I did not grow up in deprived famine conditions, but not well off either. But for whatever reason when I see people blithely or intentionally wasting edible food it disgusts me.
I’m talking about stuff like someone ordering a whole pizza to share among two people, eating two slices and then throwing the rest in the trash can instead of taking it home.
Or pouring a large glass of milk, deciding they only wanted a sip or two and dumping the rest down the drain instead of putting it in the fridge.
Having a wedding with catering, with leftovers and instead of asking the guests to take some home just says eh and throws thirty pounds of chicken in the trash etc.
I don’t know why this bothers me so much, but goddamn it does! You know how some old people are just DISGUSTED by gay marriage or interracial marriage, well that is how I feel about wasting food!
Finishing every last grain of rice or pea on a plate doesn’t bother me so much, but it did occur to me one day while tossing a package of raw chicken breasts that I had left in the fridge too long allowing it to go bad before cooking that I was saying to those living animals, your mother popped your egg out, warmed you until you hatched, you lived probably a caged not so pleasant life, and were slaughtered… For no reason. Until that day, it had not really hit me how every 2 boneless skinless chicken breasts = 1 life. Now I’m far more aware of expiration dates.
I used to lean towards the ‘sin’ end of the opinion scale until municipal composting systems became common around here. Now I know the food will be reused instead of being incinerated or trapped in a landfill, cut off from the nutrition cycle. Now I think that wasting food just inefficient to ostentatiously tacky, depending on circumstances. Still shouldn’t be done, of course.
Agreement. It’s a “secular sin.” I hate how much food is wasted in the U.S. I hate how much food is lost in the processing phase. I hate seeing people at restaurants leave behind entire meals worth of scraps on their plates, all to go into the dumpster in the alley out back. It strikes me as callous and extraordinarily unwise.
Robert Heinlein said that the first law of the universe is, “Thou shalt not waste.”
Cannot think of the last time I saw something like this. We eat out quite a bit, take doggie bags home from the restaurants and notice plenty of other people doing the same. Course don’t have any way of knowing whether they actually eat the contents when they get home but I assure you we do.
I for certain have not been at a pizza place, whether getting one to take home or eating there, and seen 2 slices eaten out of a whole pizza with the remainder being trashed. I have literally never seen this, that I can recall.
Don’t go to weddings so don’t have anything to relate there. I don’t drink much milk but I do drink what I pour, generally speaking. OP, where would you have occasion to see what you describe in that scenario other than at your own home? And couldn’t you exercise some sort of control in that case?
I do agree with Trinopus that a lot of food is wasted in the US. Seems to me that this is due more to expired foodstuffs at grocers and perhaps food that has sat too long at fast food establishments, for example. Also, I know a lot of vegetables and fruits (for example) get tossed because of slight, often cosmetic imperfections. I used to own a small donut shop. Speaking from that experience, it can be difficult to judge how much to make on a day-to-day basis. In my case, leftovers generally went to friends, elderly people we knew or homeless shelters.
Wasting food, or seeing it wasted, does make me feel pretty bad, though. I think it’s bordering on thoughtlessly disgusting to waste large quantities of meat (especially from smaller animals like chickens) because it’s one thing to kill to eat, but it’s another to kill to cook and throw away.
*Excepting everything I long to do, no matter when, or where, or who.
It was a sin if your parents had been Depression-era babies. Kids still get hit by their parents, usually for violence against a sibling, property destruction or verbal insubordination. But it was more common years ago for food-wasting to be in that catagory of the criminal kid code.
OT: for their generation, the “children are starving” were from still holdovers from the Armenian Genocide. In the 60’s we had the Chinese from Mao’s Great Leap Forward. Of course the 80’s brought the specter of starving Ethiopians to the dinner table.
You consider wasting food a moral outrage, which is succinctly conveyed in the word “sin.” No need to apologize.
I agree, and it bothers me that my wife won’t eat leftovers - or even save them. She thinks the leftovers are a means to transmit salmonella/e. coli/anthrax/whatever, and has essentially declared them “unhealthy.”
I was a picky eater as a child. I’m better now. When my picky appetite showed up as a kid, my mom would play the “Children are starving in Europe” card to guilt me to eat. I was 17 when that stopped. I remember it well.
I’ve never cared for peas. Oh, I’ll eat them if they’re in a stew, soup, or casserole, but never if they’re split and made into a soup or just in a pile on my plate. And after 17 years, my mother knew that. Or should have. But no, she had to not only serve peas as a veggie side, but tried to guilt me into eating them with those poor starving Europeans.
So I stormed off into my bedroom to get an envelope, wrote “To The Staving Children In Europe” on it, stormed back to the dining room, spooned the offending peas from my plate into the envelope, sealed the envelope, slapped the pea filled envelope on the table, and told my mother “Here. Mail it to them!”
A long 5 seconds of silence followed. It could have gone either way. Then mom broke into hysterical laughter. I guess she spread the story around, because not long after that, at a family dinner at my aunt’s, the aunt asked me if I’d like some peas. I asked her if she knew the postage to Europe. Laughter ensued.
I have seen, in a number of third world countries, restaurants that carefully save food left on plates, and distribute it after hours to hungry people who wait for it out the back door. In some cases, the dining patrons know this, and intentionally order too much, knowing that they are contributing to the hungry. In the USA, this could literally be illegal, and a restaurant could, in some jurisdictions, be prosecuted for it, or at least have their food service license withdrawn.
I ate in a restaurant in rural China, where they slaughtered their own hogs for the menu, and the hogs were fed whatever had gone beyond what a human would eat, as well as the shit from the public toilets. Nothing is wasted in China. Nothing.
