Throwing away food...

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  • callsitlikeiseeit
    callsitlikeiseeit Posts: 8,627 Member
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    KateTii wrote: »
    The fallacy with the "Starving kids in Africa" argument is that the kids will still be starving whether you eat everything on your plate or not.

    In my town, we have a special bin for food scraps that gets collected and it's turned into compost - maybe get yourself a compost bin or worm farm, so if you don't eat it, you still won't be "wasting" it.

    need a like button ;)
  • glassyo
    glassyo Posts: 7,596 Member
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    KateTii wrote: »
    The fallacy with the "Starving kids in Africa" argument is that the kids will still be starving whether you eat everything on your plate or not.

    In my town, we have a special bin for food scraps that gets collected and it's turned into compost - maybe get yourself a compost bin or worm farm, so if you don't eat it, you still won't be "wasting" it.

    Not that I wouldn't toss anything I didn't want to eat after tasting it, maybe the starving kids thing is more of a guilt trip and you should be grateful you're being fed at all thing.
  • Machka9
    Machka9 Posts: 24,868 Member
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    Clawsal wrote: »
    Hello everyone!

    I was taught as a youngster that you should never throw away food (usually followed by a reminder that there are starving kids in Africa).

    So, I always finish my plate. However, now that I am counting calories, I notice I have become a lot pickier about food. I am also trying new recipes which sometimes result in unappetizing food.

    Tonight I had a particularly nasty meal, and have two more portions of the same to eat tomorrow. Just the thought of eating THAT tomorrow... and "wasting" allotted calories on THAT...

    I will probably just throw it away... but the guilt! (it's two entire meals!)

    Do you have a similar problem? How do you deal with it?

    I made a decision when I started here that I would not eat foods I don't like. I am not wasting my calories on something I find unpleasant.

    Therefore, if I made something and really did not like it, I would:

    a) try to fix it.

    b) toss it and eat something I do like.

  • Machka9
    Machka9 Posts: 24,868 Member
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    sisu89 wrote: »
    OMG do I ever!!! Particularly with leftovers! Right now I have about 3 meals worth of spaghetti (bf always cooks way more than we need!), a pork chop, and an enchilada! How am I ever going to eat all that before they start getting gross? It's particularly frustrating that my boyfriend refuses to eat leftovers, and yet he makes a ton of food!

    Freeze them.

  • kazminchu
    kazminchu Posts: 250 Member
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    I am only just starting to come to terms with this. As somebody who doesn't earn very much, I run a very tight budget, and if I've made/bought food, then it'll get eaten because otherwise it's wasting money. However recently I did manage to force myself to throw away a jar of hot chocolate that I just found disgusting. I'll be honest, I was proud of myself. Undoing 24 years of being told to never waste food doesn't just happen overnight. I'm taking it one step at a time.
    For some reason, I find it easier to throw away bought food than food I've personally made. For example, my meal prep for this week's lunches is bland and meh. But I'm forcing myself to eat it because I made it.
  • dhimaan
    dhimaan Posts: 774 Member
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    I couldn't do it. The guilt would eat me alive.
  • Protranser
    Protranser Posts: 517 Member
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    TaraTall wrote: »
    See if it's salvageable? A salad or soup or with alow cal sauce?
    Otherwise, don't beat yourself up - just don't make the same 'mistake' again.

    This is exactly what I do, too. I try to salvage it somehow, especially if I went through the effort of cooking/cutting/combining ingredients but didn't like the end result due to poor decisions with spices/herbs.
  • crb426
    crb426 Posts: 657 Member
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    My mom actually encouraged us to leave food on the plate. She has always been naturally thin. She never ever told us to take one more bite if we said we were done. I keep her habits in my head on this journey, but it can be hard. Especially when I've calculated the calories of everything already, why wouldn't I eat it all?

    I throw away food all the time.
  • LexiLuLexi
    LexiLuLexi Posts: 12 Member
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    My African colleague tells me 'kids are no longer starving, if you don't want your food, don't eat it'.

    Alternatively, I box mine up and have it the next day. The 1/3rd of my dinner I left last night will be dinner tonight with a portion of noodles. No waste, money saved.
  • oneoddsock
    oneoddsock Posts: 321 Member
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    The whole Africa argument feels very retro. There is a point about the resources that it takes to produce food (both environmental and human effort) but that doesn't mean that you have to eat absolutely everything. Take it as a lesson in portion control.
  • scyian
    scyian Posts: 243 Member
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    I hate food waste as it's a waste of time and money not only for me but for those who produced/grew it.

    If I made a recipe that I didn't particularly like purely on the taste of it I would still eat the leftovers. Though I would probably try and play around with it to make it more palatable.
  • boombalatty123
    boombalatty123 Posts: 116 Member
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    Try to learn what you can from the experience (don't buy that product/don't use that combination of flavors in your cooking/don't trust that author's recipes/etc.), and just toss it. If it was horribly burnt would you force yourself to eat it? In my mind it's the same kind of issue. You are worth more than that.

    A couple years ago I spent a lot of time and money making a fancy roasted pumpkin stuffed with bread, cheese and sausage. It smelled wonderful while it was cooking, but it was a disaster. Somehow all the flavorful ingredients wound up tasting like nothing. Plus, to add insult to injury, as soon as I pulled it out of the oven the pumpkin deflated like a tire and spewed about a gallon of liquid all over my kitchen! I was mad for a couple of minutes, then it got funny. We threw that thing into the woods without a single regret and made something else for dinner.

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