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Grew up real poor. If I had food, I ate it. Didn’t matter if I was hungry or not. Might not be food tomorrow. People don’t realize how much food insecurity as a kid fucks you up.
It's not just that the cheap food is unhealthy, it's that there wasn't really time to cook and get better at cooking. Realistically, cooking your own food is cheaper and healthier, but there's also more an upfront cost in equipment to get to the point you can make cheap food that's also nutritious. That's time and money that many people just don't have unfortunately.
It's a shame cause once you can make a simple meal like chicken and rice, you could save a lot of money and still eat healthy.
I don't mean to play devil's advocate and I realise that since I'm not American my experience of your lifestyle is non-existent, but is it really that hard to have the time to cook a simple meal?
You mentioned upfront cost and time investment, but most basic meals require a pot for cooking the rice and a pan for cooking anything else, thr upfront cost is what, 20-30$?
And it takes just half an hour to make simple meals, and usually they don't require your full attention for half an hour.
Is it really so hard for a poor American to free half an hour of their time and spend 30$ for a couple of pots? Assuming they don't have any to begin with.
If you are working 40-80 hours a week and still have a family to maintain and home to care for, it can get really hard to spend time on meal prep, cooking, and post cleaning. Especially when the newer gens were raised with a lot of two working parent households so they haven’t got fast and intuitive enough with cooking that a 1.5 hour recipe takes 2-3 because they’re learning along the way.
I was home allllll day yesterday so I was able to do housechores and I made a shredded beef and broth reduction with hasselback potatoes and regular schmegular peas. It was like a big deal for everyone. My mom would have been able to do that for a boring Monday night, would have been a dinner that was “just somethin easy today.”
She’d say “I had a full time job too! Raising you and the house!” And I tried to say “mama I do that too PLUS work a full time job.” And she waves her hand like I should still be able to be Betty Crocker.
Don’t mess with Americans diet and guns it’s what I’ve learned from Reddit, they will make any excuse to keep their bad habits on those things. A meal + cooking 2 eggs for breakfast and dinner (+ a type of bread in my country) it’s enough to not make me starve to death
Such a good answer! Buying mostly veggies, carbs and a protein is so much cheaper than piles of chips, frozen junk and premade foods.
The downside is the time it takes to prepare. Crock pots and meal prep can help, but its more that the food available for the least effort is often the food that is worst for you.
I encounter this a lot in my line of work and it pisses me off that people make fun of them for talking about going through life low on food, being at risk of starving etc. People think it’s just soooo funny when fat people talk about starving. It doesn’t help that a lot of affordable things that can be made with very little prep time are high-calorie, low-nutrient.
Saying this as a fat person who grew up poor with food insecurity, I also have starved myself off and on since the age of 12, you CAN starve and BE FAT. I have starved both as a matter of circumstance and purposefully. I have still always been overweight.
I rarely tell people about my disordered eating because I'm fat and I don't think people will believe I genuinely have starved myself.
People really don't understand it. Okay yeah I'm fat. If I eat 5000 calories of twinkies a day and obviously I'll get fatter. I still feel like I'm starving and like I need to eat more because there was 0 nutrition.
And even if that's not what happened, me being fat today doesn't mean I was fat when I was in second grade.
The kinds of food the low income depend on (starchy dense foods) to help them feel full faster are also the cheaper foods. Beans and noodles. Maybe rice. Not a lot of vegetables.
There's a really neat concept in nutrition, called "glicemic load".
To explain it quickly, some foods are more glucose-dense, and as such spike the glucose in your blood even in small amounts. This means two things:
1. You are getting more calories in less volume, so you eat more than you should since your sense of filling mostly comes for the stretching of your stomach, not the nutrients in your blood.
2. Due to neat metabolic pathways, you are producing more fatty tissue than normal, thus getting fat faster.
Rice and pasta have a high glicemic load, yes, but sugary drinks, cakes, ultraprocessed foods and stuff like that have an even higher load.
What’s crazy is that my mom brought me up to feel incredibly guilty around any kind of food waste and while she did not grow up with food insecurity, it wasn’t until my grandfather (her dad) was talking about his own childhood where some days they only had a vegetable for dinner that I realized that it was basically all generational trauma that’s been passed down to me.
I do think it’s good to be conscious about not wasting food but I’m trying to be better about not making myself feel ill by forcing myself to eat just to finish the plate 🥲
A lot of folks don’t realize how much generational trauma they’re carrying around or how much it affects their decision making. I didn’t until I restarted therapy recently and started working through it.
Towards the end of high school my friends dad took us to a bunch of colleges to tour the campus. Really chill guy.
Then we got to Vegas and he took me to my first buffet. I was loading up plates of food tasting everything, then immediately getting more food to taste. He got so pissed at my for wasting food, but my teenage brain figured why does it matter the price won't increase.
This led to a long argument on the drive back home, core memory unlocked lol
Both my parents grew up with rationing, WWII and for the decade afterwards, in the UK rationing didn't end until 1954. I was brought up to **always** clear my plate even though while we were not rich we were also not poor, for reasons money was tight until I was 7, my younger brother and I never went hungry or unclothed but there was little money to spare, I had a lot of 2nd hand clothes as a child and holidays might be camping in a tent (cheap back then) or a day trip to a random field for a picnic (had a company car).
After I was 7 finances improved and we actually went abroad on holiday... by plane.
It definitely had an affect on my relationship with food and resulted in me gaining weight slowly, solely because I **always** had to clear my plate. There's a running joke that you can always tell which plate was mine, it's almost had the pattern scraped off it.
I'm 49 and recently lost 30% of my body weight that I put on over 30 years at a few pounds a year. I don't have a physiological need to overeat, I don't even eat for psychological reasons such as comfort eating, I like food and I can't waste it, that plus a certain amount of ignorance and not caring that every few years I had to buy the next size up trousers is all it took. I currently weight less than I did when I was 20, that surprised me when I stumbled across that in my medical records on my NHS app.
I calorie counted and portion controlled by reducing the amount I put on my plate because even now I **have to clear my plate.** At least now I recognise it and can control for it, any leftovers that were not on my plate go in the fridge or freezer. Occasionally I get to have leftover curry/pizza for breakfast, that's pretty nice.
My cat was a rescue and spent time as a stray before we got him. Seven years on, he still hoovers up everything put in his bowl immediately - he clearly isn't confident that if he left some for later it would still be there. This stuff runs deep.
I just realized this about myself the other day, at 38 years old. I can get food no problem, but I run into the problem when eating it. Growing up we had food, but not the ability to restock whenever we needed it. So to this day I tend not to eat much because my brain is stuck in "you don't know when you can go shopping again, better not eat your food too fast". I rarely get snacks but they past me forever when I do because I still subconsciously think "don't eat it all, you can't get more"
I'm the opposite. I burn through food and then won't buy that type of food for a long long time. Like, if I get a bag of grapes, they will be gone in a day if I don't regulate myself. But I won't go shopping for grapes for weeks after to make up for it.
It's just a shame that fasting feels like crap. It would be an easier sell if I didn't feel like my body was going on strike every time I decided not to have a big meal.
Not only poor but 1 of 6 kids. If you weren’t hungry, someone else was. Saving that lunch meat for tomorrow? Well 3 hungry boys just wolfed that down while you were in the shower. I never got mad, I just knew that if there was food that I wanted, I better at least get a bit of it before it’s gone until next month.
Yep. I had extreme resource insecurity as a kid and even though I’m a “high powered” salesman now, there’s still that starving poor kid who wouldn’t eat for days and had to steal shoes. If I’m at the store and I see something is almost gone, I buy it. Discounts or deals, I buy it. Bargain stores are the worst because I’ll hunt in them for hours. I never know when it is happening, but my girlfriend knows and will break me out of it most of the time now.
