The Real Junk Food project operate a pay-as-you-feel system, which as well as making it more inviting to try their produce means that they can also help the homeless or those who can’t afford an expensive meal out.

So do people mind less about eating supposedly waste produce? With more of a social conscience around food developing, we’ve become more open to different styles of cuisine, but we're also starting to get more touch with how food is produced.

Rubies in the Rubble have recently rebranded, updating the products’ packaging, and Director Alicia Lawson tells stylist.co.uk that “when we started [in 2011] we had to make use of the fact that our name is a metaphor for what we do. Now we’re free to use puns around the waste element of our food, we’re not shy of the associations.”

Companies like Rubies in the Rubble and The Real Junk Food Project prove that it’s not only possible, but practical to save food from going entirely to waste. With a rise in the idea of independent, seasonal cooking, reducing food waste goes hand-in-hand with today’s foodie trends. And that’s not to say it can’t be gourmet and exciting, as Duck and Waffle’s Urban Decay menu beautifully illustrates.

For now, the trend is thriving: Rubies in the Rubble are ready to launch a new range, the Real Junk Food Project is approaching fifty locations of established cafés and pop-ups around the world.

Yet more similar projects are beginning too, from Silo, the Brighton-based zero waste café, to zero waste pop-up Tiny Leaf which opened in Notting Hill earlier this year and is now looking for new locations.

We, for one, can't wait to embrace this audacious new culinary revolution.

Waste not, want more: why leftovers are blazing a trail to a new foodie trend