Gross Wastefulness

Recently i learned about the food crisis around the world. The world is more than able to produce enough food for everyone to have their fill, yet 20% of the world's population go hungry everyday. Now, i firsthandedly get a clearer picture why.

The other day i was working at a banquet at sentosa, with a buffet dinner for 200+ guests. By banquet standards, it is not a large crowd. But the buffet spread was of extravagant quality - oysters, sashimi, tender roasted beef, tempura, chocolate fondue, tiramisu, and ice cream, along with many other mouth-watering foods and desserts. The dinner went on into the night, watching the guests gorging themselves, while my stomach rumbled and longed for that juicy piece of steak or a slice of black forest cake.

Then the time came when all the guests left and we had cleared up the tables. So at 11pm, it was finally our turn to have our fill of whatever is left, which surprisingly, even a lot of the good stuff was leftover. I ate till i was full and feeling totally guilty from all the excessive calories from the rich food, yet still so much food remained. With no other choice, it just breaks my heart to see such luxurious, high-quality food being defiled and tossed into the garbage by the trayfull.

If only i could save a small portion of it to supplement together with the leftover plain porridge that would be my lunch the next day...

The food industry of today has gone way past the simple utility of food, inserting much more resources into style, quality, presentation, hygiene, packaging, and so on. And then, after all these vast amount of resources have been put into its production, the consumer of half of the food turns out to be the garbage dump.