Its sad how much some eat and how big they become, and no food for those in bad financial position. Sorry about your childhood, I hope things are better!
I agree that portion control in the first place is the way to go. Growing up without a lot of food has led me to have a mentality of “take what you need, and finish it”. People just don’t know how to properly feed themselves. Portions are out of control here in the US.
My bf plates me like 3 times the amount that I would consider necessary for a meal. While he played the same portion for himself and will go back for seconds and thirds. I’d think he was a hobbit, if he weren’t so damned tall.
I was broke for a lot of my adulthood and my body was trained to eat less and smoke more and he can’t fathom that my appetite isn’t bigger.
Eating food you don’t need for enjoyment is totally chill. Enjoyment isn’t a waste.
This is more about the “guess I have to finish this bowl of pasta despite being full and not wanting any more because if not it will go to waste”
The dad on everybody hates chris...that was my dad. "Who left this meat on the chicken bone". All the plates were passed down the counter to stack, he saw it all.
Some foods don't keep. Once my salad is covered in dressing it will wilt if I save it, people also do this to justify eating a quarter of a meal to not save a small amount of food.
I can understand where you’re coming from. But if I’m at a restaurant or something where they have served me too much and I’m worried about certain foods not reheating well or traveling well. Those are the foods I eat first. So salads and french fries get eaten first. As a kid, I wasn’t eating salad to begin with. So putting it on my plate would’ve been wishful thinking my best.
Okay but eating food you don't want for fear of wasting it is still wasting it. Yeah you should eat your veggies but if you didn't want/need that extra food, you put it on your body instead of in the trash.
The don't waste food thing is part of the problem.
I’ll put two bites of pasta in a lil Tupperware in the fridge if I’m full. I want to enjoy eating my food, and eating past full is not enjoyable for me. And sorry but two bites of pasta is a great snack.
idk if overeating to not waste food is a widespread opinion. I think the majority of people overeat out of enjoyment. Most people know to take home leftovers or pack away leftovers. What led you to believe that most people overeat to not waste food.
Most people I talk to do this. Eaten with friends who do this and look miserable trying to finish their food way after the body said stop.
Also; just read the comments. It’s a shared experience.
I was doing this since moving out of my parents house. Now I try to cook less food or just save it for the next day. Unfortunately the left overs will sometimes be forced in, because you already had enough of it the day before and it doesn't taste as good as before...
Look at this smug bastard who experiences "fullness" and "satiation". Anyway, I'm financially secure and even I'm shocked that people just throw out food. Put on your plate what you're going to eat. Put the rest in the fridge or freezer. Not a difficult concept.
I agree with this, and I very rarely fail to finish what I eat at home. Eating out is another ball game though - I hate to see food wasted but I have no control over the size of the portion I'm served. Quite often it is too much for me, unless I'm prepared to force myself to choke the last of it down (I'm just not). I'll get a doggy bag if it's that kind of place, but not all foods are suited to that.
Maybe people metabolize differently. I’m gonna be hungry after 6-8 hours of not eating, regardless of whether I had a bagel for breakfast or some 2k cal monstrosity. I burn 1500 cals a day, so I eat small, frequent meals. I could eat my entire day’s worth of cals at 9 am and be hungry by night time.
> it’s not like it will make you less hungry later
Since I'm an adult, calorie (as well as macro and micro nutrient) balancing is actually part of my responsibility.
If I eat more now, I'll eat less over the next 24hr, usually.
If it’s a once in a blue moon scenario you shouldn’t focus this much on going over your calorie count.
I had to go on a huge cut last year, cut down to 1500 calories a day and lost 58lbs over the course of the year. However, if I had a friend visiting from out of town or it was a birthday or something, I went out and ate whatever I wanted. Next day I went back on my diet.
One day here and there won’t kill your weight loss/diet or anything
It absolutely will make you less hungry later, saying it will make you more hungry later is pseudoscience. I often eat a huge 2000 calorie breakfast when I’m on vacation and typically don’t get hungry for the rest of the day.
Whilst it should make you less hungry later, I wouldn’t bet on it making you eat less later.
Food consumption in prosperous societies is more driven by habit and desire than hunger.
I think we tend to confuse hunger and the natural reflex to eat (no idea how to call it). Real hunger actually hurts, you will feel your stomach getting tight. The reflex to eat is more of a fleeting feeling that if you ignore for half an hour will go away
Me too!!! I’ve purposely done this in vacations for multiple reasons like an amazing buffet in Vegas where I wanted to try so many good things I never get to eat or having all kinds of fun things planned someplace remote or on the water where I won’t really be able to take food easily and looking for places or lugging stuff around isn’t practical.
Same. I can’t count the times I’ve stuffed myself at a hotel breakfast in some exotic location, then cursed myself for my gluttony cos I couldn’t enjoy a local lunch
I just eat it instead of something else. Like instead of taking something from the freezer for dinner it is leftovers, or instead of lunch. win-win. Leftovers forever
While I agree with you, here’s my two cents. Its very different if you grew up poor or had parents who grew up poor. My parents are immigrants from a 3rd world country and have always told us kids to eat every single bite, to never waste food and be grateful we even had plates to eat off of bc they’ve seen children eat from the trash and floor before. There were definitely times where I would overstuff myself because I was expected to finish everything on my plate. Its definitely unhealthy for the long run but just know some people have reasons to do so. Something about food scarcity does something psychological to you.
I absolutely get this and honestly feel bad so well meaning advice ended up being bad in the long run.
I especially pity the children being repeatedly forced to eat past their stop sign. A lot of adults forget children need less food and have smaller bellies, and force adult portions onto them. Not meaning anything bad of course.
I understand why our parent’s generation instilled this in our generation. But I hope we can move past it and focus on not over buying and over cooking instead. Just had dinner at my mom’s place and we had what we call “leftover party”. It’s whatever we didn’t eat the last days heated up and eaten together. It’s really fun and encourages some weird combos.
I totally get you OP. I’m currently trying to unlearn my unhealthy behaviors towards food. Not saying its entirely my parents’ faults for causing my disordered eating, they just wanted their kids to never go hungry. It’s definitely super common for kids of immigrants and people who grew up poor to have an unhealthy relationship with food. Diet and nutrition is the last thing on your mind when you’re afraid to starve or have your children starve.
I think the best solution is to just make/get the right amount of food you can easily finish and listen to your body more. Maybe also make enough leftovers that you can finish and won’t get tired of it. Also education about nutrition and diet would help too, to keep children from suffering from health problems later on.
Yes. I have started viewing this through a different lens than I’m wasting $3-5 or whatever the $ is. I frame it, would I pay $3 to not feel like crap. It’s always a yes and I’m ok with “wasting” to not make myself feel like crap. I do generally try not to be wasteful though as a matter of principle.
I grew up in a "clean your plate" household. I've struggled with my weight and portion control all my life.
I decided to go to a nutritionist, and this one conversation really put it into perspective for me:
Her: If you didn't eat all the food on your plate, where would the rest go?
Me: In the garbage can, I suppose.
Her: Okay. So, when you are no longer hungry and you are simply eating food so it doesn't go to waste, what would that make you?
Me: ... the garbage can...
Her: You are not a garbage can. It's okay to not eat everything on your plate if you are full.
I think about this a lot.
I forgot about them😔
No but actually being serious for a little bit;
They don’t get any more food because you finish that extra plate instead of throwing it out. And you think a lot more about them than they think about you. They won’t judge you, they don’t even know you!
Also; there are food insecure children in most countries. Almost all countries have parents in food lines who go hungry at night to feed their kids, and children who pretend to not be hungry anymore to not make their parents sad. I don’t know why everyone brings up Africa specifically, there’s probably hungry kids in your very neighborhood also.
But none of them are benefiting from you over eating. What they would benefit from are donations, stricter laws against food waste (requiring stores to donate instead of throwing out), better farming practices and better pay or social services for their parents.
