To Waste or Not To Waste, That Is The Question

I woke up this morning at 6:20am.  It’s breakfast time I tell myself and stumble, still half asleep, into the kitchen looking for something to eat.  I look through the fridge and find some cheese and a few vegetables, so far so good.  Then it hits me, right above the fridge is a bag of bread that we bought on Saturday at the farmers market.  It’s amazingly good, but it doesn’t last too long and we forgot all about it.  So what’s my first thought?  Some of you may have already guessed it.  “Better eat it all now before it goes bad.”

How many times has that thought gotten us into trouble?  How many times have you sat at a restaurant, felt full but still finished your plate because you didn’t want to waste anything?  How many times have you finished off that chocolate cake because you knew it was about to be thrown away?  How about your partner’s leftovers?  Eaten much of those lately, not because you were hungry, but because you knew they weren’t going to finish their food?

Four years after my little health meltdown, four years of eating healthy and working out and I still fall prey to this mindset.  Four years later and I still think that overeating is ok if it means less waste.  So how can I blame you, my readers, if you make the same mistakes.  Well, rather than blame, let’s talk solutions.  How did I get past this little issue you ask?  Easy, I just reminded myself that I wasn’t saving anything.  By eating it before it got wasted, I was still wasting it.  I didn’t need that food, I certainly didn’t need those calories.  Eating that bread was the exact same thing as throwing it away.  Except instead of making my garbage bag bigger, it was doing the same to my rear end.

Eating something to prevent it from going to waste IS WASTE.  You are not saving that food.  You are not preventing it from going to waste.  You are not reducing any amount of waste.  You are simply making things worse, creating the same amount of waste AND making yourself unhealthy in the process.  I know it feels bad to throw away perfectly good food.  I know it feels wrong to let something go bad, but let it go.  You’re not doing anyone a favor by eating it.  Those starving kids and homeless families are not going to cheer you as you walk down the street.  They’re not going throw flowers and thank you for not letting that loaf of bread go to waste.  No one will thank you for saving those Chinese leftovers from going bad.

So yes, I put the bread back in its place on top of the fridge after eating a small portion.  I didn’t eat too much and I didn’t give in to temptation.  Tomorrow, I’ll check it again and, if it’s good, I’ll eat a bit more.  If it’s bad, I’ll throw it away and I’ll feel good about myself.  I might make a note to buy a bit less next time, but I’ll still feel good knowing that I stopped myself from making a mistake.  That bread was already wasted but at least I didn’t make a bad situation worse by eating it.

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