The French are recognising the need to reduce food wastage, opening up the possibility that ‘doggy bags’ will be offered in restaurants.
Wasted food costs the average French household €400 every year and the country up to €20 billion, said a report this week.
Food wastage around the globe accounts for a third of all edible produce, amounting to 1.3 billion tons per year.
Providing a doggy bag to diners was one of 36 recommendations contained in the report, despite the practice being rather unpalatable to the French.
To French sensitivities, doggy bags have been too easily associated with quantity over quality.
Guillaume Garot, the Socialist MP who drew up the report, said "most customers don't dare ask for the remains of their meal, and restaurateurs can see it as 'degrading' their dishes’".
But with the astonishing amount of wastage, a doggy bag “must be used as a springboard” to change the "almost automatic" habit of restaurants binning leftovers.
A recent poll in the southeast of the country found that 75% of diners there would be prepared to take leftover food home.
The hotel and restaurant industry union, UMIH, is helping to promote the concept, having struck a deal with one provider. The union is taking another tack by naming it “le gourmet bag”.
