Ⓥ Speaking of Wastefulness

Yesterday I was talking a little about my feelings regarding wastefulness. I am deeply bothered by our society's views on this subject, and our obsession with convenience over conservation. As I said yesterday, I try to do everything I can to prevent waste. However, there is one idea about wastefulness, which everyone else seems to share, that I simply do not understand. That is the idea that it is better to eat more food than you want, simply because it is already on your plate, than to throw it away. I am all for not throwing food away, but I accomplish this by saving it for the next day, as opposed to just eating it right then when I don't particularly want it. The idea that eating more food than you want, or need, is somehow less wasteful than throwing it away seems inherently absurd to me.

We've all heard the argument that we should eat all our food because "there are starving kids in Africa". What I would like to know is, does anyone actually believe that starving kids would feel better about their own situation knowing that we were eating an excess of food rather than throwing it away? Is that, in any way, better? The truth of the matter is, any food beyond what you need is wasted, whether you eat it or not. And I'm fairly certain that anyone, anywhere, who is starving would be just as bothered by our overeating as they would by our throwing food away because, in essence, it is the same thing.

If we are being honest with ourselves which, let's face it, very few of us are we are, we have to admit that our entire way of life is basically a slap in the face to people who don't have enough to eat. If we want to help the "starving kids in Africa" the solution is not to eat more food than we care to eat at a time, it's to stop consuming more resources than we need, all the way around. We, as a society, take much more than we need, and much more than we have any right to. Instead of telling ourselves, and our children, to eat everything we have, what we should be doing is taking less in the first place.

Our entire system of food-production, as well as our system for producing pretty much everything else we use, is completely unsustainable. If we truly want to do something to help those who are starving, we need to start with abolishing animal agriculture (you all knew that was coming, right?). It is, by far, the most wasteful way we could possibly obtain food, and it is draining resources from everyone who needs them.

I recently found a version of this ^ that said "mock meat" and "soy pudding" and I really wanted to use that one, but I couldn't find it again. This one still works though.