can be used in recipes. And it’s smart to put restaurants, which often just throw in a lot of ingredients, at the forefront of this practice. Here, restaurants have the potential to serve as training centers, disseminate optimal culinary philosophies, help form communities, as well as improve the visibility and popularity of these restaurants on a day-to-day level.
However, approaches like the one below assume you have time to cook rather than minimal meal preparation. Time poverty is a big reason why Americans eat so much fast food. In other words, this type of training is extremely valuable from both a budget and planetary health perspective…for those who are in a position to take advantage of it.
Luis Alexis Rodriguez-Cruz is a social scientist and author covering food, environment, science, and politics. Luis Alexis cooks every Sunday and publishes the newsletter La Fiambrera, where he writes about social, cultural, and scientific topics related to Puerto Rico’s food system. His byline has appeared in NextCity and El Nuevo Día, among others, and his research has been published in several scientific journals. First published: Yale Climate Connections
Adéli Llanos arrived at the Virgen del Rosario Community Kitchen in Lima, Peru, as the soft summer morning light still filtered through the space. She and the other cooks began cleaning the facility before preparing the lunch menu.
That day, she helped cook rocro de zaparro (a traditional dish made with vegetables such as pumpkin) with fried eggs and house soup, using techniques learned in training sessions that have helped reduce the amount of food thrown away as waste.
This training session is sponsored by an organization called CCORI (pronounced “hori”). The organization CCORI (pronounced “hori”) is derived from the Quechua word for “gold” and reflects the organization’s view of food as valuable in all its dimensions.
Founded by engineer Aniel San Miguel and research chef Palmiro Ocampo, CCORI promotes food sustainability through optimal cooking. Optimal cooking is a methodology that trains people in cooking techniques that allow them to preserve, recycle, and add value to every part of their food.
For example, the training will emphasize the nutritional value of the peels of citrus fruits such as lemons, tangerines, and oranges and how they are processed and used in various dishes.
“I was surprised to realize how much we were wasting. It’s exciting to see that every product we buy at the market, from the seeds to the pulp to the skin, is useful,” Llanos said, speaking in Spanish like everyone interviewed for this article.
While Peru is a source of incredible food biodiversity, it is also the most food insecure country in Latin America, with more than 50% of organic waste, including food, being discarded. Globally, it is estimated that almost one-third of food ends up in the trash.
The decomposition of food contributes to methane emissions, which warms the atmosphere and causes climate change. Food waste occurs throughout the supply chain, but the kitchen is one place where individual action can help.
Adéli Llanos teaches cooking classes. (Image credit: Adeli Llanos)
In community kitchens working with CCORI, the word “waste” is no longer used to describe food. They are doing everything possible to alleviate this problem while also helping to feed the community.
“Creating more food with less was what we were looking for, and this training really helped us use the product 100%,” said Llanos, who is also a workshop facilitator for CCORI.
She said she’s gotten positive feedback from diners when she uses vegetable peels to make salads and fruit peels (a part of the food she didn’t use before) to make drinks.
“I’m proud of what we do and what we teach,” said Anita Clemente, a cook at La Amistad Community Kitchen and leader of the training sessions. “I’m really excited to come forward and share my knowledge. I’ve never been a public speaking person before.”
The two women are being trained through CCORI’s Cocinas Bondadosas (Kind Kitchens) program, which has already trained more than 300 women in more than 20 community kitchens in Lima. Through the sharing of cooking techniques, ancestral gastronomic knowledge and scientific knowledge, CCORI has succeeded in reducing food waste in kitchens, which are most often located at the end of the supply chain.
Whole Foods Value
CCORI’s Cocina Óptima Menu (Image courtesy of Luis Alexis Rodríguez Cruz) During a visit to Lima in the summer of 2025, I had lunch at the recently opened CCORI restaurant. I had a dish made with all parts of broccoli. It features crunchy leaves, a sea of green and textured florets and shoots topped with a creamy base made from the stems. Dishes that used preserved foods such as fruit seeds and vegetable peels that are used in other dishes were also delicious.
“The message we want to convey to people is that food has value in every part of it. That value is demonstrated by turning it into something delicious, because the mechanism needs to work to get the message across,” Palmiro Ocampo said. “Using all parts avoids waste generation because each part is an additional material and the product itself is a complete recipe that can be made from a single material.”
When he and the CCORI team went to La Amistad Community Kitchen to conduct the workshop, Clemente initially thought it would be a traditional recipe-based class.
“When they started explaining how they use food wrappers and how the nutrients that we were throwing away in the trash can actually nourish us and how we can use them, it was very impressive to me,” Clemente said. “Because when we go to the market and buy vegetables, they weigh everything. You pay for it, and you also peel it. And what do we do? We go to the kitchen, peel it, remove the seeds and skin, and throw them away. And what were we throwing away? Money.”
Many of the recipes and knowledge shared in these workshops are available in two Spanish recipe books published online.
The workshop helped participants recognize their role in the food system.
“In some cases, consumers have little influence over how they manage these things, but as the end consumer, what you can control is how you handle the food,” San Miguel says. “After all, this is one of the most important steps, because energy, land and water have already been used before the food reaches you. It is this final step that we must truly respect the food that comes into our hands.”
Strengthen support through knowledge exchange Cetworks
In addition to being a source of income, the restaurant also serves as a source of inspiration and learning for the CCORI team. New processes continue to be developed there and then introduced to other kitchens. However, this interaction is not one-way, as community kitchen cooks also travel to CCORI to give demonstrations and participate in training sessions with restaurant teams.
“I have a lot of respect for them,” Ocampo said. Before working full-time at CCORI, he built a career in Peru’s fine dining scene. “There’s a really beautiful dynamic that happens. For example, a chef at Le Cordon Bleu might meet Adéli Llanos, who has worked in various fine-dining restaurants and is now working at CCORI, and who has a lot of experience but knows things that she doesn’t know.”
space for change
CCORI restaurants are encouraging other restaurants in the city to take precautions to reduce the amount of food that goes to waste. Others join to collaborate and support the organization’s programs. In 2025, we also trained a team to create a similar program at restaurant Gustu in La Paz, Bolivia.
“The dream is that we won’t even have to call it the ‘optimal’ cuisine; there will be a paradigm shift,” Ocampo said.
