When I was twelve I had a friend who’s family was fairly well off. I have a lot of memories that showcase the extreme disparity between us, but the time we ate lunch together at his parents’ tennis club is perhaps the most clear. He ordered this plate of nachos and after eating only about 1/3 of it he threw it away. I looked at him as if he’d just eaten the face off a newborn child. “What?? Why did you do that? It was perfectly good to eat!” cried I. He said, simply, that he was done eating and wasn’t hungry anymore.

Anyone who has been to weight watchers knows what the “clean plate club” is, and for those who aren’t familiar with the term I think it’s pretty self-explanatory. We are people who feel a compulsive need to eat every speck of food on our plates. Over the course of my life, I’ve met some people who have this particular conditioned behavior something fierce. It causes them overwhelming psychological pain to see just one bite of food thrown away, even if it’s on someone else’s plate. I’ve witnessed people sit and miserably stuff themselves, sometimes on the brink of tears, because they just cannot bring themselves to “waste” it.

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