So I decided to research the Clean Plate Club. I always thought the Clean Plate Club was just a cute name for parents who force their kids to finish all the food on their plates at every meal. But apparently it has an institutional origin from the United States Government! I had no idea.
From Wikipedia:
"[During WWI, President] Hoover knew that many Americans were willing to volunteer and had a strong sense of patriotism during the war, so he used that to his advantage when he advertised the idea of the “Clean Plate” campaign. Hoover promoted this idea to children who attended school with a pledge that read, “At table I’ll not leave a scrap of food upon my plate. And I’ll not eat between meals, but for supper time I’ll wait.” This targeted children too young to understand the value of food in the difficult economic time. Many necessities such as flour and sugar were in short supply, so Hoover used a sense of American nationalism to encourage families to take appropriate rations and save food."
"The ideal of completely finishing a serving has now become a bad habit, as food (in America) is no longer in short supply, and finishing the remainder of your meal is not a crucial belief any more. Today, portion sizes have increased considerably, shown by the fact that a serving of french fries today is twice the size of a 1950s serving, making “cleaning your plate” an unhealthy dietary action. It has been shown that parents who push their children to eat their entire meal may interfere with the self-control of their child, thus leading them to overeat, as well as creating a misunderstanding of an appropriate serving size."
So what began during World War I as a nationalist propaganda movement to encourage Americans to eliminate food waste (and hey, we can all get down with that, right?) has morphed into one of the causes of our current obesity epidemic. Seriously, is there another term for that? I hate the term "obesity epidemic." It's like all those commercials that start with "In this economy..." Cleaning our plates used to be a better idea, because our food was more natural and we didn't have so much of it on our plates to begin with. Now, though, it's not a good idea to clean our plates anymore, because our food is unhealthy and our portion sizes are huge. WOOPS!
However! We can't WASTE food - that would be equally bad, not for our bodies, but for our consciences. Which brings me to the core principle of the No Waste Vegan Place. This principle was also used as a propaganda campaign, this time in the US during World War II:
Take all you want, but eat all you take.
One of my favorite WWII posters with a similar slogan. Source.
So, we're no longer in a situation where we have to conserve rations in order to send them overseas to our troops. We actually have an enormous global food SURPLUS, if you can believe that! The problem - the terrible, horrible, unfair issue at hand - is the unequal distribution of that food. We have much far too much food here in the United States, and not nearly enough in the developing world. Even when developing countries do have a lot of healthy foods, they are often exported to wealthy countries where we sometimes waste over half of our food supply while the developing world starves.
If we, as fortunate Americans, were to finish all the food available to us at mealtimes, we would become very unhealthy. We just have too much food here, and not the right kind. Out of the surplus of food we have - the wealth, the abundance, the mountains and mountains of food we have - we should take, buy, and eat all we want (responsibly, of course - I'm looking at you, Bacon-Imported-from-Haiti). But we should always take only what we can eat, and we should never waste anything we take.
Which brings us full circle back to the Clean Plate Club. Sometimes we all take more than we can eat. As the old saying goes, our eyes are bigger than our stomachs. The good news is that "not wasting food" doesn't have to mean "eating all of it ourselves." Here are some ideas to prevent food waste without reverting to the old "Clean Plate Club" ways:
1) Share it. Shareshareshareshareshare. Sharing is caring. Share with your friends. You've got a carton of soymilk in your refrigerator door, and its expiration date is fast approaching? Invite your friends over for a milk 'n' cookies party. Bonus points if you read If You Give a Mouse a Cookie in a circle on the floor sitting criss-cross-applesauce.
2) Take it to work. I cannot emphasize this enough. Your coworkers will LOVE YOU if you are the person who constantly brings free food to work. Try to make it look nice though, okay? No one wants to stick a spoon into your crusty half-eaten scalloped potatoes. Put them in a new dish and add some extra (vegan!) bacon bits or something.
3) Freeze it. You'll be surprised how many foods can be successfully frozen, thawed, and enjoyed for a second time. Label your foods with the date you froze them so you remember not only what they are, but how long they've been all cryogenic in your kitchen.
4) Give it to a homeless person. People always giggle when I say this. I'm serious!!
If you just cannot get anyone to eat your leftover food, you can compost it, or you can throw it away and just try to do better next time. Living a healthy life and eliminating food waste is a continuous process, not an endless series of days where you pass or fail at being a good person. Every day is a new day, and if you threw away a half-eaten yogurt today, maybe tomorrow you'll remember you just don't like yogurt that much. Stay positive, and remember you are improving yourself, your body, and the world every day that you make happy, healthy decisions about your food.
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