Waste Not, Want Not

Recently, my cousin received an award from a charitable organization, and I attended the banquet. The event was beautifully done, and the food was surprisingly good.

During the salad course, I noticed several people at my table letting their lovely bowls of greens sit untouched. The person next to me said, “There are funny things in there I don’t recognize, I’m not eating it.” Another said, “I don’t like purple stuff in my salad.” Others didn’t care for the dressing choices.

So, the people bussing the table collected piles of untouched produce and dumped it in the garbage pans.

The main course presentation was lovely, with mounds of wild and brown rice, and spinach-stuffed chicken arranged on china, with paprika sprinkled around the rim.
Again, my fellow diners let most of the food go untouched. Only two people at my table ate the delightful rice, which was well seasoned and perfectly cooked. I heard, “I don’t do rice,” “There are specks in it,” and “Yuck.”

Apparently, my table wasn’t the only one with a bunch of picky eaters. As the employees collected the plates, I was appalled to see the mounds of rice piled on the carts ready to fill the trash bins.

All I could think about was the news reports of food shortages around the world, and mass starvation. In some villages, children live on a cup of rice a day. There were over three hundred people at that banquet, most of whom didn’t eat their rice. The food in that garbage pile could have fed a third world community for a week.

I don’t know the solution to that kind of revolting waste. Maybe there could be a way for people who won’t eat certain things not to get them on their plate. Or, maybe banquets could serve family style, and if you don’t want something, you wouldn’t have to take it.

If people can afford to be so picky, then maybe it’s proof that as Americans we are used to excesses, and it’s no wonder many people around the world hate us.

In the United States, we not only produce an abundance of food, we waste an enormous amount of it. Americans toss out at least $75 billion in food each year, according to an extensive study.

At home, the average American family throws away 14 percent of their food.

I know I feel guilty about that every day. My husband and I throw away more things than we should, such as bags of lettuce that go to waste before we eat them. I’m also often sucked into buying things on sale we don’t need, and letting them go to waste.

I don’t know the answer, except to try to be more cognizant of our wasteful nature. As the old proverb says, ‘Waste not, want not.”