Why should we stop "food waste"

According to this initiative, food waste violates the traditional virtues of the Chinese nation and endangers national food security. Stopping food waste is of great significance for implementing the Anti-Food Waste Law and the Consumer Protection Law, safeguarding national food safety, advocating social civilization and building a conservation-oriented society.

Dining halls, hotels and other places have always been the hardest hit areas for food waste. Especially in hotels and restaurants, the waste phenomenon is even more amazing. On the one hand, there are personal reasons for customers. For example, some customers are afraid of "losing face" when entertaining guests in the hotel, so no matter how many people attend the banquet, they are full of dishes. As a result, more than half of them are left after the banquet, watching the waiter pour all the leftovers into the slop bucket. This is a typical "beating a swollen face to fill a fat man", which not only saves face but also causes great waste. On the other hand, there are also reasons for hotels. Hotels have the obligation to remind customers to "order food on demand", but many hotels are afraid that less ordering will affect economic benefits and make customers "order too many dishes", resulting in a lot of food waste.

In recent years, with the promulgation of the Anti-Food Waste Law, various new anti-food waste measures have been introduced in various places, such as ordering food on demand, awarding CDs, and packaging leftovers. However, because it is only based on the "advocacy" level, the waste phenomenon has not been eliminated, whether it is the unit canteen or the hotel restaurant.

Dining halls and hotels provide "side dishes" for consumers to choose according to their needs, which is a good strategy to reduce waste. "Small portion" allows diners, especially when the number of diners is small, to taste more dishes without wasting them because of too large a portion, which is in line with the current initiative of "practicing economy and opposing waste" and greatly improves the catering civilization of consumers. Providing a "small share" is a win-win move, which is worthy of praise and promotion.

In addition to catering enterprises, the catering take-out platform is also an important subject of "small dishes" model innovation. The Anti-Food Waste Law stipulates that the food and beverage take-out platform should prompt consumers to order food in a significant way. Catering service operators who provide services through the catering take-out platform shall provide consumers with information such as food weight, specifications or suggested consumption quantity on the platform page. Therefore, the catering take-out platform should make use of advanced technologies such as Internet, big data and artificial intelligence, give full play to the characteristics and advantages of platform economy, provide services and convenience for catering businesses to sell "side dishes" and consumers to buy "side dishes", and become a guide and supervisor for catering enterprises and consumers to participate in the "side dishes" mode. After doing these jobs well, the catering take-away platform will also be the beneficiary of "side dishes".

The "side dishes" that came into being and quickly became popular vividly explained the "great truth" of cherishing and saving food and opposing food waste. It is expected that consumers, catering enterprises and catering take-out platforms will actively participate in the innovation of "small portion dishes" mode, which can provide more useful practices and experiences for all sectors of society, food enterprises, functional departments, internet platforms and other parties to jointly perform their duties of anti-food waste, continuously strengthen the consumer culture atmosphere of "being ashamed of waste and proud of saving" and promote civilized, healthy, rational and green consumption of the whole society.