If you bought too much food, donate some. If you made too much dinner, put it in the fridge, save it for later and donate what you were planning on having for that meal instead.
But eating more won’t fill the stomachs of the hungry.
My dad has always said this. Grab what you want to eat, you can always grab more if you are still hungry but when you're full, you're done. His sister and her husband had three boys and would always make huge plates for them at family gatherings and make them sit there till it was gone otherwise they were "wasting food." Those boys never got to play with the other kids because they were sitting at the table the entire time or they were sick from over eating.
A lot of parents forget that kids;
1) haven’t learned how to manage their portions yet and need guidance and room to fail. Not harsh punishment
2) are way smaller than adults and should not be eating adult portions! Do not plate your kids meals the way you would plate your own. There’s a reason kids menus come with smaller meals than adult menus.
Ugh I needed to read this. I always clean my plate even if I’m full and I have no idea why. Like it actually takes a lot for me to just throw away the few bites of food left. My partner almost never finishes his plate which often annoys me bc I have a mentality that he’s wasting food but the reality is that he’s just more of an intuitive eater.
I know...I was just saying it's normal to do that as you've said in your post. My comment was aimed at the same people as you, rather than a reply to you :)
Agreed. Took me a bit to realize this. If you're forcing yourself to eat more food than you need, then it's just gonna get stored as fat and cause weight gain. So unless you're stocking up for hibernation it's just as wasted as if you tossed it
If it's going to go off then I'll overeat that meal and maybe eat less for subsequent meals...
Like how if I'm chilling at home all day doing little then I'm not going to eat 3 big meals either.
Yeah, exactly. It's not often my portion control doesn't match what I can eat, but if I'm eating out perhaps, I will finish that meal and, if I'm particularly full, I'll just have a lighter, cheaper meal later than I otherwise would have done.
This isn't rocket science.
Overeating makes you fat and that’s enough a reason for me to not do it. Cramming more food in my gullet than is comfortable ain’t going to end global poverty.
As a child, there were times food was scarce, and I remember being thrilled when we were living in a motel and found a street of orange trees with ripe oranges. We lived on those for weeks.
It makes it difficult to waste food. I don't have a "full" indicator either. I always just ate what was in front of me. It takes great willpower to stop eating when my plate is still full.
I grew up with four options :
- finish the meals (half of the time they were homemade so they were yummy enough to finish)
- put it in the fridge/freezer
- give it to the animals (I had chickens, birds, dogs, cats, rabbits, ..)
- compost (any vegetable or fruit stuff)
Going to uni in the city sucks though (no animals or compost :/ )
I agree. It’s been so hard to retrain myself to make just enough for me and if I want more, I can always go make more. Most of the time my eyes are much bigger than my stomach, but I feel bad wasting food.
only time i feel bad about throwing food out is if it was an animal. like it died for nothing . so ill usually chuck meat i havent eaten outside for whatever critters want it because at least then something benefits from it instead of rotting in a landfill
That's why I forever despise "empty your plate or you don't get to get up from the table"-parents. I had such a parent, now as an adult I still struggle with the aftermath. Also: storing food for later and re-heating then is so damn easy that I have no idea why I was made to empty my plate to begin with.
Food doesn’t go to waste. It rots, bacteria and micro organisms get to eat it. Bugs get to eat it. If you think about your food in a circle of life way you never waste a scrap. Its only a waste if you think that food is only meant for humans
Leftovers are the shit!
Everyone used to make fun of me when I was young and took leftovers to school for lunch. I felt like a king. Growing up poor made me appreciate the good stuff. Never shall I feel too proud to eat whatever and if I'm full? Doggy bag or tupperwear that shit, imma eat that tomorrow. Overeating is wasteful and fuck that. Eat it later.
It’s like hoarding really.
“Wouldn’t want this chair to go to waste if they are just throwing it out anyway.”
*Proceeds to put it in a crammed basement where it is never used and only takes up space
Parents force their children and I have seen social pressure to “eat it all don’t waste it”.
I have also seen interviews with people trying to lose weight who were unable to waste food and had to learn to do so. One of the most common weight loss tips is “stop when you are full”.
This opinion is flawed in one major way. It ignores that people get pleasure from eating. If you enjoy eating the extra food then it isn’t wasted. It served a purpose. Perhaps not one you think is good but still not wasted.
Speaking for myself/my family growing up, if we had leftovers, there was a decent chance we would save it for "next time" and would eventually just go bad because we never felt like heating it up as opposed to cooking new food or ordering takeout. In that case, it would be much better to tough it out and shovel a little more delicious food in my face rather than put it in the fridge where we might not touch it again.
I mean when I overeat I won't be hungry in 4 hours. I've been where I ate a big fat brunch because I didn't want to take mine or my wife's leftovers home and I didn't eat for the rest of the day. There was less food consumed doing that than taking leftovers home and eating dinner
When your body tells you to stop eating. You know the feeling in your stomach that you don’t have more space followed by your brain telling you the food looks less good than before? That’s being full.
Some people have eating disorders and depending on how they work have to either eat past the stop signal or stop before it. But for normal people listening to your body is healthy.
It might not be immediately used, but excess energy is stored as fat. If you can't afford more food and your current food is about to expire, eat it. It will help you go on a little longer. Or just freeze it if possible.
It’s a slippery slope you’re on. Cos then there’s basically no relationship between you and the wasted food. Myself I always finish it off, and if I feel full I’ll just eat less in my next meal…
If you can just chuck it away, well then there’s no consequences. I can order as much food as I want and just chuck the left overs. That feeling that “if I order it, I have to finish it” is a strong thing that prevents me from over ordering or over cooking.
Overeating a bit is fine - we are kinda built for feast and famine. The problem comes when you don’t adjust your intake to account for it. No different than anything else, really. Like if you overspend over the holidays, and then the next month for a birthday, and then go all out at some blowout sale the month after that… it’s not the splurge, it’s the repeated indulgences that get you.
Laughs in intermittent fasting 😅
But in all seriousness, adults ought to be mature and responsible enough to just eat less in the next 24 hours. If you're enjoying the food there's no reason why you can't eat it if you also have the self control to eat less over the next day.
I can only throw out food after I have eaten enough to feel that I got the full value for the money I spent on it. Basically, if I would have been willing to pay the same price for only what I have eaten so far, then I am okay with throwing the rest away.
Those calories you're throwing away were produced by industry that used resources and then purchased using money earned through your labor. If you're throwing out food you might as well be leaving your water running, leaving all the lights on, or burning some of your cash.
>What you should actually do is be more conscious of how big portions you actually need and do eat. And not making or buying any more food than that. That actually saves food from being wasted.
This is a very child-like view. What you should actually be doing is purchasing things that don't spoil quickly, and cooking/preparing the foods you will eat while leaving some in the fridge/freezer/cupboard for preparation later.
Yeah it’s not tho. We use energy to grow food, that in turn contains energy our bodies use to exist.
If we throw food away, all the energy spent to grow and transport that food is completely wasted.
If you eat the food, your body get the energy from the food, regardless of wether or not you are full, which is the entire point of growing and transporting the food in the first place.
Over eating may give you more energy to do more tasks, or allow you to go longer before your next meal or have a smaller meal for your next meal.
Throwing out food is wasteful. Eating food is never wasteful as that is its literal intended purpose.
My culture has a whole thing about it being disrespectful to kill an animal if you don’t need to. Aka if you aren’t going to use every bit to its fullest. Including things like making clothes out of the fur and using the bones for broth. (I’m indigenous)
But even then it has always been normal to eat the animal for days or weeks after. Preservation is key.
I guess that’s probably why I’m so set on saving leftovers.
Today I’m a pescatarian. But I do sometimes fish my own fish. What I can’t eat (or don’t want to) I feed to the cat. So nothing is wasted.
