Think about how much food you eat in a day. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and those snacks in between. Now think about all of the food that you didn’t eat; the leftovers from ballooning restaurant portions or the extras in the fridge from dinner Friday night. Next time you sit down to eat, take a hard look at your plate and try to think about what you really plan on eating. Do you have time to eat everything you’ve served yourself in a 15-minute lunch break? Should you really be eating a salad that size?
Strive to throw nothing away from your plate. As cliché and silly as it sounds, there are starving people in this world. Children in particular have fallen victim to the hunger that looms over some of the most impoverished continents. Basic foods have become a precious and finite commodity in our world. It is disheartening to know that children go to school every day without breakfast and growling stomachs and are expected to still do their best.
No, you cannot airmail your leftovers to Africa or India to feed the hungry there, but taking a minute to think about what is on your plate before you start eating is a great step towards considering the waste that occurs all over our planet every second of the day. Are you really going to eat all of that?
- Vanessa
Editor’s Note: This post is one in a series published by students in the Sustainability Learning Community at KU. Additional posts from this series can be found under “LC” on the Categories list.
