The food we waste is a feast for most
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Notre Dame classmates, I am writing to you about a topic that affects us every single day of our lives. We have the privilege of eating in a place where the pasta never grows cold, certified chefs stand all day long awaiting our personalized orders, mascot-marked waffles are ready to be baked and slices of pie beg to be claimed. Yet, every time that we eat in the dining halls, we unnecessarily waste an enormous amount of food. We are "American eaters" who have been brought up in a culture of excessiveness. When we are presented with an abundance of food and choices at the dining halls, we take more than we want or need because we have not been taught to do otherwise.
The most characteristic aspect of "American eating" is our wastefulness. Every year, the U.S. wastes over 96 billion pounds of food which amounts to one-fourth of the food produced for world consumption. Of course, such facts are impressive but perhaps they're not as striking as the waste that we know from our own experience. Whenever we sit with others in the dining hall, the majority of our companions will not finish their meals; untouched pizza, half-eaten salads, perfectly good breads and full bowls of cereal will return to the tray lines to be thrown out. We are wasting needlessly. At the end of the each day, Notre Dame turns out the equivalent of 10-12 dining hall dumpsters full of wasted food.
In the meantime, at the end of each day, the dining halls also attempt to share with those who are hungry by donating untouched food to the Center For the Homeless and HOPE Rescue Mission in South Bend. The organization in charge, Foodshare, reports that Notre Dame's output in this instance usually amounts to a few meager trays. According to the Department of Agriculture, 27 percent of the food produced in this country is wasted. We can improve this. Believe it or not, there is plenty that one person can do about the problem of wastefulness and its relationship to hunger. It begins with a simple choice. Becoming aware of this choice could enable us to rebalance the scale of injustice in a small but significant way. All we have to do is eat everything on our plates! In the dining halls, this means taking no more than we want and eating all that we take.
We should ask ourselves to live by the logical principle: No food should go to waste when people are hungry.
A friend of mine learned to relinquish "American eating" habits when she went overseas to live in a small village without electricity or running water. When she returned to us a semester later, we quizzed her with endless questions about life in a third-world country. To the naive question, "What was the food like?" she gave a memorable and poignant response: "Oh, it was often terrible. But you ate everything that you were given. For my host family, a good meal was the nicest gift that they could give me, and they insisted that I had the most and the best of everything. In a developing country, you just can't be picky or ungrateful about what you eat. You are fortunate to even have food before you."
This gestures may seem small, but history has shown that the small acts, such as refusing to give up a seat on a bus, have been enough to inspire greater social justice. If you think that these reasons not to waste are slightly intrusive, you may be right; in the end, giving up wasteful eating will come down to a personal choice.
When we eat in the dining halls, in our dorms, at restaurants or at home, will we remember that food is a blessing? Before that food appeared before us, it was bought, and before it was bought, it was grown or raised from the earth, through a miraculous process requiring time and labor that most of us know nothing about.
One out of 10 children in American households are hungry or at risk for hunger. I had three meals today. Although I don't think should feel guilty for my three meals, neither should I waste the food that I was given. If every single day, we make sure to eat all that we need or take, then every single day, we'll become more conscious of those who don't have food.
This week will be a good time to start changing our habits since it has been declared the week of the National Student Campaign Against Hunger and Homelessness. A group named Students For Clean Plates will be at the dining halls inviting you to sign a petition that asks our government to make a commitment to ending hunger.
Hopefully, this will also remind us that despite the extravagance of our surroundings, we can promote change by ending our "American eating" habits.
Rene M. Mulligan
Junior, Students for Clean Plates
November 12, 1999
All Viewpoint Stories for Monday, November 15, 1999
