Wasting food is wrong. But what to do with the leftovers?
Before checking out of our family holiday let, a minor disagreement broke out. The opponents: my boyfriend and my mother. The dispute: what to do with the remaining food. He argued that we should bin it – you can’t force yourself to eat when full. She argued that we should try: wasting food is gross, and we’d be less hungry later.
They turned to me expectantly. I had become the referee.
I could see both sides. Mum’s thinking reflects the way I was raised – with a scarcity mindset. If you don’t know when the next resource might appear, you’re compelled to use everything when you have it. But there’s more to it than that. Yes, we learned that every penny counts, but we were never discouraged from enjoying life. It was about spending on things we genuinely wanted (a nice early dinner) and not frittering idly (airport sandwiches). I guess you could call it the art of “mindful spending” (also: “not being a mug”).
That said, I have self-flagellated many times on the altar of waste. Once, I phoned my boyfriend, miserable about working late. “I was supposed to cook the chicken,” I whimpered. “Now it’s going to spoil.” He told me I ought not to give a chicken such power over my wellbeing.
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Back to the debate. Part of adulthood is learning to balance competing interests, but this is a muscle I’ve only just begun to flex. I am not a mother, an older sibling, or a line manager. The responsibility to adjudicate rarely falls to me.
I did what any proper adult would do. I weighed up who I was more scared would kick off (both! In different ways!) and solved it by wrapping everything in kitchen paper and carrying it around “just in case”. Sure, at one point I found melted cheese all over my favourite bag, but you can’t put a price on peace.
