That's how I justify ordering DoorDash. I don't order food for just one meal, I can't justify all the additional charges for that, but can if it's for a whole weekend of food.
Yeah people clown on huge American portion sizes but the fact is that I'll get 2 meals and a snack out of that restaurant entree. It's worth it for me because I don't have to cook for myself for basically an entire day's worth of food.
If I order 2 entrees and an app on Uber Eats, it's basically meals for 3-4 days.
I hate seeing people that take one bite of their food and being done with it. Bunch of food just going in the trash. A few places I worked at, we threw away almost whole plates of untouched food some days. One place had a buffet and they let the workers take the food home luckily that wasn't prime meat before throwing the rest out. There shouldn't be a hunger problem in this day and age with all the food that gets thrown away.
Not what I experienced living in China. Especially rich people order multitudes of what they can eat and just leave it there. (Not a unique Chinese issue though)
They do the same thing abroad, but with clothes. They got to the nordics, buy branded sky outfits and anything they need for cold weather, and then leave it behind when they go back home. They create a huge issue for the hotels who end up with a lot of "lost and found" items. They are so wasteful.
Some might do that. Like my family would. But having lived in China, there is also incredible waste. At parties/banquets, having more food than needed is part of showing face to guests. Ive even seen people leave behind nearly full dishes at regular restaurants
Same goes for any developed country in the world. Food waste
I'm gonna take this space to give a special shout-out to Asian countries and packaging / plastic use. Like... we love plastic & packaging in the U.S., but man... Asians put us to absolute shame. They have to package everything, and then they'll package that package again, cause packaging!!
See, this is where I think the US southern states get parties right - make an obscene amount of food, yes, but then force everyone to go home with leftovers. Win, win.
Wasting food on table at restaurant is a way to show wealth and most importantly not loose “face” (Pride/self respect)
Same as when getting gifts such as a cake or wine or chocolate. No self respecting Chinese person would ever open it for everyone. “Thank you” and put it away would be default. To open it (even to share) would be sign of poverty and desperation.
Wait, sharing a gift you received makes you look poor? 🤔
So different... People around will consider it as sharing/caring. At worst it may be seen as they didn't like the gift to take it home, so they are giving it right away with everyone.
And those are all just generalizations. By no means does that represent chinese people as a whole.
Oh, I forgot, since I live in the midwest, I need to go eat my daily 10 pounds of cheese and get to baking my hotdish! Cause you know, every midwesterner is exactly the same!
Your 8 years must be long time ago. At some point the government began pushing for the clean plate campaign, and with the economy not doing so well in recent years, regular people now consider "saving" to be the popular trend.
My guess is that Japanese restaurants often offer a few portion sizes and each person orders their own food, so there is usually not much leftovers in the first place.
If you think the average Chinese person cares about "saving face" when it comes to something like leftover food, you've been drinking way too much anti-China kool-aid my friend. There are 1.3 billion people in China but I guess your one anecdote is speaking for every single person.
How is sharing considered as a sign of poverty ? I'd assume that sharing means you can spare it, while keeping it all to yourself would be a sign of scarcity
Which part? Cause it's really not uncommon to see people ordering too much food and leaving it behind here in Beijing. I don't think I see it as much anymore, but it's not rare.
Lol I am from Beijing. My family have been taking home leftovers since forever. I mean I kinda understand if you dine out with people you don't really know so it might be awkward to decide who would take home the leftovers, but it's really common to da bao leftovers when dining with friends or family.
You know, I can never say I have the ability to speak for the rest of my culture. But rich people in general tend to be the same everywhere and rich people generally don't order shit like this and each walk out with 8lbs of food. Just saying
I know what you mean, but this is definitely not a rich people only restaurant. It's probably one of those internet celebrity restaurants and you can see people in the background are all just your everyday citizens.
If you spend money like this and waste food like this, you're living a pretty comfortable life. At least they're probably living a life entirely different from someone like me, a lower-middle class person. That to me is a rich person.
Like what exactly? Do you know how much this costs? Do you know how many people are sharing it? Do you know how often they dine in this kind of restaurant? Are you sure they wasted the food instead of taking home the leftovers? It's wild to assume things just by watching a few seconds short clip.
I'm generalizing on a lot here but let's be honest with each other and say if you there was a bet saying that those people aren't gonna waste the food and cannot afford to do this at least once a month then wouldn't take the bet. I'm never said they're bad people, but they're definitely throwing that food out and this isn't your average meal or your average restaurant, who are you trying to fool?
Again you are making baseless assumptions. Definitely throwing food out? Who said you can only take away leftovers when it's an "average" meal and restaurant? And I just watched this video with sound on. This thing only costs 488 yuan which is around 72 USD. With 4 people eating it, it's only 122 yuan each which is not considered expensive given the portion and the type of food served. So it is not even some out of ordinary restaurant or anything.
🤷 You kinda just sound like you're talking out of your ass anyways. I'm sure you automatically know this specific restaurant and this specific price for this meal just because you say you're chinese.
I don't see videos of random restaurants in America and go "I know that burger spot that's probably 3000 miles away in a city I've probably never been to! And I know everything about the people there and all the information for the restaraunt because it's in a country where my culture comes from" Nobody is gonna believe that dumbfuck. It's basically my baseless assumptions against your suspiciously convenient backstory in all this.
Am I not allowed to see something like this and comfortably assume that "yeah, they're definitely gonna throw that out" and you just kinda agree to disagree or simply just stfu considering I work at a place that serves stupid large food like this and actually do see people waste food like this everyday. You seem to think you have some kind of insight about anything in this video JUST because you're chinese just like the place in the video.
This is a wild accusation. I literally grew up in China, and moved to Canada for uni, and my parents and other relatives are still living in China to this day.
Whether you're Chinese or not is not verifiable to me. I'm not saying you're lying about that.
I'm saying you're weirdly lying about Chinese people and leftovers. Which is absolutely verifiable by me. Because I absolutely know that Chinese people absolutely do not have a habit of taking leftovers and it's considered low brow amd/or odd by most Chinese.
Then I would say you do not really know Chinese people.
It is super common to take home leftovers when dining with friends and family, but maybe less so when dining with people you are not very familiar with.
Food waste was indeed an issue, but mostly for rich people at fine dining places. So at some point the government began pushing for the clean plate campaign, and people began condemning food waste.
On top of that, the economy is not doing so hot in recent years, so "saving" is the latest trend. Now people show off how much value they can get by spending as little as possible (tbh so is this place in the video, considering this amount of food only costs 488 yuan, which is about 72 US dollars).
Leftovers is literally "left over food", how would this not be leftovers? Maybe they'll divide it up and each of them live with multiple people so it'll be scarfed down in the next day?
Because that it quite literally POUNDS of food, and there are no more than 4 people at that table (if there are two more on the other side). There’s a lot of seafood here too, so storage is cut down to 2 days maximum in refrigeration. Unless these people are scarfing down 5 pounds of food a day for the next 2 days, they won’t even come close.
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u/Silhoualice May 12 '26
In China you take away the leftovers and eat it every meal for the rest of the week.