Waste or Waist?

To a reader who asked: I got the red bananas at Hannaford's in Concord, N.H. It's one of the bigger ones with a large produce section.

Many of us belong to the Clean Plate Club -- we couldn't leave the table until our plates were clean. We essentially grew up on overeating. I know I still have a hard time to stop eating when I'm full if my plate is not empty. A nutritionist I knew once told me she thinks of throwing away food as a choice between "waste or waist."

That got me thinking: If we clean our plates, eating food we don't need, isn't that waste too? We're not using the food; we're just carrying it around with us as fat, rather than letting it sit in a landfill or become compost to enrich the earth. In a sense, overeating is waste. And it doesn't help those without food when we gorge ourselves. Those starving people in Ethiopia my mother always told me about aren't one bit better off because I'm stuffed.

That said, sometimes it's hard to stop eating because the food is just so good. I'm still working on that.