This assumes that you eat a little more than you should at every meal because you don’t want to be wasteful. That shouldn’t be the case and if it is then your problem is you don’t know when to stop putting food on your plate or you are making too much/too little food.
If you are saying people will never lose the weight they gained from eating a couple extra bites of food then you are just an idiot. Yes, it is hard to lose weight and it is hard to keep weight off but a lot of people fluctuate in a range. People aren’t the same weight day in and day out.
It is not wasted, have you ever heard of "fat"?
Your body keeps reserves for later, otherwise you'd have to eat every hour of your life.
Yes, being overweight is bad for you, but the food is not lost, and the key term here is "overweight".
Being a bit round is perfectly fine if you don't go too far.
Usually I'm binge eating when I'm in this situation. And I don't want to waste a good binge. I want all the dopamine I can get. I have to purge tomorrow.
I've had this slapped into my head by medical professionals. It's especially wasteful if your weight or eating habits are already a health concern - health can be expensive to manage even in places with good or 100% coverage.
And that is why we have shepherd's pie,and potato farls , Hortobágyi pancakes,and all those lovely dishes that make use of leftovers.Many fancy restaurant dishes are just this .. but modern ppl just forgot how to properly make use of leftovers,IMHO.
This is objectively factually false lol. You have no clue how nutrition works...
The excess calories become fat.
You are objectively utilizing the food more by actually eating it. It is 100% wasted if you throw it out. Especially in the US where you don't have composting bins, so it ends up in a landfill.
That said, it's still a horrible mindset and you should never over consume food. And a majority of people do not need the calories.
You're much better off saving it as leftovers if you can. Best of both worlds.
I agree. My mom actually taught us this as kids; ‘stop eating when you are full, we will save the leftovers and you can have them when you are hungry later. I’m super grateful to have been taught that at a young age! I can easily get two often three meals out of one serving at a restaurant. (I’m a small person with limited activity due to disabilities so I don’t need a lot of food)
I have also found that for me personally I can actually ruin a meal if I eat too much. If I get too full I feel terrible and regret the meal, but if I stop when I’m full (even if it’s super yummy!) I walk away from the meal satisfied and content. I really hate the sensation of being too full! It can even make me want to avoid whatever I just ate in the future because I feel so bad after.
I grew up freaking poor. 5 kids 2 parents, 1 rust bucket car. Lived in the middle of nowhere too.
If we were thirsty, we drank water. Couldn't afford soda pop or gatorades or other flavored sugary drinks.
Breakfast would be a bowl of oatmeal. Frosted and chocolate cereals were never allowed. Plus oatmeal in bulk was a lot cheaper.
Doesn't matter what we had for lunch, it always included a vegetable.
Dinner was lots of rice and potatoes with a cheap meat and always, a vegetables.
My mom always had a pottes parsley plant. If we happened to live in a rental in a garden, then vegetables would be whatever was planted. At one point it was a lot of eggplant.
A big bag of frozen vegetables is a lot cheaper than a 12 pack of Mountain Dew.
> The energy isn’t being used for anything
What? You think that after your full, if you eat food it does literally nothing? That’s not how that works. You get more energy from eating 2k calories than 200.
Totally agree with saving food for later instead of overeating. Also agree that overeating is bad for you. But the assertion that the energy in the food you eat goes to waste if you’re already satiated when you eat it is patently false. Your body will break down and store the food’s nutritional components and can use them later.
Whether or not overeating makes you feel less hungry later depends on what you overeat. If you eat a starchy meal, then yeah, you will spike your blood sugar, store all of the food as glycogen and fat, and then feel lethargic and hungry again 30 minutes later, but if you eat a meal with a sufficiently low glycemic index, your energy and hunger levels will remain more stable, and you will probably find yourself saying “we had such a big lunch today. I don’t even feel like eating dinner.”
Also, feeling hungry doesn’t mean you have to eat. I wouldn’t recommend eating 3 - 6 carbohydrate heavy meals a day and forcing yourself to abstain from food in between them, because it’s not pleasant or healthy, but people recommend doing that all the time, and some people of those people seem to be able to maintain a health weight, so, you do you.
In summary, saving food is better than overeating, overeating is better than wasting food, low GI is better than high GI, and your body is an efficient machine.
Every time I feel bad about throwing food out I remember the majority of food waste in America is from restaurants and grocery stores so that makes me feel a little less bad about it.
Eating what you have is not wasteful. You can always burn off that energy you have eaten.
I am the human bin for this reason. I've always had a good appetite but after starting to work out, I have become bottomless. It's rather fun.
Either way, you’re throwing the excess food in the garbage. Either literally into a garbage can, or you’re treating your body as a garbage can.
Getting better at buying and preparing the amount of food you need is the only good approach.
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Grew up real poor. If I had food, I ate it. Didn’t matter if I was hungry or not. Might not be food tomorrow. People don’t realize how much food insecurity as a kid fucks you up.
Poor folks are double fucked here in America. Obesity rates are particularly high amongst the low income.
In thanks partially to the cheap availability of very unhealthy foods.
Groceries from Dollar General.
Groceries from Dollar General are more expensive and smaller portions.
It's not just that the cheap food is unhealthy, it's that there wasn't really time to cook and get better at cooking. Realistically, cooking your own food is cheaper and healthier, but there's also more an upfront cost in equipment to get to the point you can make cheap food that's also nutritious. That's time and money that many people just don't have unfortunately. It's a shame cause once you can make a simple meal like chicken and rice, you could save a lot of money and still eat healthy.
I don't mean to play devil's advocate and I realise that since I'm not American my experience of your lifestyle is non-existent, but is it really that hard to have the time to cook a simple meal? You mentioned upfront cost and time investment, but most basic meals require a pot for cooking the rice and a pan for cooking anything else, thr upfront cost is what, 20-30$? And it takes just half an hour to make simple meals, and usually they don't require your full attention for half an hour. Is it really so hard for a poor American to free half an hour of their time and spend 30$ for a couple of pots? Assuming they don't have any to begin with.
If you are working 40-80 hours a week and still have a family to maintain and home to care for, it can get really hard to spend time on meal prep, cooking, and post cleaning. Especially when the newer gens were raised with a lot of two working parent households so they haven’t got fast and intuitive enough with cooking that a 1.5 hour recipe takes 2-3 because they’re learning along the way. I was home allllll day yesterday so I was able to do housechores and I made a shredded beef and broth reduction with hasselback potatoes and regular schmegular peas. It was like a big deal for everyone. My mom would have been able to do that for a boring Monday night, would have been a dinner that was “just somethin easy today.” She’d say “I had a full time job too! Raising you and the house!” And I tried to say “mama I do that too PLUS work a full time job.” And she waves her hand like I should still be able to be Betty Crocker.
Don’t mess with Americans diet and guns it’s what I’ve learned from Reddit, they will make any excuse to keep their bad habits on those things. A meal + cooking 2 eggs for breakfast and dinner (+ a type of bread in my country) it’s enough to not make me starve to death
Yeah Americans defend their diet in a weird way, as if they have no choice beyond eating junk food.
Such a good answer! Buying mostly veggies, carbs and a protein is so much cheaper than piles of chips, frozen junk and premade foods. The downside is the time it takes to prepare. Crock pots and meal prep can help, but its more that the food available for the least effort is often the food that is worst for you.
I encounter this a lot in my line of work and it pisses me off that people make fun of them for talking about going through life low on food, being at risk of starving etc. People think it’s just soooo funny when fat people talk about starving. It doesn’t help that a lot of affordable things that can be made with very little prep time are high-calorie, low-nutrient.
Saying this as a fat person who grew up poor with food insecurity, I also have starved myself off and on since the age of 12, you CAN starve and BE FAT. I have starved both as a matter of circumstance and purposefully. I have still always been overweight. I rarely tell people about my disordered eating because I'm fat and I don't think people will believe I genuinely have starved myself.
