Do you waste food

[Pradeep bhatt]

As there is shortage of food in many counties , I want to know whether ranchers waste food. I throw some from my office canteen's afternoon meal (you guessed it quality is bad)but none that I prepare in the evening.

[Rambo Prasad]

I don't waste...It is not right to waste food when so many people are starving...

[Pradeep bhatt]

Originally posted by Rambo Prasad:
I don't waste...It is not right to waste food when so many people are starving...

What do you do when food tastes awful. Do you still eat ?

[Arjun Shastry]

Sometimes I used to waste but did not have option as food was really bad.That was in India.Here food is good(though less tasty) so till now I have not wasted except 1/2 incidences.

[Sunny Malik]

Sometime It happens to me when food is really good...
I think that I will eat much more. So I take food in my dish.
Then after eating some I realize I did big mistake.
My apetite is not gonna support so much...
Then it goes wasted. Then I really regret for that..
But It happens sometime.

[Nikos Pougounias]

French super-markets waste 250,000 tons of food every year.
Food of 30 billion euros gets wasted every year in Britain.
Food of 100 billion dollars gets wasted every year in USA, according to Tim Jones.

Let's do better than this!

[fred rosenberger]

how do you define 'waste'? if there is more food on my plate than i want to eat, is it less wasteful if i then go ahead and eat it? all that does is make me fat(er), raises my health care costs, raises everyone else's insurance premiums...

wouldn't it be better to throw that food into a composter? or is that wasteful, too?

[John Smith]

I don't talk. It is not right to waste words when so many people are deaf and mute. I don't urinate. It's not right to waste water when so many people are thirsty. I don't have sex. It's not right to waste sperm when so many women are unable to have children.

[Nitesh Kant]

Originally posted by John Smith:
I don't talk. It is not right to waste words when so many people are deaf and mute. I don't urinate. It's not right to waste water when so many people are thirsty. I don't have sex. It's not right to waste sperm when so many women are unable to have children.

Awesome!!!

BTW, will it be correct to say that "I dont use condom or do self-service and waste sperms". Having unprotected sex probably is not a waste of sperms, after all we are giving it a try !!!

[Arvind Mahendra]

Originally posted by fred rosenberger:
how do you define 'waste'? if there is more food on my plate than i want to eat, is it less wasteful if i then go ahead and eat it? all that does is make me fat(er), raises my health care costs, raises everyone else's insurance premiums...

wouldn't it be better to throw that food into a composter? or is that wasteful, too?

No then you don't get that food on your plate in the first place unless you like having more food on your plate then you can eat.

[Arvind Mahendra]

Originally posted by John Smith:
I don't talk. It is not right to waste words when so many people are deaf and mute. I don't urinate. It's not right to waste water when so many people are thirsty. I don't have sex. It's not right to waste sperm when so many women are unable to have children.

The difference being of course with the above you can't help or hurt the situation anymore unlike the case with not wasting food. your constant urination or abstaining from it wont help anyone who suffers from thirst. Neither would your abstaining from sex or masturbation help anyone get pregnant. With food, however its a different story.

[John Smith]

Originally posted by Arvind Birla:

your constant urination or abstaining from it wont help anyone who suffers from thirst.

I beg to differ. If I didn't urinate too often, I would have preserved the liquids and would not have to drink that much, thus leaving extra water for the needy and poor.

Neither would your abstaining from sex or masturbation help anyone get pregnant.

I disagree with that assertion as well. Instead of wasting the semen, I could have contributed it to a sperm bank, and it would give a good chance to so many childless women in the world.

[Deepak Bala]

Originally posted by John Smith:
I don't talk. It is not right to waste words when so many people are deaf and mute. I don't urinate. It's not right to waste water when so many people are thirsty. I don't have sex. It's not right to waste sperm when so many women are unable to have children.

hehe. classic

Well the idea behind, 'dont waste your food' is that if you did someone could have eaten that instead. Thats kinda faulty logic. It is based on the assumption that if you were to not waste food you are helping the needy.

