Can we achieve hunger free world?

I was thinking about this topic for quite a while. Yesterday night I felt it was the right time to scribble my thoughts.

I visited a restaurant for dinner with my friends yesterday. We all ordered dosa and wanted to finish with coffee. As we were chatting and enjoying our dosas, I noticed few other people seated next to us. As it was closing time there was not much crowd, so I happened to notice people around.

There was an American couple, an Asian couple, an Indian family with kids and few friends group, including us. Each of the table was filled with lot of food items. But most of them were hardly touched, just a bite or two was consumed.

Everyone was busy chatting, ignoring the food they had ordered. One of the couple packed their left over food before leaving. Few others were waiting for their bill and had ordered the waiter to clean the table (with lot of left overs).

We were the last group to leave the restaurant. Happy that we didn’t waste any food. The cleaning person started cleaning the table and started throwing the left overs in the dustbin. Most of the items were hardly touched. But it was his job to clean which he was doing perfectly.

I couldn’t digest the fact that people order so much food when they can’t eat it. At least they should be carrying the left overs. Do they consider it as a prestige issue to take left overs? Or wasting food is a way to establish wealthy status? I was standing there, staring at the left over food that was trashed, it was very painful to watch.

The food we eat is not grown by us. We have no right to waste it. Paying money for it doesn’t mean that we can waste or throw away food. The pain taken to grow the crop and hard efforts to bring it to our table can never be paid off.

Money or wealth can never fill our tummy. There are nations suffering in hunger. Do you think money can provide them food? Not at all. Food we waste doesn’t belong to us, we are depriving others right to that food.

Respect a farmer’s hard work and don’t waste food. More they work hard, more the nation strive towards hunger free world.

“Love and food are meant for sharing, not for wasting.”