WRAP off, frankly. As Julia, notes, this government funded (i.e funded with money stolen from us) quango is interfering where it has no business being. WRAP is a classic example of government waste, so it is best if they led by example and cut its funding to zero.
Restaurant customers ought to order smaller plates of chips, the Government’s recycling advisers have declared.
They say that too many people leave cold fried potatoes uneaten on their plates – and as a result hundreds of thousands of tons of food waste each year have to be dumped by pubs, restaurants and fast food chains.
They called for waiters to be trained to tell customers they ought to have less chips, and for ‘stealth menus’ designed to encourage diners to go for lighter meals.
The campaign against chips was launched by the Waste and Resources Action Programme, a £30million-a-year quango set up to encourage more recycling.
Thirty million we are spending on this crap. Thirty fucking million! On the one hand, my wallet is being arse-raped to pay for these useless fuckers and on the other, they are nagging me about portion size. Jeebus! Look, none of this is any business of government or its hangers-on. It is a matter for the restaurant and its clients. If the clients want smaller portions, they will ask. If they want to pay for food they do not eat, that is their concern. The restaurant has sold the food and that is the end of the matter for them. If the customer pays for it and does not eat it, well, too bad.
On a personal note, waste is something I abhor, so will try to order meals that I am likely to manage to eat – having a fairly small appetite. But that’s me. I do not consider it my business to poke my nose into other peoples affairs – because I am considerate like that. I’ll never make it as a politician or as a member of a quango where interfering in other peoples business is required as part of the job description.
WRAP said that to solve the problem ‘eating venues could train their staff so they are better able to talk about portion sizes with customers and provide more information on the meals, for example ingredients, cooking.
Oh, that’s right, make their life more difficult than it already is. If other diners are anything like me, they want to order the meal and eat it without having a discussion about the ingredients with the person serving it. I find it mildly irritating to be asked if everything is okay while I am eating. If it wasn’t they would know. Silence can be assumed to be assent, but they are obliged to do it, so I answer with good grace. What I do not want is ever more state sanctioned nannying.
But the document, Understanding Out Of Home Consumer Food Waste, warned: ‘Any messages or communication initiatives developed need to be stealthy and subtle, as diners do not want to be told what to do when out enjoying themselves nor do they want to think about food waste when eating out.’
You see? They know how we will feel about it, but they will insist anyway and use stealth. I’d like to take my eating sticks and stealthily insert them into a suitably fleshy part of the person who came up with this dreadful idea. I do not want nor need them to stealthily inflict their poison on me. I want them to pack up, go home and get a real job that doesn’t involve interfering in my life, thankyou very much.
Stealth menu suggestions made by the WRAP research include portion sizes marked by three chillies, by numbers of scoops, by different sized plates, or by a three bear system in which different-scale meals would be called mummy bear, baby bear and daddy bear.
That is not stealth, that is patronising bollocks. mummy bear, baby bear and daddy bear, fer cryin’ out loud!
Can we hang them yet?
Any eaterie which spotted that diners regularly left a large quantity of anything uneaten on the plate would surely either conclude there was something wrong with the way they were preparing that item – which actually I would expect the purchasers of it to let them know in no uncertain terms – and as a result of “unhappy customer feedback” they would address, or if that wasn’t the reason and people were nevertheless leaving stuff uneaten the next sane conclusion would be “our portion sizes obviously need adjusting downwards”, because portion size is closely related to profit and the idea is to always serve up the smallest portion you can safely get away with in order to maximise gross profits. So we might conclude no one at WRAP has any experience whatsoever of the trade and certainly doesn’t understand it.
” the idea is to always serve up the smallest portion you can safely get away with”
Which is what any sane person would conclude. Even if you cannot finish your meal, you’re not going to whine about it on TripAdvisor – you’ll praise them for the abundance. Watch people flock to restaurants serving VietCong POW camp portions.
I disagree with Longrider, though. £30m would be spent well on WRAP, were it put towards torturing them in new, horrific and waste-saving ways that we could watch. An ear removed from a team leader with a Stanley knife (a knock off from a pound shop, we are trying to economise here) can feed a piglet for 1.5 hours. Why have two ears? – that’s gluttony. Then we can continue with an eye, a lung, a kidney and an ovary or a teste.
“Stealth menu suggestions made by the WRAP research include portion sizes marked by three chillies, by numbers of scoops, by different sized plates, or by a three bear system in which different-scale meals would be called mummy bear, baby bear and daddy bear.”
A world for morons, created by morons.
The poor blighter who scrapes the skidmarks out of the porcelain in the lavatories at my local achieves more than these WRAP tapeworms ever could.
Cheers for link! 🙂
“Thirty million we are spending on this crap. Thirty fucking million!”
On the bright side, we used to pay £80 million. Progress? 🙄
XX They called for waiters to be trained to tell customers they ought to have less chips, XX
Then they should also be trained in Karate, Judo, Kung fu, whatever, because if some limp wristed bastard whos highest achievement in life, is to dress like a fucking penguin, and prance around like a puffter tells ME what I should order, he/it is likely to have its face ripped off with a blunt dinner fork.
“Evenin’ sarge. Could you call out the emergency plastic surgeon – one of the lads has just seen FT going into the Ecoeatery on the High Street.”