An English woman said she found it strange that a hotel in Singapore had put up a sign saying buffet diners would have to pay for uneaten food on their plates.
My reply was:
"Why should it be odd when Singapore has a reputation for being strict?
"Buffet-style dining means being able to go back for further helpings, so why take more food than necessary? It’s just bad social sense.
"Wasting food is a terrible practice, especially since there are so many people going hungry throughout the world. Shockingly, too many people don’t bat an eyelid when it comes to wasting food (or anything for that matter), even when they have to pay for it themselves, but especially when it's all one price anyway.
"I’ve often thought such people should be sent off to places where there’s a shortage (food, daily needs), for them to experience at first hand what it’s like to live in such conditions. A bit like making motorists go and be cyclists for a while, to experience at first hand for themselves how hairy some motorists make it for cyclists on the road.
"For buffet, customers pay a fixed sum of money however little or much they eat (or leave uneaten), but the caterers pay for the whole lot (eaten or binned). I totally applaud the hotel for taking that stand."
Of course one should not waste food. But one should not lose common sense either. My grandmother would never thrown away any old food. If nobody else in the family would eat it because it was too old, she would eat it herself. But one day by eating some very old food she became quite sick. A larger amount of waste of resources surely followed as a consequence. The moral of the story is that there may be situations where wasting some food is the lesser of two evils. To address the specific case of the Singapore “All you can eat” buffet, suppose someone became sick due to the food they chose. Eating it all would mean becoming more sick. Now penalizing them for leaving the food on the plate would not seem such a fair thing to do.
ReplyDeleteI know that with a scientific mind like yours, you'd want to challenge generalisations and all that, but of course common sense will have to apply, don't be silly.
DeleteI am not sure if my instinct to avoid extremism is due to a scientific mind. "Aurea mediocritas" is something I learned from my father, who was definitely not a scientist.
ReplyDelete