May 19, 2017 – FRENCH FRIES FOR ALL!
World Hunger is a major problem. World-wide, 21,000 people die each DAY from hunger!! Many of them are children. Americans waste an average of 15% of the food they buy each year. That equals $165 BILLION per year in America alone! We buy 7 bananas at Stop and Shop and at the end of the week, we throw out 3 brown, soft, lumpy, oozing blobs from our fruit bowl. OR, if we are feeling inspired, we put them in the freezer with the intention of making a “nice banana bread someday”…and we don’t. We throw the frozen, brown blob in the Ziploc bag in the freezer, right into the garbage 3 months later. Often, we bring the leftovers from that delicious meal we ate at Dry Dock, only to throw it away, container and all, 4 days later. We are a wasteful society when it comes to food. I bet we can all think of examples when we have tossed food. In a matter of seconds, food on a plate goes from “dinner” to “garbage” with one scoop down the disposal in the sink!
And there are rules that work against us. You can’t donate leftover food if it has already been opened. So, the whole 6 foot sandwich with only one slice taken from it, has to go in the garbage. OR, the salad from Stew Leonard’s that was mistakenly opened and closed right back up is also known as garbage. No one can eat it at a shelter or any place else, even though two minutes earlier all of your friends at the party could have eaten it, but they didn’t. They were already full!
My whole life I have battled food. I have paid HUNDREDS, if not THOUSANDS, of dollars to Weight Watchers (YES, I am a lifetime member). I have bought every “caffeine pill” in the aisles of CVS, and I have gone to hypnosis for weight loss. Food and I have a LOVE, LOVE, HATE relationship. It calls to me and teases me and I pay to have it not stay with me! I know all the lines….”NOTHING TASTE AS GOOD AS THIN FEELS” or “ONCE ON THE LIPS and FOREVER ON THE HIPS”….or “BLT’s are BITES, LICKS and TASTES”. I have nibbled a bite from my sons’ plates and eaten the leftover crusts from my daughters’ pizza! I, personally, have paid so much money to buy food, throw away food, and then try to get rid of the pounds I gained from the food. I can’t even imagine a grand total!
So…on May 19th, on a trip to Citifield for a Mets vs. Angels game, I had a FIRST!! I was standing behind the seated section by the bar. There they were; an order of french fries with a corner of the container filled with ketchup! It hit me! I have never eaten leftovers from a stranger’s plate. Someone had walked away, leaving the french fries there…all alone. If an employee of Citifield had walked by to clear the tables right before me, those salty and still-warm french fries would have been referred to as “garbage”. In one second and one split decision and I was eating them. Ed joined me and Brian nearly gagged when I dipped a second one in the ketchup! And, although I felt like I was guilty of stealing someone’s fries, which I kind of was doing, the reality was that someone had abandoned those poor french fries! I have to admit, they were delicious!
So now, on my list of firsts, I can add that I have personally done my share to conquer the “wasted food epidemic” in America!
Let’s go Mets!!
debiboc 