Nowadays, there are a lot of people express their concern
over every single thing whether it is utilized to fullest. Also, food is not an
exception.
According to Celia Hatton in “Operation Empty Plate: China's food Waste Campaigner”, there is a guy sharing photo of his empty dish on Chinese
social media in order to raise people’s awareness of food.
I think it is a good idea to do so. If there was just a
campaign encourage people to concern how much food they dispose each day, the
campaign might not receive the response which contribute to an unchanged
situation. However, sharing photo via the social media may easily stimulate
people to follow the new trend leader as “Action speaks louder than words.” Also,
it can trigger a vast majority people around the world.
In the last couple decades, people have been concerning
about the world's environment owing to the global warming. There are a lot of
campaigns launched in order to save our environment. For example, there are
environmental friendly products such as glasses, plates, and forks that are
made from cassava not plastic as they were. This is because those products are
biodegradable and they do not cause the increase in number of waste. Moreover,
there is a widely accepted campaign so-called "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle."
This campaign encourages people to rethink before dispose their stuff. However,
the 3R campaign cannot be applied in some situations such as food since we
cannot reuse or recycle the ingredients. This topic reminds me of the recent
news which reported that some restaurants in China reused its ingredients such
as chili. In that video, the Chinese chef picked the chili from the trash bin.
I think that reuse is not appropriate in this situation.
Not only did the food cooked from the reused chili was contaminated, but also
it reflected the lack of integrity in the chef or may be the restaurant as
well. Even though, the restaurant and chef wanted to keep the cost down, they
should not have done this. They should have served food concerning their customer’s
health rather than only the profit. Also, the customer is the person who
absorbs both direct and indirect costs of his or her dish by paying the bill.
One more thing that comes up to my mind is that now there is
a popular trend of shooting and sharing the pictures of one's diet. Sometimes
people spend too much time to do those activities before they start their
dishes. As a result, the taste of food may change and be unpleasant at the time
they start because some food is best served hot. This hypothetical may be the
cause why the customers left their food half-finished. I heard that there are
some restaurants in the U.S. prohibit cameras and smart phones from being
brought inside. The rationale of doing so is the restaurant wants its customers
to enjoy their meals by tasting them.
Also, I think that as the portion of some dishes are bigger
than what people usually have in their normal meal. That's also the reason why
the customers did not finish their dishes and led to the waste problem. One
good idea to solve this problem is that the restaurant allows its customers to
customize their dishes by choosing to reduce some ingredients of their dishes
such as rice.
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Reference
I think this campaign is beneficial and practical. Actually, I am also the one who love taking food photos before eating especially the decorative dishes. I sometimes order the food because of its look which may not have good taste. Finally, I cannot finish it. I am aware of extravagant spending on food after reading this article. I may change from taking food photos before eating to taking empty plate when I finish it.
ReplyDeleteMay be you can take before and after versions of your dish.
DeleteI think Poom comment is good idea that taking a empty dish instead of capturing a dish before eating. This might lead to the new trend to the social network lol.
DeleteI think sometimes it doesn't matter how the taste and the decoration are, but the person who are with add the season to your dishes.
ReplyDeleteI sometimes wish I could leave food that I don't really need to eat - my mother drummed it in what we should eat everything on our plates, so no matter how much is there, I eat it all. And that is sometimes way too much.
ReplyDeleteI agree that wasting food is bad, but might it be better to throw it away than to eat too much of it? In fact, is over-eating any less wasteful than throwing good food away?
It reminds me of my primary school life. I had to finish everything on plate before I could leave to canteen because the teacher would come and check it. If we did not at least half finish our plates, the teachers wouldn't allow us go. Some teachers even strategically gave us marks for those who could finish the plates. At the end of term we counted the accumulated marks, and who got the highest marks would be awarded. I think this a good idea to ensure that all pupils had necessary nutrition in their meals as we were served with what the school provided. However, when I was in high school, there was no one check my plates; therefore, I sometimes left the plates unfinished. Because I was sick of those same kinds of food which I had for an entire school life.
DeleteFortunately, the remaining food that we left would feed animals such as pigs which I didn't know where they were. So,at least it's useful for the animals.
I have read an article in one magazine that I cannot remember its name, the article was about half of the world's food has been thrown away everyday. This large amount is caused by supermarkets throw out the food that cannot sell because customers do not think it is fresh enough. I also found another interesting thing that there was a campaign that encourage people to find edible-still food in the trash bin around their house. The initiator said that this well help decreasing throwing away food. However, I feel that it is disgusting to eat food you collect from a bin.
ReplyDeleteMing, was it the BBC News article "UK supermarkets reject 'wasted food' report claims" @ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20968076?
DeleteI love Google - I had also remembered reading something like that, probably on the BBC News, so a quick google on the search term = food waste bbc news found it in less than ten seconds.
DeleteIn the past, I used to have piles of magazines with articles in them that I'd found interesting and might want to refer to again. But because it was such a pain, I rarely did, unless I had to for a research paper. Now, my home is free of magazines and everything I vaguely remember having read somewhere can be found, usually in seconds, without moving from my seat, or from my bed if that's where I'm reading.
And as always, I keep wondering with wander what tomorrow will bring: will Google do searches for me before I've even realised that I want them done?
And I notice (I just thought of it) that the verb google is already included in the OALD.
Peter, you remind me of my dad. He love reading very much and has tons of books, magazines and newspapers in his room. He has never thrown any of them away. (I wish him to do it) Though I try to suggest him to use google, he always rejects and use internet to check email only.
DeleteSome supermarkets in Japan have promotion "Get a 50% discount after 2pm". It seems very popular among salary men and office ladies there. Because the prices are very cheap and they can grap some for dinners. Although, I don't know about food quality, I guess some of them are not too bad and still edible. So, I think it's a good idea to reduce the amount of trash.
ReplyDelete