Photo Credit – Flickr 

By Tan Choon Hua

Malaysia is a heaven for food. However, food wastage has been a common issue among Malaysians who throw away extra food or leftovers that could still be eaten. 

During the current lockdown, there are many families who are hungry and couldn’t afford to have a decent meal. As such, for people who are able to have proper meals, it is wise not to waste food. There are a few ways that we could try to minimise food wastage. 

Food delivery is a convenient option for us as food gets delivered to our doorsteps. One way of minimising food wastage is to try gauging how much you could eat. It is tempting to order more food when you’re hungry but the extra food would go to waste if you throw it away. If you’re still hungry when you finish your meal, you could still order more food. 

It is best if you could keep extra food in containers and store them in the refrigerator or freezer at home. The food could later be heated up and consumed for the next meal. We could also get creative and transform balanced food into another dish by adding other ingredients. For instance, remaining hard boiled eggs could be squashed and mixed with mayonnaise, this would turn into scrambled eggs that could be eaten with bread. 

Another way is to only purchase food that we require for our meals. For instance, if you’re going grocery shopping to shop for ingredients or food to last for a week, try planning out how much you need for the week and only buy groceries that would last for one week. 

If you still have surplus good food at home, you may call up shelter homes and soup kitchens to collect the food as the extra food will be used to feed the hungry. 

It is important that Malaysians play a part to cut down food wastage as the amount of wasted food could feed many hungry families.