Xi Wants People to Waste Less Food

People tucking into their meals, but make sure you can finish everything

Chinese President Xi Jinping wants people to cut down on food waste, describing it as "shocking and distressing".

"Waste is shameful and thriftiness is honourable," he said on Tuesday. The president quoted a poem: "Who knows that of our meal in the dish, every grain comes after hard toil?"

Xi wants people to be more thrifty when it comes to food

The country could be set to introduce legislation to formulate regulations to prevent food waste through various means.

"[We would] advocate a reasonable and healthy dining culture and establish a long-term mechanism to stop food waste," explained Zhang Guilong, an official with the Legislative Affairs Commission, under the National People's Congress Standing Committee.

Zheng Fengtian, a professor of agricultural economics at Remin University in Beijing, said China's food wastage was startling and could only be changed through legislation.

"It would be very hard to curb food wastage through people's consciousness or NGO campaigns," he said. "Awareness and behaviour can be changed by law, just like waste sorting in many cities."

A 2018 investigation by the Institute of Geographic and National Resources Research, and the World Wide Fund for Nature estimated Chinese consumers in four large cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Lhasa) had wasted 17 to 18 million tonnes of food served in 2015 -- enough to feed 30 to 50 million people for a year.

A law could be in place to end food wastage like this

Interesting that Lhasa was lumped in as a major city... is it a hint that Tibetans are wasteful?

"We should always have a sense of crisis over food security, especially amid the fallout of the Covid-19 epidemic, despite China having consecutive bumper harvests in recent years," Xi was quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency.

Earlier this year he called on China's local officials to tighten their belts and live thrifty lives.

But will people be willing to change their habits and order one less dish while dining out? It's the Chinese custom for the host to order more food to show they aren't stingy, so trying to get them to order one less dish may be hard to adopt.

Responses from some internet users were hardly enthusiastic.

Doggy-bagging a lot of food here

"Can you first limit the dining of officials? Don't always take away from the people," one said, referring to formal banquets and lavish meals officials ate at.

"This seems aimed at us bottom class, but we are already thrifty. This means nothing to the rich," moaned another. "I especially hate this kind of political action that means on ordinary people to act."

This commenter took the proverbial cake: "This level of control. Even the number of dishes people order has to be regulated?"