Estimate your hunger. If you can’t, read on…

I went to a restaurant with my friend one day. As soon as we saw the menu card, we felt like hogging all of the dishes there! Without giving it a second thought, we ordered 4 dishes we felt like drooling over. The moment the first dish went in, I was no more “extremely hungry”. The second one almost filled my tummy. I loved the third one, so finished my share in the same momentum. Then! I looked at the fourth one and felt, “What was I thinking when I ordered this? But never mind, my friend is here to finish it”. But oh, my friend was equally full! We kept pushing the dish towards each other forcing the other one to complete!  Somehow we managed to complete half of it and that’s it! It felt like my stomach is gonna burst if I take in one more spoon. The rest of it went a waste.

Happens with you? This was me, about 2 years ago. Until one day, when I heard that a staggering ‘one billion people’ in this world sleep hungry every single night! There must have been days you’ve not had food and tried sleeping. Could you sleep? Not easy, right? Imagine the plight of those unfortunate kids who might have never tasted a candy! They never know how “Oh, I’m full” feels like.

When you order an extra dish at a restaurant that you can’t finish, it’s not the 100 odd bucks that you are wasting, it’s the resource! It’s the resource someone somewhere in the world is dying for. You can afford to waste 100 bucks, but not the food that’s keeping you alive. Most of us empty our plates at home, almost all the time. Why doesn’t this happen at restaurants? We fail to estimate our hunger may be, or we are too lazy to wait for the dishes to be prepared & served, so we order all at once. Or sometimes, it just doesn’t occur to us that we are ordering more food than we need.

Let’s try and keep this in mind next time we go to a restaurant - “Take all you want, eat all you take!” To mark a beginning to this, support this brilliant initiative – “Empty Plate Campaign” by 36meals, happening this weekend - March 23^rd and 24^th. You don’t have to move out of your house, it doesn’t take hours. All it takes is a photo of your empty plate after your meal and uploading that on 36meals Facebook Page or Twitter. Here’s the FB Event Page to join.

Of course that’s not the last day we follow it, but that’s the beginning for many people. Those of you who never waste a morsel of your meal, take lead and inspire the people around you. “All empty plates look good. It’s the plate with food left over that looks ugly”. So go ahead and post your photos!

Thank you.