Why taking home your "doggy bag" is a good idea

It gets eaten by the kids or by them for lunch the next day.

And so it should. If you don’t believe that doggy bags play a major role in global efforts to reduce food waste - which is an alarming 40% in the US and nearing that in Europe - consider this: last week a new anti-food waste law passed in Italy earmarked 1 million euros to the rebranding and destigmatising of "doggy bags”.

Italy's new law

Henceforth to be known as "family bags", it’s hoped that Italians will revise their views on what’s currently considered a vulgar practice, and five celebrity chefs are spearheading a campaign to do just that…

Most of what lands up in landfills is food, and most of it shouldn’t be there at all.

The major part of that new Italian law allows for food to be donated even if its past its sell-by date and allows for mislabeled food to be donated (provided that there was no safety risk in that mislabeling).

France has similar laws. But no such law exists in SA. As I said in a recent show, there’s a lot of misperception about “expiry” dates - best-before dates are about quality, not food safety, so products which are still perfectly safe to eat after they have “expired” get unnecessarily wasted anyway. So there's a lot of perception changing to be done there.

How popular is this in SA?

But when it comes to doggy bags, we’re generally not coy about it at all. In most South African restaurants it’s normal practice for uneaten food to be scooped into a polystyrene container or wrapped in foil and given to the customer to take home.

I phoned a few restaurants in the greater Durban area to ask them about the doggy bag issue.

Spiga d’Oro’s Florida Road manager George Mthembu said 80% of the restaurant’s patrons went home with their leftovers.  “Even the wealthy ones ask,” he said.

“And if they don’t ask, we ask them ‘Would you like that as a take-away?’ We really don’t want to throw the food away.” Most avoid the term doggy bag.

At Cafe 1999 on the Berea, it’s a similar story - 75% of diners ask for the remainder of their meals to be packed as a take-away for them, and the other 25% who don’t ask, get asked by staff if they would like that.

An Olive and Oil Umhlanga manager told me about a third of diners asked for “doggy bags” and the waiters and waitresses were trained to ask the take away question on clearing away plates with uneaten food on them.

But at Mundo Vida in Ballito, it’s rare for diners to ask for doggy bags, possibly, the manager told me, because it’s a fine dining restaurant and portions are smaller. 

“We do ask our guests if they’d like to take away what they haven’t eaten, but most say no,” I was told.

“On Sunday we had 45 tables and we only packaged three take away boxes..”

Ivan Govender, manager of Little India, Musgrave, said about half his patrons asked for a doggy bags, as their portions are large. Interestingly, he said the business lunch crowd tend not to want them, but it’s very different at night. 

What I love is that every restaurant I spoke to said their waiters and waitresses were trained to offer to parcel up the uneaten portion of a diner’s meal “as a takeaway” - in other words to pro-actively suggest it, to remove any possible embarrassment or awkwardness on the diner’s part.

So, do your bit for the global move to drastically cut down on food waste - and spare the landfill - and take what you don’t eat home with you. It’s the right thing to do!