# 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:** 15\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2014, 10:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146/41 "2014-08-10T10:08:31Z")
Not a sin in the religious sense, but wasting food is simply wrong. We cook a few extra portions to use as lunches or dinners the next day or two, ‘put up’/preserve veggies grown in excess of immediate need, or veggies and fruits purpose bought to put up for when they are out of season [plus homemade pickles and preserves taste better than store bought IMHO] One serious lack in education is in ‘home economics’ - everybody needs to learn to shop for foods, how to cook from scratch, _portion control_ and what is a reasonable healthy diet. Yes I know that there are ‘food deserts’ and housing with inadequate food prep/storage facilities, but if they can get exposed to real food and healthy diet I think it may be possible that they could learn how to pick out the healthy choices on a fast food menu or in a convenience store. ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2014, 10:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146/42 "2014-08-10T10:41:14Z")
Point to ponder: some have pointed to the “don’t ever waste food” mentality of some parents as a factor in childhood obesity. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2014, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146/43 "2014-08-10T12:26:14Z")
Haven’t read the thread, answering the OP directly. It does, _but_ I don’t think that the place to correct it is at the table; that is, eating on when you’re not hungry is worse. What I do to reduce waste is purchase and prepare only as much food as I’m going to eat (either first-run, frozen or as leftovers); that involves planning my purchasing, cooking and eating with leftovers and frozen portions in mind. There is no way I’ll eat a whole head of broccoli in one seating, but by freezing several portions I have them for future needs. I also limit the amount of frozen leftovers, way below what my freezer has room for (I know too many people who have at one point asked “it says here this frozen salmon is from five years ago, you think it’ll be ok?”). ---
**Author:** ![MeanOldLady](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanoldlady/32/10737_2.png) [@MeanOldLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanOldLady)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2014, 12:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146/44 "2014-08-10T12:34:59Z")
Love how literal some folks are. I don’t believe in “sin” either. That said, wantonly wasting food is a fucking sin. ---
**Author:** ![Sahirrnee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sahirrnee/32/13937_2.png) [@Sahirrnee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sahirrnee)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2014, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146/45 "2014-08-10T12:54:13Z")
Don’t know that I’d call it a sin but it certainly bothers me to waste food. I love leftovers though so not much gets wasted by me. My son was friends with a girl who used to full her plate, eat a few bites and then announce that she was full. If we got fast food she’d order two or three sandwiches, fries, a drink, a dessert, take a few bites of each and leave the rest. I always wondered if she would have been so wasteful if _she_ had been paying for the food. Her family was not well off so I’m not sure why they tolerated her behavior. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2014, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146/46 "2014-08-10T16:38:24Z")
Growing up in a lower middle class family in the 40s, I knew that food was not to be wasted and it really really bothers me. My wife grew up in a middle middle class family (her father was a school teacher) and does not have the same attitude. But we save leftovers and I usually eat them for lunch the next day. Once she made some borscht. She removed the beets and was about to discard them when I intervened. Surely, I said, we can do something with them. So we googled a recipe for beetloaf. It was pretty awful and we ended up throwing most of it out. Is wasting food a (secular) sin? Yes, I guess I feel that way. I read somewhere that 40% of the food “consumed” in the US is actually thrown away. ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2014, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146/47 "2014-08-10T20:32:18Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > 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. I remember Dear Abby’s advice to an elderly woman who wrote to her, complaining about how difficult it was for her and her husband to lose weight. Abby’s advice was to _stop eating when you’re full_, and I loved the way she summed it up: “Regardless of what your mother may have told you, cleaning your plate will not help anybody in China.” I cook in a retirement home, and the “I don’t want to waste food” thing from the residents can be a real pain in the neck sometimes. It’s fine when they order one of the specials that we’re dishing up out of a pan, and they only want a half portion. It’s when they order half of a hamburger because they can’t eat a whole one and they don’t want to waste food. What do they think we’re going to do with the other half of the patty and half of a hamburger bun? Save it for the next person who orders half of a burger three weeks from now? No, we’re going to throw it away. The food is still wasted; they’re just not the ones physically doing it. ---