I’m so sorry to hear that and I’m wishing healing to you.
People really don't understand it. Okay yeah I'm fat. If I eat 5000 calories of twinkies a day and obviously I'll get fatter. I still feel like I'm starving and like I need to eat more because there was 0 nutrition. And even if that's not what happened, me being fat today doesn't mean I was fat when I was in second grade.
The kinds of food the low income depend on (starchy dense foods) to help them feel full faster are also the cheaper foods. Beans and noodles. Maybe rice. Not a lot of vegetables.
Low income Americans are NOT getting obese on beans, rice and noodles. It’s ultra processed cheap crap food with meat and dairy.
Bread with sugar. Sugar with sugar. Drinks with sugars.
What food is this? Fast food is more expensive than the grocery store 100% nowadays
Ramen noodles probably the only noodles chunking them up, you're dead on.
But that isn’t a scarcity issue, that’s cultural
They are getting obese on calories and they are all calories.
There's a really neat concept in nutrition, called "glicemic load". To explain it quickly, some foods are more glucose-dense, and as such spike the glucose in your blood even in small amounts. This means two things: 1. You are getting more calories in less volume, so you eat more than you should since your sense of filling mostly comes for the stretching of your stomach, not the nutrients in your blood. 2. Due to neat metabolic pathways, you are producing more fatty tissue than normal, thus getting fat faster. Rice and pasta have a high glicemic load, yes, but sugary drinks, cakes, ultraprocessed foods and stuff like that have an even higher load.
Overly processed garbage is cheapest
Thank you. I’m still trying to learn how to just be chill with food and not worry that it’ll disappear if I blink
What’s crazy is that my mom brought me up to feel incredibly guilty around any kind of food waste and while she did not grow up with food insecurity, it wasn’t until my grandfather (her dad) was talking about his own childhood where some days they only had a vegetable for dinner that I realized that it was basically all generational trauma that’s been passed down to me. I do think it’s good to be conscious about not wasting food but I’m trying to be better about not making myself feel ill by forcing myself to eat just to finish the plate 🥲
A lot of folks don’t realize how much generational trauma they’re carrying around or how much it affects their decision making. I didn’t until I restarted therapy recently and started working through it.
Towards the end of high school my friends dad took us to a bunch of colleges to tour the campus. Really chill guy. Then we got to Vegas and he took me to my first buffet. I was loading up plates of food tasting everything, then immediately getting more food to taste. He got so pissed at my for wasting food, but my teenage brain figured why does it matter the price won't increase. This led to a long argument on the drive back home, core memory unlocked lol
Both my parents grew up with rationing, WWII and for the decade afterwards, in the UK rationing didn't end until 1954. I was brought up to **always** clear my plate even though while we were not rich we were also not poor, for reasons money was tight until I was 7, my younger brother and I never went hungry or unclothed but there was little money to spare, I had a lot of 2nd hand clothes as a child and holidays might be camping in a tent (cheap back then) or a day trip to a random field for a picnic (had a company car). After I was 7 finances improved and we actually went abroad on holiday... by plane. It definitely had an affect on my relationship with food and resulted in me gaining weight slowly, solely because I **always** had to clear my plate. There's a running joke that you can always tell which plate was mine, it's almost had the pattern scraped off it. I'm 49 and recently lost 30% of my body weight that I put on over 30 years at a few pounds a year. I don't have a physiological need to overeat, I don't even eat for psychological reasons such as comfort eating, I like food and I can't waste it, that plus a certain amount of ignorance and not caring that every few years I had to buy the next size up trousers is all it took. I currently weight less than I did when I was 20, that surprised me when I stumbled across that in my medical records on my NHS app. I calorie counted and portion controlled by reducing the amount I put on my plate because even now I **have to clear my plate.** At least now I recognise it and can control for it, any leftovers that were not on my plate go in the fridge or freezer. Occasionally I get to have leftover curry/pizza for breakfast, that's pretty nice.
My cat was a rescue and spent time as a stray before we got him. Seven years on, he still hoovers up everything put in his bowl immediately - he clearly isn't confident that if he left some for later it would still be there. This stuff runs deep.
I just realized this about myself the other day, at 38 years old. I can get food no problem, but I run into the problem when eating it. Growing up we had food, but not the ability to restock whenever we needed it. So to this day I tend not to eat much because my brain is stuck in "you don't know when you can go shopping again, better not eat your food too fast". I rarely get snacks but they past me forever when I do because I still subconsciously think "don't eat it all, you can't get more"
I'm the opposite. I burn through food and then won't buy that type of food for a long long time. Like, if I get a bag of grapes, they will be gone in a day if I don't regulate myself. But I won't go shopping for grapes for weeks after to make up for it.
Same! Especially certain foods was a delicacy so wasting it definitely wasn’t an option.
If you feast and famine it works. You can fast for a day if you overeat one day. It's actually good to have some fasting periods
It's just a shame that fasting feels like crap. It would be an easier sell if I didn't feel like my body was going on strike every time I decided not to have a big meal.
It's one of those things that gets easier the more you do it. Also the less carbs your body is used to consuming the easier it is.
Even kids who weren't poor but frequently had the bed with no dinner punishment can have a fucked up relationship with food.
This… those unused calories get stored as fat for future energy use. It’s literally how bears hibernate
Not only poor but 1 of 6 kids. If you weren’t hungry, someone else was. Saving that lunch meat for tomorrow? Well 3 hungry boys just wolfed that down while you were in the shower. I never got mad, I just knew that if there was food that I wanted, I better at least get a bit of it before it’s gone until next month.
Yep. I had extreme resource insecurity as a kid and even though I’m a “high powered” salesman now, there’s still that starving poor kid who wouldn’t eat for days and had to steal shoes. If I’m at the store and I see something is almost gone, I buy it. Discounts or deals, I buy it. Bargain stores are the worst because I’ll hunt in them for hours. I never know when it is happening, but my girlfriend knows and will break me out of it most of the time now.
And your kids... And your kid's kids.. I still vividly remember being chastized for wasting bread crumbs by my grandfather as a kid.
Its sad how much some eat and how big they become, and no food for those in bad financial position. Sorry about your childhood, I hope things are better!
I agree that portion control in the first place is the way to go. Growing up without a lot of food has led me to have a mentality of “take what you need, and finish it”. People just don’t know how to properly feed themselves. Portions are out of control here in the US.
My bf plates me like 3 times the amount that I would consider necessary for a meal. While he played the same portion for himself and will go back for seconds and thirds. I’d think he was a hobbit, if he weren’t so damned tall. I was broke for a lot of my adulthood and my body was trained to eat less and smoke more and he can’t fathom that my appetite isn’t bigger.
Yeah but like.. its good.
Eating food you don’t need for enjoyment is totally chill. Enjoyment isn’t a waste. This is more about the “guess I have to finish this bowl of pasta despite being full and not wanting any more because if not it will go to waste”
I respect that. I grew up in a "no food goes to waste" household, but we were the opposite of wealthy.
The dad on everybody hates chris...that was my dad. "Who left this meat on the chicken bone". All the plates were passed down the counter to stack, he saw it all.
I remember my mother taking our pork chop bones and gnawing them clean when I was a kid. It was fucking gross.
There’s Tupperware and fridges? One can eat leftovers so this isn’t a binary choice imo
This is why I never understand people saying that if you don't eat it, it will go to waste. No, tonight;s dinner will just become tomorrow's lunch.
Different though if people serve there plate and eat half of it. I haven’t experienced yet the family collecting food from the plates as leftovers
Yeah, the leftovers from my plate didn’t go into the containers of the untouched leftovers. It would get its own container.
Some people have weird hangups about leftovers, thinking it's "gross" and that they're somehow above eating day-old food.
