SCIENTISTS are using their loaf to cut down on landfill... by developing bread made from cauliflower.

Every year, tonnes of food scraps, including cauliflower and broccoli leaves, orange pulp and fruit peel, are dumped as landfill.

Experts at Manchester Metropolitan University have been looking to find ways that food waste - often the by-products of processing - can be used.

And now they have found a way of using cauliflower leaves in bread-making, increasing the amount of fibre in the loaf... and reducing landfill.

"People tend to buy the florets of a cauliflower rather than the leaves," said Prof Paul Ainsworth, who has led the research. "We could be eating them, but we don't. So what we have been doing is using the leaves to add fibre to bread."

Dried

Prof Ainsworth and his team dried the leaves before milling them with the flour.

They found that up to 15 per cent of the mixture can be cauliflower leaves before there is any impact on taste.

Although they don't believe there is an instant market for the bread, they say it could become popular in the future, as the cost of disposing of food waste increases.

The research team has looked at using the by-products of lager brewing to help make bread, as well as ways to develop red cabbage as a dried snack.

Previously, Prof Ainsworth and his team have created crisp-like healthy snacks from fruit skins and vegetables.

It has aroused the interest of snack manufacturers, but has not yet made it to the supermarket shelf.