杜絕"舌尖上的浪費"
Zhou Jinsong, a canteen manager at Central South University, said that students produce over 12 barrels of leftovers on a daily basis — each barrel stands at one meter in height. Zhou’s canteen is just one of several on the campus.
周勁鬆（音譯）是中南大學的一位食堂經理。他說，學生們每天的剩飯都會超過12桶，而每個桶都有一米高周勁鬆所在的食堂只是校園裏衆多食堂中的一家。
But canteen waste is merely the tip of the iceberg. According to Xinhua News Agency, the food wasted by Chinese people equates to about 50 million tons of grain every year, or 10 percent of the country’s total annual grain production.
而食堂浪費只是冰山一角。據新華社報道稱，中國人每年“舌尖上的浪費”約等同於5000萬噸糧食，佔全國糧食年產量的10%。
This dumped food could feed another 200 million people. If that wasn’t bad enough already, numbers around the world are even uglier.
這些被倒掉的食物可以養活兩億人。如果你覺得這還不夠糟糕的話，一些全球性的數據將更加觸目驚心。
Food waste, which has become a global issue, serves as a mirror that reflects various cultural and societal issues in different countries.
食物浪費已成爲一個全球性問題，像一面鏡子一樣折射出各國不同的文化與社會問題。
In the West, for instance, consumerism, the belief that it’s good to use a lot of goods and services, is often to blame for food waste. China, in turn, features its own eating culture and a generation of single children that is less aware of the food waste issue.
例如在西方，崇尚享受精品與服務的消費主義觀念常被認爲是食物浪費的元兇。而在中國，這一切都歸咎於本土飲食文化以及獨生子女一代對於食物浪費問題的忽視。
New generation
新的一代
Quantifying how much food college students, most of them single children, waste is a shocking exercise.
想知道以獨生子女爲主體的大學生會浪費多少糧食嗎？結果一定會令你大吃一驚。
As a 2011 survey conducted by China Agricultural University shows, 28.3 percent of canteen food ends up in rubbish bins on campuses nationwide, over twice the national average (10 percent).
中國農業大學2011年的一項調查顯示，全國校園食堂裏，有28.3%的飯菜被倒進了垃圾桶，這個數字超出了全國平均浪費率（10%）的兩倍還要多。
“What students waste every year could feed over 10 million people,” Zheng Chuguang, a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, told China Education Daily.
“每年學生們浪費掉的食物可以養活一千多萬人口。”全國政協委員鄭楚光在接受《中國教育報》採訪時表示。
Gong Tao from the Youth League at Central South University, has seen a diminishing awareness of food waste on campus over the years.
來自中南大學團委的龔濤（音譯）發現近年來校園內的食物節約意識越來越淡薄。
“Students nowadays are well protected by their families and hardly have any concept of how much toil others go through in order to provide them with the food they eat,” he said.
“現在的學生被家人寵得厲害，根本不知道生產他們吃的這些東西需要付出多少辛苦勞動。”他說。
Face counts
面子問題
According to Yu Changjiang, a sociologist at Peking University, the communal dining tradition and the social function of banquets make food waste almost inevitable in China.
北京大學社會學家於長江表示，在中國，公共食堂的傳統以及宴會的社交功能使得食物浪費現象幾乎不可避免。
“Since the 1980s, when Chinese gradually became more affluent, food waste has been a subject of debate. But things have hardly changed over the years,” said Yu. “It’s the Chinese way of showing respect to guests and displaying generosity, often referred as mianzi.”
“自從上世紀80年代，中國人逐漸富裕起來之後，食物浪費就成爲爭論熱點。近年來這種現象幾乎從未改變幾乎。”於長江說。“這是中國人的好客之道，以示慷慨，也就是通常提到的‘面子文化’。”
But rather than tradition, huge public spending on government banquets is also fuelling food waste, said Zhou Xiaozheng from the sociology department at Renmin University of China.
中國人民大學社會學系教授周孝正表示，除了飲食傳統之外，政府部門公宴上的鉅額支出也使得食物浪費愈見突出。
“It’s the result of widespread reception meals at government levels,” he told Economic Daily.
“這是公款吃喝風行的結果。”他在接受《經濟日報》採訪時表示。
Extravagant government banquets at the taxpayer’s expense have become “a major source of waste, a degrading factor of social morality and political atmosphere”, commented People’s Daily last week.
公款吃喝的奢侈之風已成爲造成浪費的罪魁禍首，“喝壞了黨風，敗壞了社會風氣。”《人民日報》上週發表評論稱。
China Daily added: “It is also important that everyone thinks about how they can do their bit to reduce food waste.”
《中國日報》也在文章中指出：“每個人都應該思考如何爲杜絕食物浪費來盡一己之力，這點也至關重要。”
