“We tend to waste food because we think that food is worthless, abundant, and can be easily acquired from the monoculture and industrial production systems.”
This is just the extremes of mankind that occurred after hunger and food shortages hit hard in the post-World War II period. This caused production acceleration so that no one had to be hungry anymore.
Ask yourself when was the last time we completely finished everything in our dish?
How much food residues left in the refrigerator that we need to throw away?
We eat and throw foods away because we never realize that the gaps between consumers and producers are largely distant. The fact that we never farmed nor cultivated the rice makes us blind in knowing how hard it is to produce ones, to plant some vegetables and fruits or tot take away of animals’ lives in order to serve them on the plate. Because we never been there and share mutual experiences, we tend to waste food without thinking of anything. We never realized that one life has to be taken down for us, that’s why we can easily
throw that into the trash within a second.
Eating culture to satisfy the ego and emotion is probably one of the main factors of food wasting habit of people in this era. Just because you want others to see that you are rich, so you order plenty of food to show other people your wealth. This is similar to the tradition of the Chinese table. However, the continuation of the celebration is completely different. Because it seems like we tend to overly celebrate every day and that is too overwhelming. The buffet food is also be commercialized in a way that is less thoughtful these days. In fact, the establishment of a buffet-style food is for people to scoop the food in a just enough amount to eat so that they won’t be any leftovers. However, the way of buffet-style food now is more of a gigantic dish decoration to satisfy both consumers and producers. It is too excessive that can cause the bad habit of food wasting.
Because we understand that we are not accountable for food wasting habit because wasting it or not, it’s our money. But that’s not always a case because the fact that we live together in the same world. Your leftovers in the dish will be trashed into the big gigantic waste pond that can produce methane gas and carbon monoxide to negatively impact the temperature of this planet even with the foods that you may claim as the organic ones. These days, we tend to only blame industrialization such as transportation, mining and construction in polluting the world. However, please be mindful that every food that left from going into your mouth also counts. Do not ever leave our food residues as a burden of anyone both directly and indirectly.
Author
Chef Bo – Duangporn Songvisava
A Michelin Star Chef
The Owner of Bo.Lan