Roman Catholics have prayers for pretty much everything. Need to sell your house? We’ve got prayers for the intercession of St. Joseph for that. Lose that special piece of jewelry that belonged to your grandmother? St. Anthony is ready to help! And if you’re about to set out on a journey, the angels tend to be good protectors.
Not surprisingly, Catholics have a standard prayer before meals as well. It’s simple and direct, and it won’t let your food get cold. “Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts, which we are about to receive from thy bounty, through Christ, our Lord, Amen.” I’ve said it before most every meal since I learned how to speak.
Prayers like these are important sentiments. They remind us to be grateful and to recognize that the food we eat is a gift. I don’t grow my own food, or process it, or package it, or transport it to market. Someone else does. I may pay for those things, but it is still appropriate that I have gratitude for the people who labor for my sustenance. And I certainly am not responsible for the miracle of sunshine and photosynthesis. Tip of the cap goes to God on that one.
I’ll admit, though, that I’m not great at preserving that spirit of thankfulness and appreciation throughout the meal. Far too often, that blessing just checks the box – I’ve said it and I can then move on to the daily task of consuming calories. And then when the meal is finished, if I’ve got anything left over and I don’t want to save it, to the trash can it goes. No big deal.
Except it turns out that it is a big deal. Food waste, I mean. It’s a huge deal, actually. Big enough of a deal that I’m going to dedicate four more blog posts to it. And that gesture on my part is the equivalent of a water balloon to the Mediterranean Sea in terms of the hugeness of the deal that food waste is.
As an appetizer, we’ll look at the scale of global food waste in general. I’ll follow that up with a delightful course that links food waste to water scarcity and conservation. For your entrée, we’ll explore the impacts that food waste has on climate change. And if all of that leaves your stomach empty and depressed, I’ll have the perfect dessert for you: a generous serving of what-we-can-do-about-it with a scoopful of hopefulness on top. Your chefs for the next month or so will be John M. Mandyck and Eric B. Schultz, authors of Food Foolish, a book I recently read that expertly knits all of these issues together.
I’ll leave you with just a taste to start things off. Globally, we lose and waste 1.3 billion metric tons of food every year, which is the rough equivalent of 1.3 billion elephants in weight (Food Foolish, p. 57). I’m going to think about that the next time I bless my food. I’m pretty sure I’ll be a bit more thankful as a result.
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