# Does wasting food strike you as a sin? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 9, 2014, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146 "2014-08-09T04:43:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2014, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146/21 "2014-08-09T16:27:38Z")
Yeah, I hate to see wasted food. Hate, hate, hate it!! Seems like a sin to me, and I’m an atheist! It’s just being unnecessarily lazy. There’s almost always something you can do with leftovers. ---
**Author:** ![Lorene89095](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a8b319/32.png) [@Lorene89095](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lorene89095)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2014, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146/22 "2014-08-09T16:37:00Z")
Yes,I hate to waste food. Something,whether it was a carrot or a calf,gave it’s life for me. Please excuse me,I have pork chops in the fridge… and Swiss Chard on the stove. ---
**Author:** ![zoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zoid/32/336_2.png) [@zoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zoid)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2014, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146/23 "2014-08-09T16:59:50Z")
I’m a bit obsessive about food, so yeah it bothers me. When my kids are old enough I take them to a local place that raises and slaughters chickens and we pick out that nights dinner while it’s walking around. They take it in back and kill/dress it and we take it home for dinner. I want my kids to appreciate where their food comes from. I don’t discourage eating meat but I do encourage being honest and knowledgeable about where it comes from. Perhaps if you see an animal walking around and then being slaughtered before you eat it you’ll be a little less casual about tossing it away carelessly. Those styrofoam trays of meat in the grocery store make it a little too easy to ignore the reality. Rant over - I’ll shut up now. ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2014, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146/24 "2014-08-09T17:51:25Z")
Nope, wasting food doesn’t strike me as a moral issue at all, although after reading this thread I can see why people might see it as one with regard to meat and seafood. But plant products? Seems to me that as long as you bought and paid for it, you can do whatever the heck you want with it, including throwing it away untouched. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2014, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146/25 "2014-08-09T18:43:38Z")
> [@Bozuit](#): > > 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. This, for me. I’m a vegetarian but do cook meat for others, and knowing that some animal suffered and died for no reason at all, and it was in your control, is really tough for me to deal with. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2014, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146/26 "2014-08-09T19:14:01Z")
FWIW, homeless people dumpster dive behind restaurants, so a lot of stuff that is thrown away does in fact, get eaten. It’s not an ideal set-up, and in fact, in the town where I used to live, some restaurants did participate in a food-share, where they would send stuff that had been cooked, but not served that day, and it would be packaged by volunteers into boxed meals, and refrigerated, and anyone could stop by and request a free boxed meal, no questions asked (samples of everything were taken and dated and labeled, so that if anyone ever reported getting sick, they could pull everything that contained something possibly tainted). That was food that had been prepared and not served, though. Stuff that was served and not eaten still got thrown away. But I don’t personally know anyone who doesn’t ask for to-go boxes. The military is a huge food waster, and they make sure homeless people don’t try to sneak on bases to dumpster dive by throwing everything down the disposals. I remember watching someone dump about 50 steaks down a disposal the first time I had KP. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2014, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146/27 "2014-08-09T19:33:49Z")
[But it’s the fad that’s sweeping the nation!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn4Frslsq8M) ---
**Author:** ![TheWillMckoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c57346/32.png) [@TheWillMckoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheWillMckoy)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2014, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146/28 "2014-08-09T19:44:44Z")
James 4:17 So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. Food for thought, no pun intended… ---
**Author:** ![hogarth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hogarth/32/1773_2.png) [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2014, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146/29 "2014-08-09T19:51:43Z")
> [@johnpost](#): > > La Tomatina is a bad thing. The idea used to strike me as wasteful, but eventually I came around to the opinion that wasting $X worth of food for a local festival is not really any different from spending $X on music for a local festival, for instance. ---
**Author:** ![iljitsch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/77aa72/32.png) [@iljitsch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iljitsch)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2014, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146/30 "2014-08-09T20:22:45Z")
Yeah, I don’t like it. But then, putting half a glass of milk back in the fridge also seems a bit ridiculous. And any place that serves freshly cooked food is going to have a problem with leftovers that can’t be saved/sold. But I would certainly start eating raw chicken around the “no leftovers” wife until she changes her ways. (Or I get really sick, but since I’m not 8 months or 80 years old that’s not going to happen.) However, I feel very strongly that the food wasting issue must be addressed by better planning in the future, not by eating leftover food that you don’t rally want to eat. The food is going to be turned into greenhouse gasses one way or the other, no need to unload a bunch of unneeded calories on your body and possibly mess up your satiation feedback mechanism. But what **really** gets me upset is parked cars idling. It pollutes the air, it’s noisy, it costs money… WHY DON’T PEOPLE TURN OFF THEIR ENGINE!? ---
**Author:** ![Timetrvlr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/53a042/32.png) [@Timetrvlr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Timetrvlr)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2014, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146/31 "2014-08-09T21:07:55Z")
OP posted: > [@](#): > > 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! I’m an old person(76) and I don’t have a problem with gays or mixed race marriage but I do hate waste, especially food. How can you have leftovers if you don’t refrigerate excess food? also agree with **iljitsch** : > [@](#): > > But what really gets me upset is parked cars idling. It pollutes the air, it’s noisy, it costs money… WHY DON’T PEOPLE TURN OFF THEIR ENGINE!? ---
