Is wasting food a sin

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SeanF1989

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This is something I always heard growing up in a Catholic household and attending Catholic school.

Where does the Church on food waste?
 
It kinda depends. Are you throwing it out because you are a picky eater and just didn’t want it? Did it go bad without your knowledge, or did you put off eating it because you wanted something else? It’s a nuanced thing. I ask myself this a lot (I HATE wasting food).
 
I think it would almost qualify as gluttony to waste food when you have the option save or share it. I think it would only be a grave matter if you intentionally allow food to waste instead of using it.
 
I’m usually the LAST person on this forum to say something else is sinful, and I think many people take things way too seriously, in particular when it comes to “is this sinful? Is that sinful?”

However, wasting food IS sinful. Like what your mom probably said (mine did) there are people literally dying of starvation every day in India, Africa, North Korea, South America, I could good on.

Now, that doesn’t mean it’s a one way ticket to hell if you can’t finish your Sunday dinner, but use common sense and never forget how blessed you are if hunger isn’t a main concern for you.
 
Let me tell you about the tablespoons of food growing critters in my fridge because I hate to waste it. Duh. I am getting better.
 
Rascalking said:
I’m usually the LAST person on this forum to say something else is sinful, and I think many people take things way too seriously, in particular when it comes to “is this sinful? Is that sinful?”

However, wasting food IS sinful. Like what your mom probably said (mine did) there are people literally dying of starvation every day in India, Africa, North Korea, South America, I could good on.

Now, that doesn’t mean it’s a one way ticket to hell if you can’t finish your Sunday dinner, but use common sense and never forget how blessed you are if hunger isn’t a main concern for you.
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One should never “clean their plate” because people are dying of starvation in Africa, though! How is me finishing my plate of food here going to help them there? On the other hand, it can teach one how to not listen to their body and stop when they are full! When I was a child, I was told all the time to “clean your plate”, “eat all of what you take”, and “have one more cookie - it won’t hurt you”. Well, it did hurt me. I was a very overweight teenage girl because I did not listen to my body. I managed to lose that weight in college, but that set me up for a lifetime of weight gain, weight loss, now at weight gain.

I have taught my boys “eat if you hungry, don’t eat if you are not hungry”. They are all slender young men and can turn down food if they are not hungry and will not accept the “have one more” argument from Grandma!
Ohana said:
Let me tell you about the tablespoons of food growing critters in my fridge because I hate to waste it. Duh. I am getting better.
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Oh, can I relate. I still save leftovers, because it “might be used”, but it never does get used. My college age sons are the only 2 who eat leftovers, so when they are gone…leftovers sit in the fridge for a few weeks, then get thrown out, usually with the plastic containers, because the mold is just too nasty to deal with.
 
Catholic90 said:
One should never “clean their plate” because people are dying of starvation in Africa, though! How is me finishing my plate of food here going to help them there? On the other hand, it can teach one how to not listen to their body and stop when they are full! When I was a child, I was told all the time to “clean your plate”, “eat all of what you take”, and “have one more cookie - it won’t hurt you”. Well, it did hurt me. I was a very overweight teenage girl because I did not listen to my body. I managed to lose that weight in college, but that set me up for a lifetime of weight gain, weight loss, now at weight gain.
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Yeah. That argument never made sense to me, either. Personally, if there’s something I can’t eat because I’m not hungry, I drop it outside, in the woods at the end of our yard, so the critters can have it.

I don’t think a situation like this counts as wasting food, but I think it would apply if, say, you had food out just for show and no one ate it, then it got tossed. I read about this happening with a birthday cake at some celubtante’s birthday party (might have been Paris Hilton). It gets better though: this young up-and-coming hip-hop singer had been invited to the party, and when he heard about this, he literally took the cake, after the party, and brought it to a homeless shelter in the neighborhood where he grew up, so the poor folks there could have a treat!
 
Food is a blessing and we should be mindful of that. I’d rather have insufficient food than an excessive amount which stuffs me or goes to waste.

It is a sin to be wasteful with food. At the Madonna house apostolate, the pots get scraped clean so that nothing even ends up in the sink, God forbid th garbage!