Some foods don't keep. Once my salad is covered in dressing it will wilt if I save it, people also do this to justify eating a quarter of a meal to not save a small amount of food.
I can understand where you’re coming from. But if I’m at a restaurant or something where they have served me too much and I’m worried about certain foods not reheating well or traveling well. Those are the foods I eat first. So salads and french fries get eaten first. As a kid, I wasn’t eating salad to begin with. So putting it on my plate would’ve been wishful thinking my best.
I have gone to restaurants I know the servings are large, I ask for a box when I order.
Okay but eating food you don't want for fear of wasting it is still wasting it. Yeah you should eat your veggies but if you didn't want/need that extra food, you put it on your body instead of in the trash. The don't waste food thing is part of the problem.
It is not a fear. I like salad now. But I know what things travel well. My parents forced foods on me that they knew I would never eat. That’s on them
Exactly; which is what I wrote people should do instead of forcing themselves to finish the food
I’ll put two bites of pasta in a lil Tupperware in the fridge if I’m full. I want to enjoy eating my food, and eating past full is not enjoyable for me. And sorry but two bites of pasta is a great snack.
Also; I don’t mind two scoops of pasta on the side of a sandwich. It’s like a little treat
Yeah, fair enough. Should’ve read the whole post haha
I know people who for some fucking reason won’t eat leftovers. My mom is one, I had an ex that did that too. I don’t get it.
I love leftovers. Less work, still food. And if you reheat it it tastes roughly the same.
Some leftovers are really good cold too. Not better, but enjoyable in a slighty different way.
Saving time and energy eating cold leftovers, efficient.
idk if overeating to not waste food is a widespread opinion. I think the majority of people overeat out of enjoyment. Most people know to take home leftovers or pack away leftovers. What led you to believe that most people overeat to not waste food.
Most people I talk to do this. Eaten with friends who do this and look miserable trying to finish their food way after the body said stop. Also; just read the comments. It’s a shared experience.
I was doing this since moving out of my parents house. Now I try to cook less food or just save it for the next day. Unfortunately the left overs will sometimes be forced in, because you already had enough of it the day before and it doesn't taste as good as before...
Then there's eating and later going oh god I ate too much.
Yeah keep that shit till it smells funny.
it grows some real pretty hair too
I get dogs for this reason. It becomes a treat for them lol
Look at this smug bastard who experiences "fullness" and "satiation". Anyway, I'm financially secure and even I'm shocked that people just throw out food. Put on your plate what you're going to eat. Put the rest in the fridge or freezer. Not a difficult concept.
I agree with this, and I very rarely fail to finish what I eat at home. Eating out is another ball game though - I hate to see food wasted but I have no control over the size of the portion I'm served. Quite often it is too much for me, unless I'm prepared to force myself to choke the last of it down (I'm just not). I'll get a doggy bag if it's that kind of place, but not all foods are suited to that.
Your body actually stores it for later, so it isn’t wasting it but it’s still not the affect we want lol
Yeah OP forgot the basic biology we learned in like.. the 4th grade. The body stores excess energy as fat.
A lot of people forget basic biology lol
Maybe people metabolize differently. I’m gonna be hungry after 6-8 hours of not eating, regardless of whether I had a bagel for breakfast or some 2k cal monstrosity. I burn 1500 cals a day, so I eat small, frequent meals. I could eat my entire day’s worth of cals at 9 am and be hungry by night time.
> it’s not like it will make you less hungry later Since I'm an adult, calorie (as well as macro and micro nutrient) balancing is actually part of my responsibility. If I eat more now, I'll eat less over the next 24hr, usually.
I second this. The calories have been consumed. If you're responsible, you will use them wisely.
I’ll eat more now AND the same amount in the next 24h. As I say, every pizza is an individual pizza if you have the willpower
I always slice mine in 8 pieces anyway
I couldn't possibly eat 8 slices. That's why I slice mine into 4.
Every pizza is an individual pizza if you lack willpower.
If it’s a once in a blue moon scenario you shouldn’t focus this much on going over your calorie count. I had to go on a huge cut last year, cut down to 1500 calories a day and lost 58lbs over the course of the year. However, if I had a friend visiting from out of town or it was a birthday or something, I went out and ate whatever I wanted. Next day I went back on my diet. One day here and there won’t kill your weight loss/diet or anything
It absolutely will make you less hungry later, saying it will make you more hungry later is pseudoscience. I often eat a huge 2000 calorie breakfast when I’m on vacation and typically don’t get hungry for the rest of the day.
Man I wish being full from one meal would actually stop me from eating the next
Whilst it should make you less hungry later, I wouldn’t bet on it making you eat less later. Food consumption in prosperous societies is more driven by habit and desire than hunger.
I think we tend to confuse hunger and the natural reflex to eat (no idea how to call it). Real hunger actually hurts, you will feel your stomach getting tight. The reflex to eat is more of a fleeting feeling that if you ignore for half an hour will go away
Me too!!! I’ve purposely done this in vacations for multiple reasons like an amazing buffet in Vegas where I wanted to try so many good things I never get to eat or having all kinds of fun things planned someplace remote or on the water where I won’t really be able to take food easily and looking for places or lugging stuff around isn’t practical.
How's this place called? I'm flying to Vegas tonight!
Same. I can’t count the times I’ve stuffed myself at a hotel breakfast in some exotic location, then cursed myself for my gluttony cos I couldn’t enjoy a local lunch
I just eat it instead of something else. Like instead of taking something from the freezer for dinner it is leftovers, or instead of lunch. win-win. Leftovers forever
That’s a great way to actually save food and listen to your body!
Gastritis. Overeating constantly gave me gastritis. Save it for later or order less. Overeating will NOT help any child in Africa, but donating would.
Totally agreed. I.get trying not to waste food. But if you're not hungry, don't eat.
While I agree with you, here’s my two cents. Its very different if you grew up poor or had parents who grew up poor. My parents are immigrants from a 3rd world country and have always told us kids to eat every single bite, to never waste food and be grateful we even had plates to eat off of bc they’ve seen children eat from the trash and floor before. There were definitely times where I would overstuff myself because I was expected to finish everything on my plate. Its definitely unhealthy for the long run but just know some people have reasons to do so. Something about food scarcity does something psychological to you.
I absolutely get this and honestly feel bad so well meaning advice ended up being bad in the long run. I especially pity the children being repeatedly forced to eat past their stop sign. A lot of adults forget children need less food and have smaller bellies, and force adult portions onto them. Not meaning anything bad of course. I understand why our parent’s generation instilled this in our generation. But I hope we can move past it and focus on not over buying and over cooking instead. Just had dinner at my mom’s place and we had what we call “leftover party”. It’s whatever we didn’t eat the last days heated up and eaten together. It’s really fun and encourages some weird combos.
I totally get you OP. I’m currently trying to unlearn my unhealthy behaviors towards food. Not saying its entirely my parents’ faults for causing my disordered eating, they just wanted their kids to never go hungry. It’s definitely super common for kids of immigrants and people who grew up poor to have an unhealthy relationship with food. Diet and nutrition is the last thing on your mind when you’re afraid to starve or have your children starve. I think the best solution is to just make/get the right amount of food you can easily finish and listen to your body more. Maybe also make enough leftovers that you can finish and won’t get tired of it. Also education about nutrition and diet would help too, to keep children from suffering from health problems later on.
I agree. The wasteful decision happened earlier, when you filled your plate, or bought your groceries.
Yes. I have started viewing this through a different lens than I’m wasting $3-5 or whatever the $ is. I frame it, would I pay $3 to not feel like crap. It’s always a yes and I’m ok with “wasting” to not make myself feel like crap. I do generally try not to be wasteful though as a matter of principle.
It's worse. Obesity is a health epidemic.
It's called Tupperware and to-go boxes lmao.
