Just eat it!

Have you ever thought of how many of your groceries end up in the litter every day? Working as a waitress for the last two summer holidays showed me: We drop too much. People ordered food, but hardly touched it. I had to throw away whole dishes, just because my guest’s eyes were bigger than their stomach. I perfectly remember one Italian family. Their four kids wanted to have a Schnitzel with french fries. The Schnitzel in the restaurant I was working for is really big. I knew they already had a starter and would surely love to eat dessert after the main course. I offered them to share a plate, but they insisted on having one per person. Their parents told me to listen to them. You surely can imagine the end of the story: four Schnitzel found their way right into the garbage.

Some restaurant-chains try to stop this trend. One of them is Nando’s. If you eat there, you will see that dishes for one person are pretty expensive. As soon as you order a plate to share you eat very cheap. There is enough on your plate to get your stomach full, but you don’t overdo it. Unfortunately there is no Nando’s in Austria. Still, you have got enough possibilities to eat cheap and eco-friendly in Graz: The L’Osteria serves pizza way too big for one person to eat. You can take it with you if you want to order one for you alone, or share it.

Another problem of our throwing-away culture is the way we behave as customers of grocery-markets. We often xpect to be able to buy everything we want to at every time. We expect the vegetables to look as fresh and appealing in the evening as they did in the morning. This is why many groceries are thrown away, no matter if they are edible or not. It would take too much time to explain all aspects of this problem here, so I highly recommend watching this movie:

http://www.foodwastemovie.com/about/

This couple started an experiment called Just eat it. They had to survive for six months by eating discarded food. The only exception of this rule was if meals were served by family or friends. Their struggle and experiences with it is really worth watching.