Why a doggy bag is perfectly fine

Whether I could take home the half pizza that I really couldn't eat anymore. I asked this question to the handsome (but of course way too small) Italian waiter. May I mention that there was a crazy portion of foccaccia drenched in perfect Tuscan olive oil and a velvety piece of burrata with pine nuts, mint leaves, and freshly ground black pepper that preceded this? Alessandro, to give the little beast a name, looked at me as if I were cuckoo. I, on the other hand, thought it was the most normal thing in the world. My mother taught me to always eat my plate clean, and in America, where the portions are ALWAYS humongous, a brown paper bag always went home with me. But we Dutch still find it a bit awkward to ask the waiter for a paper bag to put our leftovers in.

Alessandro, to give the little beast a name, looked at me as if I were cuckoo.

Recently, research has been conducted into this taboo on the doggy bag. And what turns out? We may still find it a bit strange to ask if we can take our leftovers home, yet there is slowly but surely change coming. Nowadays, 38% of the Dutch still find it embarrassing to ask for a doggy bag in a restaurant. We see an upward trend in this, as in 2015 it was still 47% and in 2014 it was another 5% higher. In recent years, restaurants have been increasingly pushed to pack leftover dishes for the guest. Since Natuur & Milieu started a doggy bag campaign in 2014, 415,000 doggy bags have ended up in restaurants. 100,000 of those were distributed for free by Natuur & Milieu, together with Depa and Rabobank. Additionally, 315,000 doggy bags were sold to restaurants through wholesale food suppliers. Last year, only 8% of the population was offered a doggy bag. This is disappointing considering the fact that our population finds it a waste of money to throw away food.

If I tell you that restaurants in our country waste over 51,000 tons of food annually, which is equivalent to 77 million hot meals, then you could say that this is quite a serious matter. 77 million meals. That could feed almost all of Amsterdam for nearly three months. Can we agree that if we all keep finding it so difficult to ask if that half portion of truffle pasta can go home in a plastic container, we should just start ordering a bit more with our bellies and a bit less with our eyes? Not me, I will keep asking for the brown paper bag. Saves me an hour in the kitchen the day after.

Source: Natuur & Milieu