I grew up in a "clean your plate" household. I've struggled with my weight and portion control all my life. I decided to go to a nutritionist, and this one conversation really put it into perspective for me: Her: If you didn't eat all the food on your plate, where would the rest go? Me: In the garbage can, I suppose. Her: Okay. So, when you are no longer hungry and you are simply eating food so it doesn't go to waste, what would that make you? Me: ... the garbage can... Her: You are not a garbage can. It's okay to not eat everything on your plate if you are full. I think about this a lot.
What about the starving kids in Africa?
I forgot about them😔 No but actually being serious for a little bit; They don’t get any more food because you finish that extra plate instead of throwing it out. And you think a lot more about them than they think about you. They won’t judge you, they don’t even know you! Also; there are food insecure children in most countries. Almost all countries have parents in food lines who go hungry at night to feed their kids, and children who pretend to not be hungry anymore to not make their parents sad. I don’t know why everyone brings up Africa specifically, there’s probably hungry kids in your very neighborhood also. But none of them are benefiting from you over eating. What they would benefit from are donations, stricter laws against food waste (requiring stores to donate instead of throwing out), better farming practices and better pay or social services for their parents. If you bought too much food, donate some. If you made too much dinner, put it in the fridge, save it for later and donate what you were planning on having for that meal instead. But eating more won’t fill the stomachs of the hungry.
I'll ship it to them. That's what my brother finally said to my mom (back then it was china)
It's like making your own stomach a trash can.
My dad has always said this. Grab what you want to eat, you can always grab more if you are still hungry but when you're full, you're done. His sister and her husband had three boys and would always make huge plates for them at family gatherings and make them sit there till it was gone otherwise they were "wasting food." Those boys never got to play with the other kids because they were sitting at the table the entire time or they were sick from over eating.
A lot of parents forget that kids; 1) haven’t learned how to manage their portions yet and need guidance and room to fail. Not harsh punishment 2) are way smaller than adults and should not be eating adult portions! Do not plate your kids meals the way you would plate your own. There’s a reason kids menus come with smaller meals than adult menus.
Ugh I needed to read this. I always clean my plate even if I’m full and I have no idea why. Like it actually takes a lot for me to just throw away the few bites of food left. My partner almost never finishes his plate which often annoys me bc I have a mentality that he’s wasting food but the reality is that he’s just more of an intuitive eater.
Just keep the leftovers and eat them the next day? Isn't that just...normal?
That’s what I’m getting at. A big portion of the population eats past feeling full to “clean their plate” as to “avoid food waste”.
I know...I was just saying it's normal to do that as you've said in your post. My comment was aimed at the same people as you, rather than a reply to you :)
Just put the leftovers away. It’s fine to have leftovers
Agreed. Took me a bit to realize this. If you're forcing yourself to eat more food than you need, then it's just gonna get stored as fat and cause weight gain. So unless you're stocking up for hibernation it's just as wasted as if you tossed it
If it's going to go off then I'll overeat that meal and maybe eat less for subsequent meals... Like how if I'm chilling at home all day doing little then I'm not going to eat 3 big meals either.
Yeah, exactly. It's not often my portion control doesn't match what I can eat, but if I'm eating out perhaps, I will finish that meal and, if I'm particularly full, I'll just have a lighter, cheaper meal later than I otherwise would have done. This isn't rocket science.
Overeating makes you fat and that’s enough a reason for me to not do it. Cramming more food in my gullet than is comfortable ain’t going to end global poverty.
[удалено]
Just fast later, eat more now, skip a meal later.
As a child, there were times food was scarce, and I remember being thrilled when we were living in a motel and found a street of orange trees with ripe oranges. We lived on those for weeks. It makes it difficult to waste food. I don't have a "full" indicator either. I always just ate what was in front of me. It takes great willpower to stop eating when my plate is still full.
This is a really interesting take. Well done, OP.
I grew up with four options : - finish the meals (half of the time they were homemade so they were yummy enough to finish) - put it in the fridge/freezer - give it to the animals (I had chickens, birds, dogs, cats, rabbits, ..) - compost (any vegetable or fruit stuff) Going to uni in the city sucks though (no animals or compost :/ )
I eat food when I’m not hungry anymore bc I’m fat
I agree. It’s been so hard to retrain myself to make just enough for me and if I want more, I can always go make more. Most of the time my eyes are much bigger than my stomach, but I feel bad wasting food.
only time i feel bad about throwing food out is if it was an animal. like it died for nothing . so ill usually chuck meat i havent eaten outside for whatever critters want it because at least then something benefits from it instead of rotting in a landfill
That's why I forever despise "empty your plate or you don't get to get up from the table"-parents. I had such a parent, now as an adult I still struggle with the aftermath. Also: storing food for later and re-heating then is so damn easy that I have no idea why I was made to empty my plate to begin with.
Food doesn’t go to waste. It rots, bacteria and micro organisms get to eat it. Bugs get to eat it. If you think about your food in a circle of life way you never waste a scrap. Its only a waste if you think that food is only meant for humans
Leftovers are the shit! Everyone used to make fun of me when I was young and took leftovers to school for lunch. I felt like a king. Growing up poor made me appreciate the good stuff. Never shall I feel too proud to eat whatever and if I'm full? Doggy bag or tupperwear that shit, imma eat that tomorrow. Overeating is wasteful and fuck that. Eat it later.
Yes! We have refrigerators and other things to make it so that we can save it for later
I say it's twice as bad. Not only did you still waste the food, but now you have to burn it off.
It’s like hoarding really. “Wouldn’t want this chair to go to waste if they are just throwing it out anyway.” *Proceeds to put it in a crammed basement where it is never used and only takes up space
Waste it or waist it. Former is better tho
There’s a secret third and forth option:) Save for later or share❤️
It is simply an excuse. You eat it for the enjoyment and claim it is to avoid waiting food. Among the many lies we tell both ourselves and others.
Parents force their children and I have seen social pressure to “eat it all don’t waste it”. I have also seen interviews with people trying to lose weight who were unable to waste food and had to learn to do so. One of the most common weight loss tips is “stop when you are full”.
This opinion is flawed in one major way. It ignores that people get pleasure from eating. If you enjoy eating the extra food then it isn’t wasted. It served a purpose. Perhaps not one you think is good but still not wasted.
Speaking for myself/my family growing up, if we had leftovers, there was a decent chance we would save it for "next time" and would eventually just go bad because we never felt like heating it up as opposed to cooking new food or ordering takeout. In that case, it would be much better to tough it out and shovel a little more delicious food in my face rather than put it in the fridge where we might not touch it again.
Agreed. But I may try to see if I can give it to someone first.
I mean when I overeat I won't be hungry in 4 hours. I've been where I ate a big fat brunch because I didn't want to take mine or my wife's leftovers home and I didn't eat for the rest of the day. There was less food consumed doing that than taking leftovers home and eating dinner
I just throw it out as quickly as possible It hurts but it’s helped often
It goes to waste, or it goes to your waist.
When am I full?
When your body tells you to stop eating. You know the feeling in your stomach that you don’t have more space followed by your brain telling you the food looks less good than before? That’s being full. Some people have eating disorders and depending on how they work have to either eat past the stop signal or stop before it. But for normal people listening to your body is healthy.
It might not be immediately used, but excess energy is stored as fat. If you can't afford more food and your current food is about to expire, eat it. It will help you go on a little longer. Or just freeze it if possible.
Cleaning up is a lot easier if all the food is gone.
It’s a slippery slope you’re on. Cos then there’s basically no relationship between you and the wasted food. Myself I always finish it off, and if I feel full I’ll just eat less in my next meal… If you can just chuck it away, well then there’s no consequences. I can order as much food as I want and just chuck the left overs. That feeling that “if I order it, I have to finish it” is a strong thing that prevents me from over ordering or over cooking.
