WASTE OF FOOD IN HOTELS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXII, Issue 95, 25 April 1891, Page 3 (Supplement)

WASTE OF FOOD IN HOTELS.

Enough is Thrown Away to Feed Any Number of Poor People.

The thing which perhaps strikes me most disagreeably in the American hotel diningroom is the sight of the tremendous waste of food that goes on at every meal, writes Max O'Rell in the 'North American Review.' No European, I suppose, can fail to be struck with this, but to a Frenchman it would naturally be most remarkable. In France, where, I venture to say, people live as well as anywhere else, if not better, there is a perfect horror of anything like waste of good food. It is to me, therefore, a repulsive thing to sea the wanton manner in which some Americans will waste at one meal enough to feed several hungry fellow creatures. In the large hotels, conducted on the American plan, there are rarely fewer than fifty different dishss on the menu at dinner-time. Every day and at every meal you may see people order three or four times as much of this lood as they could under any circumstances eat, and, picking at and spoiling one dish after another, send the bulk away uneaten. I am bound to say thab this practice is not only observed in hotels where the charge is so much a day, but in those conducted on the European plan—that is to say, where you pay for everything you order. There I notice that people proceed in much the same wasteful fashion. It is evidently not a desire to have more than is P»j<* for,° u * simply a bad and ugly habit. I hold that about 500 hungry persons could be fed out of the waste that is going on at such large hotels as the Palmer House and Grand Pacific Hotel of Chicago-and I havo no doubb such 500 hungry people could easily be found in Chicago.overy day.