Over Serving

I am sure all of us have noticed how people’s eyes are bigger than their stomach and tend to serve far too much food on their plates, more than what they can consume. This is a familiar sight when entertaining at home. The same or worse is visible at the hotel buffets. People tend to serve food on to their plates as if there is no tomorrow.

No one is objecting to the quantum of food that they serve themselves.  It is the amount that they leave behind that worries some of us.  Why serve yourself more than what you can eat, especially when you are able to serve yourself for the second, or even third, time?

This habit is one of the most disgusting traits a human being can have. This disgusting trait must stop.  Food is precious.  We all are aware that there are many finding it difficult to have three meals a day and sometimes no food at all in their homes to enjoy a nutritious meal. Many may just have some rice and sambol. The soaring prices of goods does not make it any easier for the less fortunate.  

A buffet at a home or any other establishment allows for more than a single serving but this is not a licence to pile the plate and keep discarding the half-eaten plate,  to rush off greedily and serve another mountain of food. It just shows bad upbringing. Parents should educate their children on how to serve themselves food, regardless of whether they are drowning in money or not knowing what to do with their riches. Wasting food is worse than having bad manners and behaving in any obnoxious way, which can be ignored.  But seeing those who are happy to bin food just because they think they can do so is unforgivable and not acceptable, especially in today’s context.

Religious leaders also voice this fact about waste.  Recently,  Pope Francis decried the ‘culture of waste’ created by consumerism.  This is what the Pope had to say: Wasting food is like ‘stealing from the table of those who are poor and hungry.’ 

Please be conscious of this fact and try not to waste food as it is both sinful and shameful.

• People tend to serve food on to their plates as if there is no tomorrow. No one is objecting to the quantum of food that they serve themselves.  It is the amount that they leave behind that worries some of us.  Why serve yourself more than what you can eat, especially when you are able to serve yourself for the second, or even third, time?