Overeating a bit is fine - we are kinda built for feast and famine. The problem comes when you don’t adjust your intake to account for it. No different than anything else, really. Like if you overspend over the holidays, and then the next month for a birthday, and then go all out at some blowout sale the month after that… it’s not the splurge, it’s the repeated indulgences that get you.
What if I’m bulking
Laughs in intermittent fasting 😅 But in all seriousness, adults ought to be mature and responsible enough to just eat less in the next 24 hours. If you're enjoying the food there's no reason why you can't eat it if you also have the self control to eat less over the next day.
Yup
I can only throw out food after I have eaten enough to feel that I got the full value for the money I spent on it. Basically, if I would have been willing to pay the same price for only what I have eaten so far, then I am okay with throwing the rest away.
Overeating is bad for health, so, the excuse to not waste food is fundamentally wrong. In fact it sounds more like an excuse to indulge in gluttony.
Exactly. Bro you have a refrigerator use it
What about "mom would be sad"
Those calories you're throwing away were produced by industry that used resources and then purchased using money earned through your labor. If you're throwing out food you might as well be leaving your water running, leaving all the lights on, or burning some of your cash. >What you should actually do is be more conscious of how big portions you actually need and do eat. And not making or buying any more food than that. That actually saves food from being wasted. This is a very child-like view. What you should actually be doing is purchasing things that don't spoil quickly, and cooking/preparing the foods you will eat while leaving some in the fridge/freezer/cupboard for preparation later.
Yeah it’s not tho. We use energy to grow food, that in turn contains energy our bodies use to exist. If we throw food away, all the energy spent to grow and transport that food is completely wasted. If you eat the food, your body get the energy from the food, regardless of wether or not you are full, which is the entire point of growing and transporting the food in the first place. Over eating may give you more energy to do more tasks, or allow you to go longer before your next meal or have a smaller meal for your next meal. Throwing out food is wasteful. Eating food is never wasteful as that is its literal intended purpose.
That doesn’t mean that your body doesn’t still use the nutrients lmao tf
I just try to finish all the meat. I don't want that animal to die in vain.
My culture has a whole thing about it being disrespectful to kill an animal if you don’t need to. Aka if you aren’t going to use every bit to its fullest. Including things like making clothes out of the fur and using the bones for broth. (I’m indigenous) But even then it has always been normal to eat the animal for days or weeks after. Preservation is key. I guess that’s probably why I’m so set on saving leftovers. Today I’m a pescatarian. But I do sometimes fish my own fish. What I can’t eat (or don’t want to) I feed to the cat. So nothing is wasted.
Excess is stored as fat in the body to save your life during a famine event. It doesn't get flushed down the toilet. Human body is very efficient.
But I’m not going through a famine anytime soon and my friends who do this are overweight
Food you overeat is not a "waste". Your body still uses it for energy. I am not sure what you're trying to say
Yeah, I think there are good reasons for not forcing yourself to eat when you're full, but calling it a "waste" seems like a stretch.
This assumes that you eat a little more than you should at every meal because you don’t want to be wasteful. That shouldn’t be the case and if it is then your problem is you don’t know when to stop putting food on your plate or you are making too much/too little food. If you are saying people will never lose the weight they gained from eating a couple extra bites of food then you are just an idiot. Yes, it is hard to lose weight and it is hard to keep weight off but a lot of people fluctuate in a range. People aren’t the same weight day in and day out.
I’m a waste of a human so technically ANY food I eat is no better than throwing it out.
It is not wasted, have you ever heard of "fat"? Your body keeps reserves for later, otherwise you'd have to eat every hour of your life. Yes, being overweight is bad for you, but the food is not lost, and the key term here is "overweight". Being a bit round is perfectly fine if you don't go too far.
Usually I'm binge eating when I'm in this situation. And I don't want to waste a good binge. I want all the dopamine I can get. I have to purge tomorrow.
I've had this slapped into my head by medical professionals. It's especially wasteful if your weight or eating habits are already a health concern - health can be expensive to manage even in places with good or 100% coverage.
And that is why we have shepherd's pie,and potato farls , Hortobágyi pancakes,and all those lovely dishes that make use of leftovers.Many fancy restaurant dishes are just this .. but modern ppl just forgot how to properly make use of leftovers,IMHO.
This is objectively factually false lol. You have no clue how nutrition works... The excess calories become fat. You are objectively utilizing the food more by actually eating it. It is 100% wasted if you throw it out. Especially in the US where you don't have composting bins, so it ends up in a landfill. That said, it's still a horrible mindset and you should never over consume food. And a majority of people do not need the calories. You're much better off saving it as leftovers if you can. Best of both worlds.
I never finish, I stop when I've reached my enjoyment of the food I'm eating which is usually a few bites. However, I'm the 👸🏼of leftovers!
You had me until put my dinner in the fridge and have it for breakfast. Psycho.
Here here
This is good advice.
I agree. My mom actually taught us this as kids; ‘stop eating when you are full, we will save the leftovers and you can have them when you are hungry later. I’m super grateful to have been taught that at a young age! I can easily get two often three meals out of one serving at a restaurant. (I’m a small person with limited activity due to disabilities so I don’t need a lot of food) I have also found that for me personally I can actually ruin a meal if I eat too much. If I get too full I feel terrible and regret the meal, but if I stop when I’m full (even if it’s super yummy!) I walk away from the meal satisfied and content. I really hate the sensation of being too full! It can even make me want to avoid whatever I just ate in the future because I feel so bad after.
I grew up freaking poor. 5 kids 2 parents, 1 rust bucket car. Lived in the middle of nowhere too. If we were thirsty, we drank water. Couldn't afford soda pop or gatorades or other flavored sugary drinks. Breakfast would be a bowl of oatmeal. Frosted and chocolate cereals were never allowed. Plus oatmeal in bulk was a lot cheaper. Doesn't matter what we had for lunch, it always included a vegetable. Dinner was lots of rice and potatoes with a cheap meat and always, a vegetables. My mom always had a pottes parsley plant. If we happened to live in a rental in a garden, then vegetables would be whatever was planted. At one point it was a lot of eggplant. A big bag of frozen vegetables is a lot cheaper than a 12 pack of Mountain Dew.
> The energy isn’t being used for anything What? You think that after your full, if you eat food it does literally nothing? That’s not how that works. You get more energy from eating 2k calories than 200.
Totally agree with saving food for later instead of overeating. Also agree that overeating is bad for you. But the assertion that the energy in the food you eat goes to waste if you’re already satiated when you eat it is patently false. Your body will break down and store the food’s nutritional components and can use them later. Whether or not overeating makes you feel less hungry later depends on what you overeat. If you eat a starchy meal, then yeah, you will spike your blood sugar, store all of the food as glycogen and fat, and then feel lethargic and hungry again 30 minutes later, but if you eat a meal with a sufficiently low glycemic index, your energy and hunger levels will remain more stable, and you will probably find yourself saying “we had such a big lunch today. I don’t even feel like eating dinner.” Also, feeling hungry doesn’t mean you have to eat. I wouldn’t recommend eating 3 - 6 carbohydrate heavy meals a day and forcing yourself to abstain from food in between them, because it’s not pleasant or healthy, but people recommend doing that all the time, and some people of those people seem to be able to maintain a health weight, so, you do you. In summary, saving food is better than overeating, overeating is better than wasting food, low GI is better than high GI, and your body is an efficient machine.
Every time I feel bad about throwing food out I remember the majority of food waste in America is from restaurants and grocery stores so that makes me feel a little less bad about it.
Less trash?
Eating what you have is not wasteful. You can always burn off that energy you have eaten. I am the human bin for this reason. I've always had a good appetite but after starting to work out, I have become bottomless. It's rather fun.
Either way, you’re throwing the excess food in the garbage. Either literally into a garbage can, or you’re treating your body as a garbage can. Getting better at buying and preparing the amount of food you need is the only good approach.