The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view of the subject.(May 2010) |
Leftovers are surplus foods remaining unconsumed at the end of a meal, which may be put in containers with the intention of eating later. Inedible remains like bones are considered waste , not leftovers. Depending on the situation, the amount of food, and the type of food, leftovers may be saved or thrown away.
The use of leftovers depends on where the meal was eaten, the preferences of the diner, and the local culture. Leftovers from meals at home are often eaten later. This is facilitated by the private environment and convenience of airtight containers and refrigeration. People may eat leftovers directly from the refrigerator, reheat them, or use them as ingredients to make a new dish.
At restaurants, uneaten food from meals is sometimes taken by diners for later consumption. In the United States, a once common term for the containers the leftover food was put into was "doggy bag", with the food being notionally to feed to pets, whether or not it is in actuality.
New dishes made from leftovers are common in world cuisine. People invented many such dishes before refrigeration and reliable airtight containers existed. Besides capturing nutrition from otherwise inedible bones, stocks and broths provide a base for leftover scraps too small to be a meal themselves. Casseroles, [1] paella, fried rice, [2] Shepherd pies, [3] [4] and pizza can also be used for this purpose, and may even have been invented as a means of reusing leftovers.[ citation needed ] Among American university students, leftover pizza itself has acquired particular in-group significance, to the extent that the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service offers, as its first tip under "Food Safety Tips for College Students" by Louisa Graham, [5] a discussion of the considerable risks of eating unrefrigerated pizza. [6]
At some holiday meals, such as Christmas and Thanksgiving in the United States, it is customary to prepare much more food than necessary, specifically so the host can send leftovers home with guests.[ citation needed ] Cold turkey is archetypal in the United States as a Thanksgiving leftover, with turkey meat often reappearing in sandwiches, soups, and casseroles for several days after the feast.
Leftovers have had a major impact on the consumption of food, particularly the size of portions. Portion sizes have increased greatly.[ why? ] [7] In general, food leftovers have both positive and negative impacts, depending on the person's eating habits involved with leftovers. With an increase in portion size comes the perception of the amount of intake a particular person considers. For example, a smaller portion usually leads to smaller consumption, making a person believe they have not eaten enough and negatively impacting their eating habits. [8] In turn, a larger portion leads to a greater amount of leftovers, whereas a smaller portion leads to a small amount of leftovers. Through extensive research, one of the most influential factors of weight gain is leftover food and the increased amount of consumption because of it. [9]
The name of the Chinese-American dish chop suey is sometimes translated as "miscellaneous leftovers", although it is unlikely that actual leftovers were served at chop suey restaurants.[ citation needed ]
Diners in a restaurant may leave uneaten food for the restaurant to discard, or take it away for later consumption. To take the food away, the diner might request a container, or ask a server to package it. Such a container is colloquially called a doggy bag or doggie bag, although this term has largely fallen out of fashion. This most likely derives from a pretense that the diner plans to give the food to a pet rather than eat it themselves, and so may be a euphemism. The modern doggie bag came about in the 1940s. Some also speculate the name was born during World War II when food shortages encouraged people to limit waste, and pet food was scarce. [10] In 1943, San Francisco cafés, in an initiative to prevent animal cruelty, offered patrons Pet Pakits, cartons that patrons could readily request to carry home leftovers. [11] The term doggy bag was popularized in the 1970s etiquette columns of many newspapers. [12]
Doggy bags are most common in restaurants that offer a take-out food service as well as sit-down meals, and their prevalence as an accepted social custom varies widely by location. In some countries, people might frown upon a diner asking for a doggy bag. In the UK, in the year 2010 it was still considered an Americanism and an uncommon request, [13] but the practice became far more accepted after campaigns for waste reduction and the cost-of-living crisis, and some countries now obligate restaurants to offer take-home options. [14]
Some restaurants wrap leftovers in aluminum foil, creating shapes such as swans or sea horses. [15]
Korean cuisine has evolved through centuries of social and political change. Originating from ancient agricultural and nomadic traditions in Korea and southern Manchuria, Korean cuisine reflects a complex interaction of the natural environment and different cultural trends.
A salad is a dish consisting of mixed ingredients, frequently vegetables. They are typically served chilled or at room temperature, though some can be served warm. Condiments and salad dressings, which exist in a variety of flavors, are used to make a salad.
Take-out or takeout is a prepared meal or other food items, purchased at a restaurant or fast food outlet with the intent to eat elsewhere. A concept found in many ancient cultures, take-out food is common worldwide, with a number of different cuisines and dishes on offer.
Fast food is a type of mass-produced food designed for commercial resale, with a strong priority placed on speed of service. Fast food is a commercial term, limited to food sold in a restaurant or store with frozen, preheated or precooked ingredients and served in packaging for take-out or takeaway. Fast food was created as a commercial strategy to accommodate large numbers of busy commuters, travelers and wage workers. In 2018, the fast-food industry was worth an estimated $570 billion globally.
