Wasting away; how leftovers are part of the bigger picture

Navigating a less meat or meatless plege when other people are making the food can be tricky. As we wrote earlier, in order to get something other than salad at her work cafeteria, Sofie had to pick the bacon off her cod. Getting unwanted meat with the meal has also happened to other participants. Andrew was at a business meeting, where ham sandwiches were brought in for the lunch break:
I had to pick out the ham, but the sandwich had a good salad with dressing in it, and that tasted pretty good.
Linda had a sudden, unwelcome realisation when meeting a friend for dinner:

We decided to sit outside and enjoy the fantastic summer air at the Italian restaurant in the square. My friend watched tolerantly while I asked the waitress if their meat was organic, and she politely went back to the kitchen to check. It was not (of course), so I ended up with the tomato soup. Sadly, I was almost finished eating it when it occurred to me that restaurants often use a chicken broth to pep up their soups. I stopped eating, but didn’t have the heart to ask the waitress again, resolving instead to ask ahead of time, next time I’m in this situation. So on Tuesday, I’m afraid I don’t actually know if I had any meat or not…

Having to pick out the meat or not eating the food is unfortunate, but the question is whether it really helps anything with this kind of pledge. As Jake wrote recently, throwing away something you’ve already bought doesn’t make much sense. And a very large part of our modern western consumption ends as leftovers or discarded bits; waste, basically.

Jacob had an inspiring encounter with a very waste-conscious man who he met at a seminar:

I got talking with him and told him about my pledge of eating less meat. He keeps chickens in their garden at home and it’s made the family think a lot more about what and how much they eat, and especially about how much they throw out. It’s made them more conscious of reducing their household waste. But I must admit, it was a little strange to be talking about reducing meat and waste around a buffet table that was just loaded with meat dishes.

Do you try to be careful about your leftovers, and amount of waste? Or do you think it’s irrelevant in the larger scheme of things? Tell us about it here on Meaty Matters, and we’ll discuss it!