Written by Harris Hsu and Aayush Mehta

There are about 950 primary students in RCHK, approximately 500 of whom eat school lunch every day. However, a lot of food is not eaten. Instead, it is being thrown away. 

Students do not finish their meals for three main reasons: 1) they don’t like it; 2) they don’t have enough time to finish; or 3) they are in a rush to go out and play. As a result, they waste their lunch.

Food is a basic necessity for our well-being. If we do not eat proper meals, we will not have proper nutrition, nor the energy to play and concentrate. Also, wasting food is harmful to the Earth’s environment.  Another reason you shouldn’t waste food is because many people around the world and in Hong Kong are currently living in extreme poverty. They don’t have enough food to eat. They only get to have one meal a day. Poverty food is any reasonable or promptly available food used to nourish people in times of hunger and starvation, whether caused by extreme poverty, such as during economic depression, natural disasters, such as drought, or by war. This connects to food wastage as we should be grateful for the food and nutrition we have that others don’t.

Our survey of Year 5s and Year 6s asked them why they were wasting their food. As per our research, students in our school want to change the lunch menu to unhealthy foods. However, too much unhealthy food is very bad for you, and you need to eat healthy things like rice and vegetables. Unhealthy food from the cafeteria might be really bad for you and you might get many diseases!  Eating rice and nutritious foods like that on the other hand is really good for you!

Some students also said that they don’t finish their lunches as there isn’t enough time. If there is no time to finish your lunch, then try to finish it off quicker. Chewing your food quickly could also help! 

Food is something you need all the time and without it you can’t learn or do anything. If you don’t eat, you can’t pay attention in class which then creates a bigger and bigger issue. If you don’t pay attention, you might be in big trouble and get bad marks in your semester report. Do you want that to happen? 

To conclude, we all need to try to respect food and finish our lunch when we have the time to. Take only how much food you are able to eat before being served. Wasting food is not a good idea as many people in the world don’t get to eat food. You could even donate food or money to NGOs like Feeding Hong Kong, Oxfam Hong Kong or Unicef! Your small actions make a big difference.