Poon choi or puhn choi, pén cài in pinyin, is a traditional Cantonese festival meal composed of many layers of different ingredients. It is served in large wooden, porcelain or metal basins called poon, due to the communal style of consumption. The Chinese name, transliterated as Poon choi, has been variously translated as "big bowl feast", "basin cuisine" or "Chinese casserole".
A cafeteria, sometimes called a canteen outside the U.S. and Canada, is a type of food service location in which there is little or no waiting staff table service, whether in a restaurant or within an institution such as a large office building or school; a school dining location is also referred to as a dining hall or lunchroom. Cafeterias are different from coffeehouses, although the English term came from the Spanish term cafetería, which carries the same meaning.
Canadian cuisine consists of the cooking traditions and practices of Canada, with regional variances around the country. First Nations and Inuit have practiced their culinary traditions in what is now Canada for at least 15,000 years. The advent of European explorers and settlers, first on the east coast and then throughout the wider territories of New France, British North America and Canada, saw the melding of foreign recipes, cooking techniques, and ingredients with indigenous flora and fauna. Modern Canadian cuisine has maintained this dedication to local ingredients and terroir, as exemplified in the naming of specific ingredients based on their locale, such as Malpeque oysters or Alberta beef. Accordingly, Canadian cuisine privileges the quality of ingredients and regionality, and may be broadly defined as a national tradition of "creole" culinary practices, based on the complex multicultural and geographically diverse nature of both historical and contemporary Canadian society.
A buffet can be either a sideboard or a system of serving meals in which food is placed in a public area where the diners serve themselves. A form of service à la française, buffets are offered at various places including hotels, restaurants, and many social events. Buffet restaurants normally offer all-you-can-eat food for a set price, but some measure prices by weight or by number of dishes. Buffets usually have some or mostly hot dishes, so the term cold buffet has been developed to describe formats lacking hot food. Hot or cold buffets usually involve dishware and utensils, but a finger buffet is an array of foods that are designed to be small and easily consumed only by hand, such as cupcakes, slices of pizza, foods on cocktail sticks, etc.
Jugging is the process of stewing whole animals, mainly game or fish, for an extended period in a tightly covered container such as a casserole or an earthenware jug. In France a similar stew of a game animal is known as a civet.
Online food ordering is the process of ordering food, for delivery or pickup, from a website or other application. The product can be either ready-to-eat food or food that has not been specially prepared for direct consumption.
Lunch is a meal eaten around the middle of the day. It is commonly the second meal of the day, after breakfast, and varies in size by culture and region.
Customs and etiquette in Chinese dining are the traditional behaviors observed while eating in Greater China. Traditional Han customs have spread throughout East Asia to varying degrees, with some regions sharing a few aspects of formal dining, which has ranged from guest seating to paying the bill.
Pagpag is the Tagalog term for leftover food from restaurants scavenged from garbage sites and dumps. Pagpag food can also be expired frozen meat, fish, or vegetables discarded by supermarkets and scavenged in garbage trucks where this expired food is collected. The word in the Tagalog language literally means "to shake off the dust or dirt". Pagpag can be eaten immediately after it is found, or can be cooked in a variety of ways.
The Sustainable Restaurant Association (SRA) is a not-for-profit membership organisation, based in the United Kingdom, which supports food-service businesses working towards sustainability in their sector and guides customers towards more sustainable dining choices through its Food Made Good standard.
Western-style fast food in mainland China is a fairly recent phenomenon, with Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) establishing its first Beijing restaurant in November 1987. This location was met with unprecedented success, and served as a model for many local Chinese restaurants that followed it.
Meal preparation, sometimes called meal prep, is the process of planning and preparing meals while pre packaging the meals you will eat throughout the week.
A meal is an eating occasion that takes place at a certain time and includes consumption of food. The names used for specific meals in English vary, depending on the speaker's culture, the time of day, or the size of the meal.
Migrants’ food consumption is the intake of food on a physical and symbolic level from a person or a group of people that moved from one place to another with the intention of settling, permanently in the new location. Food Consumption can provide insights into the complex experience of migration, because it plays a central role to the memory, comfort and all processes needed to adapt to a new country and environment and even to social relations within and beyond the family.
The Clean Plate campaign is a movement initiated in 2013 to reduce food waste and ensure food security in China. While the initial campaign originated from grass-roots society, it soon received government encouragement and support. Aligned with Chinese leader and CCP general secretary Xi Jinping's platform of anti-corruption and instilling more discipline among party members, there were government instructions and demands to limit the government spending on social banquets, which was a big contributor of food waste. However, other than that measure, the government mostly stayed out of the private realm with no central regulations on private practices of food waste. There was some local effort, but most of it died out soon.
Fried rice and noodle dishes with vegetables are likewise ancient. They were typically composed of leftover ingriedents and cooked in woks.
Perishable food should never be left out of refrigeration more than 2 hours. This is true even if there are no meat products on the pizza. Foodborne bacteria that may be present on these foods grow fastest in the "Danger Zone" (temperatures between 40 and 140 °F) and can double in number every 20 minutes.
If a food has been out of the refrigerator for more than two hours, then it is considered unsafe and should be thrown out.