Food Wastage / Drummer

[lathany]

Last Friday we (the four of us) were invited out for a meal to celebrate my father-in-law's 75th. There were ten of us - my parents-in-law, my brother-in-law and partner, us, my mother-in-law's sister Carol and Carol's eldest grandson. The meal was Italian (Amici’s) which was good (I had Pizza Capricciosa followed by an enormous Tiramisu) although the service was a little on the slow side. Ryan had also ordered the Pizza Capricciosa and seemed to be struggling to finish it. My mother-in-law suggested leaving the last bit (roughly two or three square inches) and Carol looked horrified. She talked about the global warming effects of food wastage and how everyone should clear their plate.

Now, I lived with her for a few years (after I gave up on the Oxford-London commute but bateleur was still doing his DPhil) and I know what she's like. There was the famous "Pringles" incident where, two months after I moved out she came to visit us in Feltham (our first bought place). With her she brought a tube of Pringles that she had found that was opened but not finished. I had to break the news to her that it wasn't mine and had been left by another couple of friends she'd had staying (to be fair, I think she also brought a few things that I had left, but it's the Pringles I particularly remember). This led to an even more entertaining exchange - she did not want to take it back, but was equally horrified by my suggestion that two-month old Pringles were probably stale and therefore to just tip them. Eventually we took pity on her and took the Pringles, quietly binning them after she had left.

I understand her point about food wastage - it isn't a good thing but, like everything else, there's understanding that and there's over-reaction.

However, I also have another issue with this scenario - that of food consumption and dieting. It's been a long time since I've been on a strict diet, but back when I was trying to lose weight (the first time after I first left (my parents') home and the second time, about a year after the twins arrived, of losing the extra pregnancy weight I'd gained) one of the things that made a difference to me was learning not to finish my plate when I stopped being hungry. At home, this wasn't such an issue as we didn't have huge portions (and back then I was mainly responsible for measuring my own) but it particularly mattered when eating out and also with takeaway food. Consequently, I really don't feel it's a good thing to force anyone to clear their plate.

Of course, Ryan actually finished his pizza and also the three scoops of gelato he had to follow. Not to mention that Carol's nearly eighty and having a fight with her over the household rules she learned from a mother who had the wartime routine down pat is probably not a great move anyway. It could well have reached my father-in-law (despite being at the other end of the table). But the whole incident stuck in my head.

Comments

[venta.livejournal.com]

I think the "clear your plate" rule has a lot to answer for if mis-applied. Fortunately, lots of places are ok with doggy bags, so one doesn't have finish-or-waste as options.

The scale of food waste is awful, but I'm not sure that making a teenager eat food he doesn't want is going to help!

(Sheep for me.)

[lathany.livejournal.com]

Fortunately, lots of places are ok with doggy bags, so one doesn't have finish-or-waste as options.

Yes - I'm grateful for this one too.

[clairval.livejournal.com]

My parents teaching me to always finish my plate certainly played a role in my severe obesity. It had two undesirable effects:

• I need to calculate my food intake before starting to prepare a meal. Of course this is too much work to be bothered with, so for a decade I just cooked way too high quantities without even noticing it.


• Because meals were pretty long and boring as a kid, since the sine qua non condition for leaving the table was finishing my plate, I became a really fast eater; habit that I have not overcome to this day. Results that because stomach feedback isn't instant, if you put me in front of a infinite amount of food and ask me to eat until I reach satiety, I will overeat.

On another hand, I understand Carol in the sense that food should preferably never be binned. In an ideal world, anyone with a beginning of a garden would get incentives to make their own compost from food waste and grow whatever they like outside. But of course, our personal food waste is insignificant compared to (for instance) supermarkets'. Over here, just from the bakery of a single one of them, there is enough "to be thrown away" bread and sugary things to fill half a car boot on a daily basis.

Of course I don't condone Carol's behaviour and your link to the wartime routine is probably spot on.

(As a side-note, I don't believe that something as dry and full of preservatives as Pringles has gone stale after a mere two months!)

[lathany.livejournal.com]

Because meals were pretty long and boring as a kid, since the sine qua non condition for leaving the table was finishing my plate, I became a really fast eater;

That happened in my family too. And I agree, slowing down would be a benefit in feeling full up.

[atreic.livejournal.com]

Food waste is bad. Eating more than we need is bad. Rules to deal with one often deal badly with the other. Rules designed for the scarcity world of the 40s don't translate well into 2015.

I think I balance the two things fairly OK by being able to a) chose my portion size (because I tend to be shopping/cooking/putting my food on my plate) and b) having a way to not waste food that I don't eat in a given meal (eg putting it in small portions in the freezer to eat at other times). But if I'm somewhere where I didn't get to chose my portion size, and there's no easy way to deal with leftovers (eg a work Christmas dinner) I think eating as much as you want and then leaving some is a perfectly OK answer.

[lathany.livejournal.com]

Rules designed for the scarcity world of the 40s don't translate well into 2015.

Yes - very true!

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes! It had never occurred to me explicitly before, but the 1940s clear-your-plate world almost certainly had much smaller helpings!

(I was at an event on Monday where I suspect I was served the wartime weekly cheese ration for at least three people...)

[huggyrei.livejournal.com]

Yes, the 'clear your plate' thing has caused me problems too. I feel obliged to try to finish things when eating out, even when I'm full, especially when there's not much left. I struggle to overcome this learned habit, but really should, especially since I'm quite small so I would expect portions designed for a normal sized person to be larger than I need. Will also note that this has added to me being a finicky eater: my primary school insisted on clearing your plate. I remember deciding to try something new (a grapfruit), and I hated it, but a dinner lady stood over me and made me eat the entire thing. I felt really sick. I learned not to try new things because of the obligation to eat it anyway.

[lathany.livejournal.com]

I think it's a hard habit to break and it was widely taught for a long time.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I heard a great anecdote years ago from a flatmate I had briefly; she was Australian but her mum was Malaysian. Her friends - being nicely brought up in Australia, which has lots of similar mores to Britain - finished the platefuls they were served by her mum.

In Malaysia, apparently, to finish a plateful given to you by your host means you are still hungry and have not had enough to eat. So they got given bigger helpings...

And so it spiralled.

[atreic.livejournal.com]

There was a HSBC ad based on that: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6_WAmt3cMdk

[lathany.livejournal.com]

:-)