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Wasteful food habits

As I write this, Christmas parties are being held all over the party-loving Philippines, and as usual, food will be overflowing as the ever hospitable party animal that is the Filipino, aptly led by one of the greatest party loving leaders in our nation’s history, will be pulling out all the stops at every Christmas party we attend.

I just sent my daughter off to her Christmas party, with the obligatory food to share, which is probably a concept that was already present when Homo sapiens were still hunting and gathering.

One thing I have noticed with these school parties is that the kids bring food to share good for up to 10 persons, but they can only eat 1 portion. So, what happens is that the food that is brought and shared is 5 to 10 times the eating capacity of the partycipants. All this excess ultimately leads to a lot of waste, which is quite a shame.

So much food to choose from and eat is awesome if your purpose in life is to binge eat, but as times have changed and we have become more aware of food waste and its impact on the environment in a planet that is being threatened by climate change, the thought of all the waste being generated as thousands, if not millions of wasteful parties are held times over the month of December can make one wonder if we deserve to live in a planet where storms, droughts and floods are getting stronger due to global warming.

We don’t really think about it a lot, but food waste is a serious problem. Aside from the wasted opportunity to redirect that resource to the millions who go hungry everyday all over the world, there is also the impact of the food production, transport, distribution, delivery, and disposal chain on the planet through its greenhouse gas emissions.

Food production requires water, fertilizer, fuel for farm equipment, and it all has to either come from mother earth or produce GHG emissions which harm the planet. Emissions come not just from tractors and harvesters, but even from the fart and poop of livestock, and methane from decaying produce.

Additionally, the food storage and distribution processes are significant sources of emissions. Cold storage is powered by fossil fueled power plants. Moving the ingredients from the farm all the way to the table requires all kinds of vehicles, from trucks to tricycles. And when uneaten food becomes waste, the decomposition process also produces GHGs, which can be avoided if we didn’t waste so much food in the first place.

We have been living in a world that is facing a climate crisis caused by human activity and excess. So we should all know all those things by now. However, a lot of us choose to ignore it, thinking that our individual excesses can’t really hurt the planet that much, failing to see the impact of our collective wastefulness, and that individualistic perspective is probably why the human race is failing spectacularly at its current attempt to slow down global warming.

The inefficient and wasteful management of food to share at school kids’ Christmas parties is just one of the many bad practices that we’ve gotten used to and never give much thought. However, it’s already 2023, and the world those kids will grow up to raise their own kids in is facing a climate crisis, yet the adults who are supposed to know better don’t seem to be interested in doing anything about it.

With all the advancements in science and technology, can’t we find a better way to have a Christmas party (and party in general) so we don’t waste so much food? I don’t want to be a party pooper, but don’t we really need to restructure our societal mindsets and traditions in order to change the way we do things, such as facing the issue of the food waste that our activities generate.

If you come to think of it, it’s not just the school kids parties that is the culprit because ultimately, this is on the adults who are the ones footing the bill and sending too much food to share. They don’t really think about it because they do the same in their parties, where being excessive is part of our tendency to show off.

It’s not a very complicated concept. The human race needs to waste less food. Changing the way we consume food, especially when groups larger than our household are involved, may seem like a big order to fill, but if we all think globally but act locally, we still have a chance of doing our part to save the planet through the simple act of changing our individual and small group food habits. All we have to do is try harder to be less wasteful and together, we can help solve multiple global problems: hunger, food security, and climate change to name a few.*

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