It’s probably walking on rather thin ice with many of the food festival types, but I’m just going to say this: wasting food is… flat out wrong.
I used a picture of the ubiquitous Midwestern Pumpkin Chunkin’ thing lest any of you feel I am unfairly targeting Europe, but I will add to my list of questionable food practices La Tomatina, in Spain, where in just an hour close to 150,000 kilograms of tomatoes are thrown, and The Battle of the Oranges in Italy, where for three days people run around in the heat flinging imported (they grow beans in that region, not oranges) fruit, and the two tons of olive oil used for wrestling in Turkey.
Someone is going to tell me quite righteously that the food is a.) bruised/nearly spoiled b.) not up to EU market-quality, c.) the extra food would go bad before it could be safely shipped to those impoverished ountries where they’re frying up sugar and dirt as a meal, where hair and teeth are falling out due to lack of basic nutrition.
Please don’t bother. The revenue these places make from tourists coming to watch them waste food could be used to send the less-than-best fruit and veg to people who would eat it gratefully, no matter what it looked like. The bad bits could be cut off and the fruit dried or canned or frozen. I am not convinced that the alleged “food crisis” in this world is an actual food issue at all; rather, it is more a failure of distribution, and production, in that some farmers are still paid not to grow food.
It’s the right of the owners of the food to do what they want with it, yes, yes, yes. That’s obvious. But, it’s also obviously insane. If there’s enough food to throw around, there’s a surplus. I cannot be convinced otherwise (this is not to say that I’m not open to a discussion, but I’m ranting here, okay?). Cattle are still fed on things that… people could eat. Since when are cows more important than people? Since when is entertainment and tourism and capitalism more important than lives? Introverted grouch that I am, I am still all for the camaraderie of a festival. But can we please find something to throw that is not useful for human food?
Californians watched much of their beloved state go up in flames this summer, while others insisted on their right to have firework shows for the Fourth. This reminds me an awful lot of that. There are some times when we have to change, let go, make compromises. What we used to do doesn’t always work in the here and now. Flinging pumpkins out of a cannon, just to see how far they’ll go, while fun, seems to me a criminal waste.
And while I’m up here, on this soapbox, I might as well go on.
Eating. Is. Not. A. Sport.
If I can go through life seeing no more people frantically shoving pies, fruit or hot dogs down their maws, rolling eyes bloodshot and distended, sweat pooling, looking only a hair-trigger away from an unfortunate projectile incident — then I would be happy. (Not watching any Food Network over the summer helps make this possible.) Not only do eating contests bypass any kind of gastronomical appreciation for what is eaten, they seem to celebrate binge eating, which, in the U.S and much of the Western world, is a serious problem. It seems tasteless to make a game out of eating as much as we can as fast as we can…just because we can.
This might be a bridge too far for some. I realize going face first into a pie is a gift of summertime that some people have had to give up, since leaving the high chair. I don’t begrudge anyone, child or adult, their enjoyment of going face first into a cobbler with their hands behind their back if that’s how they want to spend an afternoon with family and friends at their town’s annual picnic or fair. I do think that competing to be a Guinness World Record holder for how many hotdogs you can force down before your intestines rupture goes beyond the boundary of good taste, and maybe beyond social responsibility.
No answers, here. Just observations. And a mounting sense of the need to find the brakes for this particular runaway train.
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Thank you! Thank you for saying this out loud.
When I was a child I wondered why there were vegetables run “through the mill”, why there was a “butter mountain”. Adults told me it was about money and farmers getting a fair price. Well, without selling and spoiling the market you could as easily give it away?
I’m an adult now so they say… I still don’t get it.
You don’t have to fly out, look around the corner..
Hmmm… social responsibility, what a concept. I have so much to say on this subject, I don’t even know where to start, except perhaps to say that we, in particular as a nation, have come to view excess as a god given right. And when one has too much of something, one becomes careless with it. One wastes. The food crisis will not mean anything to Americans until they are hungry. During the depression, we didn’t throw pumkins, we made pies and bread and soup with them – even of they weren’t the little sweet ones.
We don’t care about crises, as long as we can have our Hummers. Don’t forget, the majority of Americans voted for Bush. Twice. And they watch Jerry Springer. What does that tell you?
Idiocracy – rent it.
Way to let it rip. And those eating contests? Simply gross.
I just read that during Myrtle Beach’s annual Bike Week, there’s female wrestling in a huge pit of coleslaw prepared just for the occasion. Can you imagine? Throwing fruit or pouring olive oil is one thing, but to actually prepare an enormous salad that no one will eat? Wow.
Well said.
Thanks for the supportive responses. I know people get weirded out when I get on my soapbox, but I honest DON’T get how anyone can do these things for “fun” when people are starving — in our own country, and elsewhere…
From someone who grows a garden, fishes all summer, survives on our own beef and basically tries to live off the land I have to totally agree. I couldn’t imagine growing anything in my garden for such wastefulness!! Or catching, cleaning, and hauling any of the food we use just so someone can “have fun” while others go without, grrrrrh!
My garden will soon be overrun with cucumbers and my first stop will be the old folks home in town, no waste here!