Out of solidarity for people who starve we should be very moderate with our eating.
 
"Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks, and gave them out to all who were sitting ready; he then did the same with the fish, giving out as much as was wanted. When they had eaten enough he said to the disciples, “Pick up the pieces left over, so that nothing gets wasted”. John 6;11

Food is just one thing mentioned in the over all category of waste. What about water, energy, gas, clothing, money, time, land, and so forth.
Responsibility and good stewardship is important in every area.

Just a thought.
 
G.K.Chesterton remarked in the early 20th century that the Catholic Church not only tells us what is right and wrong, she puts things in their proper perspective and scale of values. Unfortunately, we laypeople do not always pick up the nuances. GKC mentioned that he could never get one of his aunts (I think it was) to realise that food is still wasted if you eat it when you don’t really need it.
Relief agencies have discovered over the centuries that getting food to the hungry is very seldom as simple as it sounds. Not that we shouldn’t try –*just to be very prudent: and not to neglect our next-door neigbour for the sake of some report we have had about the other side of the world.
In the 1980s I had a friend from Guyana, of mixed racial descent (and a Hindu) who told me that in his part of the world, the only organisation that ever did any actual good for the people was the Catholic Church. He was eventually run out of the country by the local thugs in charge, because he refused to take on the role of Token Native who Made Good.
 
JackVk said:
It kinda depends. Are you throwing it out because you are a picky eater and just didn’t want it? Did it go bad without your knowledge, or did you put off eating it because you wanted something else? It’s a nuanced thing. I ask myself this a lot (I HATE wasting food).
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I always throw out the broccoli.

Please, oh please, don’t tell me that’s a sin? 🤷
 
I always wonder about those big food fight festivals that they seem to have in Spain and Italy - the most famous is La Tomatina the tomato throwing one. On the one hand it does look like fun, but it also seems (or feels?) very decadent to be throwing food around like that.🤷
 
I have a friend who permits her children to load up their plates, eat half, and pitch the rest. The first time they ate at my house, I let them know in no uncertain times that they were to put on their plates only what they would eat, and then take seconds if needed, but no taking food they wouldn’t eat! It helped that I had grown much of what I served, so they could make the connection between my sweat and their food.

I say clean your plate, but never overload it in the first place.
 
“I say clean your plate, but never overload it in the first place.”
I totally agree. Although, often I’ll eat just after my children, so if there’s any food they can’t finish, I eat it. Leftovers for breakfast and/or lunch can also be a healthier way to eat than consuming a large dinner.
We should avoid waste of any kind if we can. The money thus saved can then be used charitably (or enable a mother to work at home with her children instead of going out to work to pay for all the things we waste).
The Freecycle website is a good way to pass on to others who may use them, the things we may otherwise discard. There is one for most local areas.
 
Natural Family, I had to learn pretty early on never to serve my children and myself in combination, more than I could eat all by myself. For a while there I was vacuuming up all their leftovers on top of my meal, and that was no good either.

Freecycle is a beautiful thing. As is Share the Harvest, through which I got two free, partially processed deer this fall. (And for anyone not familiar with this sort of thing, if you have a conservation dept reasonably nearby (close enough that you’re willing to go there for pickup, which may be pretty far for free food!), phone and ask to be put on their list to receive deer that have been confiscated from poachers).
 
Catholic90 said:
One should never “clean their plate” because people are dying of starvation in Africa, though! How is me finishing my plate of food here going to help them there?
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By not putting more on your plate than you can eat comfortably in one sitting, and by not buying more groceries than you can consume in the time it takes them to go bad, more food is left available for others to eat, including the starving poor in other countries.

But when the poor see their shelves empty, but the garbage cans next door overflowing with rotten and half-eaten food, you can just imagine how they must feel.
 
John21652 said:
I always throw out the broccoli.

Please, oh please, don’t tell me that’s a sin? 🤷
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And I don’t even consider macaroni and cheese to be real food. Haven’t been able so much as to look at it since we were forced to eat it in the second grade. No one liked it.
 
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