SCMP Letters to the Editor
All Hongkongers will have enjoyed traditional food during the Lunar New Year, such as turnip cakes, rice cakes, braised vegetables and red fermented beancurd.
All these feasts will have generated a substantial amount of food waste.
We all need to reflect on the part we play in discarding so much food. How many of us, during our festive feasts, left our plates empty?
With my family, I ate poon choi on the first and second days of the new year. We could not finish it all, but instead of throwing it away kept it as leftovers.
As well as trying to use leftover food at home, when we’re out, we should order less food. And if it is a set meal, for example, in a Chinese restaurant with a lot of different dishes, you can go without rice so you have room for other dishes.
There is a Chinese saying, “May you always get more than you wish for”. And it has long been a Chinese tradition to order more food than you will need to eat.
This is a bad habit and we need to change attitudes. We should only order what we need and not throw away the food that we do not eat.
Chan Yue-ching, Kowloon Tong