**Author:** ![MeanOldLady](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanoldlady/32/10737_2.png) [@MeanOldLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanOldLady)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2014, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146/48 "2014-08-10T20:57:35Z")
Forgive me for not knowing anything about retirement homes (despite both of my parents being senior citizens), but they can’t save the other half and eat it later? Or is it a school cafeteria type deal where you serve what you serve, and if they don’t eat it, there’s nowhere to stash it later? Because when I eat, I often don’t eat my entire meal, but I’ll totally take it home and have it for lunch the next day. I guess they don’t have that option? ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2014, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146/49 "2014-08-10T21:12:34Z")
[quote=“MeanOldLady, post:48, topic:695146”] Forgive me for not knowing anything about retirement homes (despite both of my parents being senior citizens), but they can’t save the other half and eat it later? [quote] They could, but they don’t. > [@](#): > > Or is it a school cafeteria type deal where you serve what you serve, and if they don’t eat it, there’s nowhere to stash it later? > > Because when I eat, I often don’t eat my entire meal, but I’ll totally take it home and have it for lunch the next day. I guess they don’t have that option? I’m pretty sure they have refrigerators in their apartments, but I suspect that a lot of them would simply forget the food was there and it would just go bad and get thrown out anyway. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2014, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146/50 "2014-08-10T21:45:18Z")
Count me in. I was brought up in the middle of nowhere by a grandmother born in 1899 to a family of sharecropers. You can guess how much she liked wasting food. There simply was no food wasted (and bread was particularly holy). Worst case scenario, it ended up feeding some relative’s pigs or chickens. I do in fact waste food. Typically food I’m not enthralled about that goes past the expiration date in the fridge. But I can almost hear my grandmother, and all my elderly relatives from back when I was a kid, spinning in their graves when I do so. ---
**Author:** ![Mk\_VII](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Mk\_VII](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mk_VII)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2014, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146/51 "2014-08-10T21:54:12Z")
It’s a generational thing. Grandparents generation, grew up in the Depression (which lasted much of the Twenties here) and went through wartime rationing (which continued til the mid-Fifties), they did not like to waste food, and would send you home with “a piece of cheese for Phoebe [the dog]” or “a slice of ham for His [father’s] tea” rather than waste it. Their children were much the same. “Think of the sailors dying to bring that across the Atlantic to you”. ---
**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, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146/52 "2014-08-10T22:00:16Z")
> [@Mister\_Rik](#): > > They could, but they don’t. > I’m pretty sure they have refrigerators in their apartments, but I suspect that a lot of them would simply forget the food was there and it would just go bad and get thrown out anyway. I never buy yogurt anymore. Grandmother has a refrigerator in her room at the nursing home, and every day, the aide brings her snacks (usually yogurt in the mornings and juice and crackers in the afternoon,) and every day, rather than decline the snack, Grandmother has the aide put the yogurt in her little fridge. And twice a week, Ma cleans out the refrigerator and distributes the largesse. I haven’t bought yogurt or snack crackers in a year or more… (As to why Grandmother doesn’t just decline the snacks? I have no idea. She was crazy long before she was senile!) ---
**Author:** ![lisiate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f05b48/32.png) [@lisiate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lisiate)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2014, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146/53 "2014-08-10T22:17:36Z")
We try and waste as little as possible. Meaty scraps go to the dog, everything else into a bag for some friend’s pigs, and I have leftovers for lunch at work three or four times a week. About the only food items that go into the general rubbish are cooked bones. It’s not really a moral issue for me, but verges on one for my wife I think. ---
**Author:** ![Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eyebrows_0f_doom/32/3119_2.png) [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2014, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146/54 "2014-08-11T01:21:29Z")
Morality has nothing to do with it. I just don’t like to waste _money_. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2014, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146/55 "2014-08-12T07:29:10Z")
Since I am religious, I would not call it a sin. But it does bug the crap out of me. Even if you aren’t going to save it for yourself, there are tons of people who could use it. It’s why my church gives away leftovers for any meals we do. Though pizza thing described in the OP does almost cross the line. That’s not just wasting leftovers. That’s wasting pretty much the all the food. As for people saying stuff about keeping leftovers you don’t want, that’s a completely different issue. If you didn’t like the food, but have clearly eaten out of it, that’s not nearly so wasteful. But if you did like the food, why would leftovers be bad? You have at least 5 days to eat them. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-wasting-food-strike-you-as-a-sin/695146.md?page=2)