Short answer – yes. And yet, we too seldom think that way, as a new study by WRAP shows. Surveying over 5,000 UK consumers, they find that more than a quarter regularly leave food behind on the plate – either because it’s too much or because they didn’t like it – and that 57% find nothing wrong with that. Inspired by these numbers, I played around a bit (I am trying to teach myself how to make compelling infographics) and came up with this fun interactive graphic. Unfortunately, wordpress doesn’t allow me to embed JavaScript objects, so here are the main screen shots – but for the full picture, click through to the graphic! If you are even more interested in the topic, feel free to read this Guardian summary or the entire report. And let me know how you like my first-ever homemade infographic 😉
All that wasted food….it breaks my heart! What I think we should focus on here is simple: it’s normal to want to take leftovers home. The portion size may be hard to change because it varies so much from person to person, how they feel that day, who they’re with etc. But why do (some) people think it’s odd to take what you can’t finish home? They’re paying for it, it was produced, prepared with care (I hope) so WHY waste it? :
It seems like in different cultures it’s a lot more frequent and completely ordinary to do so: my Chinese, Taiwanese, Thai, Vietnamese friends do not hesitate to take food back home if they can’t finish it when they’re out. 🙂