Curbing food waste - A failure to teach or cherish

PEOPLE of a certain age will recall parents or grandparents demanding that plates be cleaned at every meal and that not a scrap of food be allowed go to waste. 

This was not parsimony or even an early outbreak of foodie enthusiasm, but the hard-learnt lesson that abundance is the exception rather than the norm across the great span of human history.

They would have been appalled at today’s unthinking waste of food and find it utterly incomprehensible that we, on average, waste €400 worth of food each year — nearly a month’s supply.