A better way of doing this would be to ask someone to serve you less food. I think the Malaysian prime minister requested restaurants to serve rice in 1/2 and full servings. This so that Malaysians would not waste rice if they are unable to consume the full cup. I cant remember the actual source of that information so I might be wrong.

[Pradeep bhatt]

Well the idea behind, 'dont waste your food' is that if you did someone could have eaten that instead. Thats kinda faulty logic. It is based on the assumption that if you were to not waste food you are helping the needy.

May not the needy. If you don't waste the food it can be purchased by someone and this becomes important because of the food crisis. This is same as "don't waste electricity"

[Chetan Parekh]

Next world war will be fought for Food and Water.

[Arjun Shastry]

So the countries which are having food shortage will be attacking those who don't have food/water shortage?
India+China is 1/3rd of world population.Though their food/person consumption might be less than some countries, in future they will be comsuming large quatities.Our Agriculture minister is still busy in cricket.

[siva kumar]

I wonder when this thread is going to be deleted!!!

[Ulf Dittmer]

While there may not be actual wars over water, there's already a good deal of violence over it, and likely to be more. The Economist has an interesting article on that this week.

[Pradeep bhatt]

Originally posted by Arjun Shastry:
So the countries which are having food shortage will be attacking those who don't have food/water shortage?
India+China is 1/3rd of world population.Though their food/person consumption might be less than some countries, in future they will be comsuming large quatities.Our Agriculture minister is still busy in cricket.

Why will china and india be consuming more.

[Ulf Dittmer]

Why will china and india be consuming more

That generally happens when countries become more developed. Assuming that the per-head consumption rises to the level already seen in more developed countries, China and India will consume much more water and food by the shear number of their people.

One of the reasons behind the rising food prices now happening worldwide are that less-developed countries (particularly China) switch to fancier food. E.g., 1 kilogram of grain will feed you longer than 1 kilogram of meat, but to get 1 kilogram of meat you need about 8 kilograms of grain as food for the animal (I think this number is for pigs). So more grain is needed to feed the same number of people. (This is simplifying it somewhat, but the underlying logic is correct.)

[Pradeep bhatt]

I understand that as population increases food consumption goes up but Ulf you are saying that number of meat eating people are increasing in India and china or may be they were satisfied with grains because they didn't have enough money. I didn't know that. Thanks.

[Rambo Prasad]

One of the reasons behind the rising food prices now happening worldwide are that less-developed countries (particularly China) switch to fancier food. E.g., 1 kilogram of grain will feed you longer than 1 kilogram of meat, but to get 1 kilogram of meat you need about 8 kilograms of grain as food for the animal (I think this number is for pigs). So more grain is needed to feed the same number of people. (This is simplifying it somewhat, but the underlying logic is correct.)

Good reason to switch to vegetarianism...

[Pradeep bhatt]

Originally posted by Rambo Prasad:


Good reason to switch to vegetarianism...

Yes but if You have been purchasing vegtables in Bengalooru in recent time the quality is declined. Reason being farmers selling their lands.

[Mapraputa Is]

Evan Osnos said in the "The price we pay for China's boom" article,

"And that is a troubling prospect. If China's 1.3 billion people are to live like Americans, says UCLA geographer Jared Diamond, China would double the global environmental impact and demand on natural resources. In other words, the world would need another Earth."

[Mapraputa Is]

Japanese do not waste their food!

[Pradeep bhatt]

You can feed leftover food to cats or dogs if they are around.

[Vikas Kapoor]

Originally posted by Prad Dip:
You can feed leftover food to cats or dogs if they are around.

Dear, We aren't confining our discussion about india.

[Pradeep bhatt]

Originally posted by Vishal Pandya:



Dear, We aren't confining our discussion about india.

Did I say anything wrong. Just because a human does not like something does not mean that animals don't like it.

[Vikas Kapoor]

Originally posted by Prad Dip:


Did I say anything wrong. Just because a human does not like something does not mean that animals don't like it.

Sorry if you get hurt. I meant, Does this happen in other parts of country?
I don't think.

[Pradeep bhatt]

I want clarify that I was talking about pets owned by you and not others.