**Author:** ![Bam\_Boo\_Gut](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8c91f0/32.png) [@Bam\_Boo\_Gut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bam_Boo_Gut)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2014, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146/32 "2014-08-10T03:06:19Z")
There’s an ad on TV driving me mad right now. The child is spilling over his milk by blowing bubbles to the amusement of a smaller child. The indulgent adult just uses more paper fucking towel to mop it up. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2014, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146/33 "2014-08-10T03:26:21Z")
> [@iljitsch](#): > > But what **really** gets me upset is parked cars idling. It pollutes the air, it’s noisy, it costs money… WHY DON’T PEOPLE TURN OFF THEIR ENGINE!? My car’s AC/Heat doesn’t work unless the engine is running. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2014, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146/34 "2014-08-10T03:44:46Z")
I’m one of those who hate to waste food. It’s for a lot of reasons, training from my family, and from times when money was so tight I was glad to be working a job that gave me a daily free meal. I recently got back from vacation. While traveling my mother and I ate at a recommended Mexican restaurant. The meals we ordered were great, but the portions were huge and we couldn’t finish. If we’d been home we certainly would have taken doggie bags home, but being on the trip we had no good way to keep it. I felt really bad, the food had been delicious. We made sure we told the waitress we had loved the meal, and why we had to leave so much. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2014, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146/35 "2014-08-10T03:51:32Z")
> [@Bam\_Boo\_Gut](#): > > There’s an ad on TV driving me mad right now. The child is spilling over his milk by blowing bubbles to the amusement of a smaller child. The indulgent adult just uses more paper fucking towel to mop it up. :smack: Yeah, wasting paper products is almost as bad. I never buy paper products – literallly never. Cloth towels in the kitchen, and backs of junkmail for computer paper and note pads… ---
**Author:** ![kambuckta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/53a042/32.png) [@kambuckta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kambuckta)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2014, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146/36 "2014-08-10T04:54:13Z")
> [@Ranger\_Jeff](#): > > 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. It was the _Biafrans_ when I was a kid. 😉 Whilst I don’t like wasting food, I view it as morally/ethically neutral. It’s most likely to arise out of a situation where I have been less-than-observant about the amount of food actually _needed_ for any specific meal: IOW, we’re all out at a restaurant and order a dish too many for the appetites of the diners, in which case we’ll call for a doggy-bag. Or I’ve gone mental\* cooking up huge casseroles and/or soups on a cold Sunday afternoon…and by Tuesday I’m sick of them so throw the leftovers to the chooks. \*I had four kids and miscellaneous hanger-onnerers during the kid’s teen years. It was the norm to be cooking up for ten or more hungry adolescents back then. Even though I live alone now the old habits die hard, and sometimes the nostalgia for cooking up a kick-arse lasagne or pot of pea and ham soup wins out. And then the chooks win! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![jimbuff314](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c57346/32.png) [@jimbuff314](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jimbuff314)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2014, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146/37 "2014-08-10T05:32:54Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > Yeah, wasting paper products is almost as bad. I never buy paper products – literallly never. Cloth towels in the kitchen, and backs of junkmail for computer paper and note pads… \<_Don’t ask about toilet paper, don’t ask about toilet paper, don’t ask about toilet paper_\> nm ---
**Author:** ![Lacunae\_Matata](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8491ac/32.png) [@Lacunae\_Matata](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lacunae_Matata)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2014, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146/38 "2014-08-10T05:41:49Z")
I grew up on a farm - sixth generation on that land. Some of my family still farms. My father hunted for some of our meat, we mostly raised the rest. We planted gardens and harvested from the fruit trees and the pecan orchard, we picked wild berries and kept bee hives, we canned, we froze food, we butchered and cured meat, etc. I’m an atheist, but I’ve used the word “sin” myself when describing food waste, because I know from experience that it’s not just food/calories going down the drain. It’s hard work, and a lot of resources, and a lot of time. That said, it’s entirely normal/understandable that sometimes you can’t use something in a timely manner. The avocado goes from rock hard to mush seemingly overnight, or one of the kids didn’t feel well and didn’t eat her portion of scrambled eggs, etc. That’s what the compost pile is for, or the dog probably loves scrambled eggs. But just tossing food in the garbage or down the disposal? Or refusing to even try to make use of leftovers? No. Not okay. Wanton food waste is a sin. ---
**Author:** ![DataX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@DataX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DataX)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2014, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146/39 "2014-08-10T05:49:14Z")
I don’t think of it as a sin - I think it is great we have a food system that allows for cheap food - the alternative is worse. I get the idea about respecting animal life, but I see people consuming food rather than throw it away (talking per meal here). Great - you get points for not wasting food, but what about your health? Food still isn’t free - the cost is a deterrent - although not representative of true cost to the environment. As far as wasting fuel - ALL oil will be burned - don’t think it makes much of a difference when that happens Anyway - that’s what I tell myself at night ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Feldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lord_feldon/32/341_2.png) [@Lord\_Feldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Feldon)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2014, 6:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146/40 "2014-08-10T06:53:21Z")
I guess waste isn’t a good thing in general, but I don’t see food as being some especially immoral thing to waste. In a modern developed country, food is cheap and plentiful. Nobody is starving because someone else threw away all the food. (Food insecurity is a real problem, but it’s not caused by food being scarce globally.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146.md?page=3)