Current Events > "Don't waste food because there's billions of people starving!"

(+) Yeah! (+)

*proceeds to eat the food instead of feeding those starving people*

Has anyone else noticed the irony of this reasoning? As if me eating more of my food is going to make those starving people any less starved? If you really cared about all those starving people then you wouldn't be telling ME to not waste MY food. You'd say "don't throw it in the trash, give it to me so I can preserve it and donate it to hungry families." But of course, you'll never hear anyone say that. Why? Because people care more about feeling good than about doing good. They feel good when they guilt trip people about leaving a few crumbs on their plate, but can't be bothered to contribute to solving any problems themselves.

So here's an idea that might just be stupid enough to actually be good...

Restaurants, cafeterias, etc should have garbage cans specifically dedicated to "food waste" just like how there's a distinction between plastic, metal, and garbage. It seems like most places have you throw your food in with the rest of your garbage. Instead, filter all the food waste and put it all into a big pool of food to donate to hungry families. Then, rather than being discouraged, "food waste" would become a noble thing because it would mean that you're donating to the indigent.

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Americans will tell themselves anything to get to stuff their faces

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Mike_Stanton posted...

Restaurants, cafeterias, etc should have garbage cans specifically dedicated to "food waste" just like how there's a distinction between plastic, metal, and garbage. It seems like most places have you throw your food in with the rest of your garbage. Instead, filter all the food waste and put it all into a big pool of food to donate to hungry families. Then, rather than being discouraged, "food waste" would become a noble thing because it would mean that you're donating to the indigent.

Lmfao gross

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TheGoldenEel posted...

Lmfao gross

I can imagine the joy on a families face when they get their garbage bag full of half eaten pastas, burgers, salads, soups, and whatever else delivered each week.

Just a big mushy mess of every random thing people didn't finish at the restaurant that night.

Yum

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Mike_Stanton posted...

Restaurants, cafeterias, etc should have garbage cans specifically dedicated to "food waste" just like how there's a distinction between plastic, metal, and garbage. It seems like most places have you throw your food in with the rest of your garbage. Instead, filter all the food waste and put it all into a big pool of food to donate to hungry families.

https://youtu.be/1X5ET0-vT1E

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The point of the statement is that you're being ungrateful and wasteful and there are people who kill to have that food you're throwing away, not that you eating it is going to make them less starved

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The way my grandfather taught me about that is don't get more then what you can eat. If you got too much food then that's your problem. You should eat it all. Throwing it away is wasting it.

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I used to work in a supermarket deli and by the end of the week our rendering bucket(the place where all the unused meat goes so it can be made into...something) probably weighed over 500 pounds

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Coloradough posted...

Americans will tell themselves anything to get to stuff their faces

^this is fatphobia
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It really is ridiculous how much food and other resources we just waste constantly if you stop to think about it. We're all guilty of it.

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Let's say you went to McDonald's and purchased 3 burgers. You eat the first two burgers, but then you don't even start the third one and just throw it away. That entire burger has been wasted. You should've never purchased it in the first place. The food was completely wasted. At this point, there's no way to unbuy the burger, so the only thing you can do is eat it or give it to someone else. And most people don't have people ready to eat their food lying around.
So why eat the food? It's already wasted, right? It won't be unwasted just by eating it, right? One could make the argument that by eating it, you're filling yourself up, so your next meal will be smaller to balance out. So if you eat 3 burgers now, you'll have one burger and some fries for dinner. But if you had only eaten 2 burgers for lunch, you'd have had 2 burgers and some fries for dinner, with the third lunch burger still being wasted.

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Caroniver posted...

Let's say you went to McDonald's and purchased 3 burgers. You eat the first two burgers, but then you don't even start the third one and just throw it away. That entire burger has been wasted. You should've never purchased it in the first place. The food was completely wasted. At this point, there's no way to unbuy the burger, so the only thing you can do is eat it or give it to someone else. And most people don't have people ready to eat their food lying around.
So why eat the food? It's already wasted, right? It won't be unwasted just by eating it, right? One could make the argument that by eating it, you're filling yourself up, so your next meal will be smaller to balance out. So if you eat 3 burgers now, you'll have one burger and some fries for dinner. But if you had only eaten 2 burgers for lunch, you'd have had 2 burgers and some fries for dinner, with the third lunch burger still being wasted.

I would just force myself to eat the third one

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Mike_Stanton posted...

Restaurants, cafeterias, etc should have garbage cans specifically dedicated to "food waste" just like how there's a distinction between plastic, metal, and garbage.

:| Walmart (and I'm sure other grocery stores and places that sell food) does this, but yeah, it's

CanuckCowboy posted...

Just a big mushy mess of every random thing people didn't finish at the restaurant that night.

and it gets sent to pig farms. Human beings shouldn't be asked to eat a big pile of other people's leftovers and spoiled food, jesus christ.