[Arjun Shastry]

I think not wasting food is ok but its not a perfect solution to food shortage.As far as India is concerned,people waste food but considerably less compared to some developed countries.Govt/agencies should focus on:
1)How to distribute grain/begetables efficiently which does not happen in our country.
if you can recall onion rate was skyrocketed to Rs 50/kg in 2003.This was because of black marketing by big traders and Govt. godowns were full of grain/onion but was infected by rats/rocahes because of imporper distibution and bad policies.and country had to import potatoes from Pakistan.

[Rambo Prasad]

George Bush blames India & China

[Ulf Dittmer]

George Bush blames India & China

While that article is satirical -and badly written, in just about any meaning of the word-, let's leave aside the question of whether the rise of nations and its associated increase in resource consumption is something merely to be acknowledged or something to be criticized.

Fact is -as mentioned before- that especially those two nations -because of their size- contribute to the problem of rising food prices.

Another fact is that bad policies like subsidizing ethanol made from corn, especially in the USA, -instead of the much more efficient ethanol made from sugar cane or sugar beet- also contribute to it, since less agricultural area is available for food crops.

So, there are no easy answers, and no way to apportion blame on one particular party.
[ May 08, 2008: Message edited by: Ulf Dittmer ]

[Akhilesh Trivedi]

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.
Teach him how to fish and he may sit in a boat and drink beer all day.

[siva kumar]

Hi...,

I was trying to avoid posting in this topic... But Ulf this is too much,

[QUOTE] Fact is -as mentioned before- that especially those two nations -because of their size- contribute to the problem of rising food prices.

I don't know anything about china... but this is really ridiculous In India we are trying to avoid hunger-deaths and we have been living on merger meals ( distributed by Ration system).

And you guys accuse us of causing food scarcity!!! This is monstrous and equivalent to the famous quote " If they cannot find bread to eat, let them eat cakes.

India has been the 2nd highest populated country in the World from early 60's onwards. How come suddenly it is possible that we are causing food scarcity.

And for your info middle class in India is not suddenly new entity but was in existence from early 1940 onwards.
And still indian middle class is very fragile and they struggle between food and mouth.

[Pradeep bhatt]

Does anyone what are the food items that India imports and which among them is seeing increased consumption. Does anyone know ?

[Ulf Dittmer]

Nobody is accusing anybody of anything. We're talking about contributing factors here. Let's leave the emotion out of it.

India has been the 2nd highest populated country in the World from early 60's onwards. How come suddenly it is possible that we are causing food scarcity.

Because it hasn't been 40 years that Indian GDP has risen strongly - that has happened much more recently. And where GDP (and especially GDP per head) rises, it becomes possible for more people to consume more food, especially more expensive food that also happens to be more resource-intensive to farm (like meat).

There's no denying that there are still a lot of poor and undernourished people in India, although that number has been falling a good deal. That doesn't change the fact that the large number of people becoming richer contribute to the food scarcity, though. As I mentioned above, China contributes even more to this situation than India.

India: GDP per capita growth

India: Percentage of population under the poverty line

[siva kumar]

How much does India imports staple food items ( mainly Rice and wheat) from out-side world - This is a critical question that needs to be answered.

1970's onwards due to green revolution strategy india has been nearly 90% self sufficient in terms of food production.

As far the Food price rise (Scarcity) around the Globe it is due to the poor distribution and could also be due to artificial scarcity created by vested interests for increasing the profits.

I still think as far as food production is concerned we are still meeting demand with supply

[Arvind Mahendra]

I think its just plain wrong to be using what politicians said about an issue such as this no matter how large he or she may be. You couldn't do so at least not without first examining to whom he was addressing, what if any political mileage is to be gained from saying it and does he possess real expertise in the area. In short, did he really mean it?

[Deepak Bala]

The topics is about whether you waste food. The topic is not about what George bush thinks about the phenomenon or about how any particular country contributes to food wastage. Lets keep discussions that may fuel anger out of this.

As for what was said so far I am sure no one intended to hurt anyone on purpose.