Our eating habits are causing a global crisis

Zhou Jinsong, a canteen manager at Central South University, said that students produce over 12 barrels of leftovers on a daily basis — each barrel stands at one meter in height. Zhou’s canteen is just one of several on the campus.
周劲松（音译）是中南大学的一位食堂经理。他说，学生们每天的剩饭都会超过12桶，而每个桶都有一米高周劲松所在的食堂只是校园里众多食堂中的一家。

But canteen waste is merely the tip of the iceberg. According to Xinhua News Agency, the food wasted by Chinese people equates to about 50 million tons of grain every year, or 10 percent of the country’s total annual grain production.
而食堂浪费只是冰山一角。据新华社报道称，中国人每年“舌尖上的浪费”约等同于5000万吨粮食，占全国粮食年产量的10%。

This dumped food could feed another 200 million people. If that wasn’t bad enough already, numbers around the world are even uglier.
这些被倒掉的食物可以养活两亿人。如果你觉得这还不够糟糕的话，一些全球性的数据将更加触目惊心。

Food waste, which has become a global issue, serves as a mirror that reflects various cultural and societal issues in different countries.
食物浪费已成为一个全球性问题，像一面镜子一样折射出各国不同的文化与社会问题。

In the West, for instance, consumerism, the belief that it’s good to use a lot of goods and services, is often to blame for food waste. China, in turn, features its own eating culture and a generation of single children that is less aware of the food waste issue.
例如在西方，崇尚享受精品与服务的消费主义观念常被认为是食物浪费的元凶。而在中国，这一切都归咎于本土饮食文化以及独生子女一代对于食物浪费问题的忽视。

New generation
新的一代

Quantifying how much food college students, most of them single children, waste is a shocking exercise.
想知道以独生子女为主体的大学生会浪费多少粮食吗？结果一定会令你大吃一惊。

As a 2011 survey conducted by China Agricultural University shows, 28.3 percent of canteen food ends up in rubbish bins on campuses nationwide, over twice the national average (10 percent).
中国农业大学2011年的一项调查显示，全国校园食堂里，有28.3%的饭菜被倒进了垃圾桶，这个数字超出了全国平均浪费率（10%）的两倍还要多。

“What students waste every year could feed over 10 million people,” Zheng Chuguang, a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, told China Education Daily.
“每年学生们浪费掉的食物可以养活一千多万人口。”全国政协委员郑楚光在接受《中国教育报》采访时表示。

Gong Tao from the Youth League at Central South University, has seen a diminishing awareness of food waste on campus over the years.
来自中南大学团委的龚涛（音译）发现近年来校园内的食物节约意识越来越淡薄。

“Students nowadays are well protected by their families and hardly have any concept of how much toil others go through in order to provide them with the food they eat,” he said.
“现在的学生被家人宠得厉害，根本不知道生产他们吃的这些东西需要付出多少辛苦劳动。”他说。

Face counts
面子问题

According to Yu Changjiang, a sociologist at Peking University, the communal dining tradition and the social function of banquets make food waste almost inevitable in China.
北京大学社会学家于长江表示，在中国，公共食堂的传统以及宴会的社交功能使得食物浪费现象几乎不可避免。

“Since the 1980s, when Chinese gradually became more affluent, food waste has been a subject of debate. But things have hardly changed over the years,” said Yu. “It’s the Chinese way of showing respect to guests and displaying generosity, often referred as mianzi.”
“自从上世纪80年代，中国人逐渐富裕起来之后，食物浪费就成为争论热点。近年来这种现象几乎从未改变几乎。”于长江说。“这是中国人的好客之道，以示慷慨，也就是通常提到的‘面子文化’。”

But rather than tradition, huge public spending on government banquets is also fuelling food waste, said Zhou Xiaozheng from the sociology department at Renmin University of China.
中国人民大学社会学系教授周孝正表示，除了饮食传统之外，政府部门公宴上的巨额支出也使得食物浪费愈见突出。

“It’s the result of widespread reception meals at government levels,” he told Economic Daily.
“这是公款吃喝风行的结果。”他在接受《经济日报》采访时表示。

Extravagant government banquets at the taxpayer’s expense have become “a major source of waste, a degrading factor of social morality and political atmosphere”, commented People’s Daily last week.
公款吃喝的奢侈之风已成为造成浪费的罪魁祸首，“喝坏了党风，败坏了社会风气。”《人民日报》上周发表评论称。

China Daily added: “It is also important that everyone thinks about how they can do their bit to reduce food waste.”
《中国日报》也在文章中指出：“每个人都应该思考如何为杜绝食物浪费来尽一己之力，这点也至关重要。”

以上文章内容选自《21世纪英文报》，详情请见《21世纪英文报》991期