Packaged food from bakery or meat department that's just slightly out of date or has cosmetic issues does get donated though.


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I thought that world hunger was a distribution issue and not a quantity issue. And that if we could just get the food to where it needs to be we could support like 11 billion people or more as-is

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Rika_Furude posted...

I thought that world hunger was a distribution issue and not a quantity issue. And that if we could just get the food to where it needs to be we could support like 11 billion people or more as-is

Yes, it is a distribution issue. Wasting food is a distribution issue lol.
It's like how the economy stalls when billionaires hoard needlessly large piles of cash. There's enough money to solve problems, but they won't be solved because the money's hoarded instead of distributed.

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Caroniver posted...

Let's say you went to McDonald's and purchased 3 burgers. You eat the first two burgers, but then you don't even start the third one and just throw it away. That entire burger has been wasted. You should've never purchased it in the first place. The food was completely wasted. At this point, there's no way to unbuy the burger, so the only thing you can do is eat it or give it to someone else. And most people don't have people ready to eat their food lying around.
So why eat the food? It's already wasted, right? It won't be unwasted just by eating it, right? One could make the argument that by eating it, you're filling yourself up, so your next meal will be smaller to balance out. So if you eat 3 burgers now, you'll have one burger and some fries for dinner. But if you had only eaten 2 burgers for lunch, you'd have had 2 burgers and some fries for dinner, with the third lunch burger still being wasted.

You could also argue that by eating the burger you risk getting heartburn due to overeating. You're committing the sunk cost fallacy. In other words, you're acting as if your past decisions are a justification for the decisions you make going forward, even when your past decisions weren't necessarily good ones.

Caroniver posted...

It's like how the economy stalls when billionaires hoard needlessly large piles of cash. There's enough money to solve problems, but they won't be solved because the money's hoarded instead of distributed.

Money doesn't solve problems.

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Mike_Stanton posted...

Money doesn't solve problems.

Let's go with the example of shelter for homeless people. The city could pay construction workers to build houses, but instead they remove benches so homeless people will go away and put noisemakers under bridges. Money is paid to people so they do things. Doing things solves problems. You pay people money to solve problems.
Of course, that would cut into the police department's tank budget, so

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Mike_Stanton posted...

Money doesn't solve problems.

It buys their solution tho

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TC is wrong. Less waste now means less waste tomorrow. (less hungry, ordering smaller portions)

Mike_Stanton posted...

Restaurants, cafeterias, etc should have garbage cans specifically dedicated to "food waste" just like how there's a distinction between plastic, metal, and garbage. It seems like most places have you throw your food in with the rest of your garbage. Instead, filter all the food waste and put it all into a big pool of food to donate to hungry families. Then, rather than being discouraged, "food waste" would become a noble thing because it would mean that you're donating to the indigent.

A modest proposal.
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Caroniver posted...

Let's go with the example of shelter for homeless people. The city could pay construction workers to build houses, but instead they remove benches so homeless people will go away and put noisemakers under bridges. Money is paid to people so they do things. Doing things solves problems. You pay people money to solve problems.
Of course, that would cut into the police department's tank budget, so

its funny that you think the problem with homelessness is that there isn't enough houses

Feline_Heart posted...

The point of the statement is that you're being ungrateful and wasteful and there are people who kill to have that food you're throwing away, not that you eating it is going to make them less starved

This is why you got slapped when you told your mom "so give it to those chinese kids, then"

Caroniver posted...

Let's go with the example of shelter for homeless people. The city could pay construction workers to build houses, but instead they remove benches so homeless people will go away and put noisemakers under bridges. Money is paid to people so they do things. Doing things solves problems. You pay people money to solve problems.
Of course, that would cut into the police department's tank budget, so

And where does the money come from?

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Feline_Heart posted...

The point of the statement is that you're being ungrateful and wasteful and there are people who kill to have that food you're throwing away, not that you eating it is going to make them less starved

@Mike_Stanton

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Feline_Heart posted...

The point of the statement is that you're being ungrateful and wasteful and there are people who kill to have that food you're throwing away, not that you eating it is going to make them less starved

I (Butters) bolded the only relevant part of this post.

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What youre doing is called extrapolating and being figuratively obtuse, ofc whats served on your dinner plate wouldnt make it to a starving child in Africa but the practice of limiting food waste as a society would have a profound effect. Glad most post arent as closed minded as you are though.

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Mike_Stanton posted...

So here's an idea that might just be stupid enough to actually be good...

Restaurants, cafeterias, etc should have garbage cans specifically dedicated to "food waste" just like how there's a distinction between plastic, metal, and garbage. It seems like most places have you throw your food in with the rest of your garbage. Instead, filter all the food waste and put it all into a big pool of food to donate to hungry families. Then, rather than being discouraged, "food waste" would become a noble thing because it would mean that you're donating to the indigent.

Yeah, Im sure nobody would get corona from eating food thats been half eaten by dozens of people.

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