Like most of us, I try to be mindful of food that goes to waste. The arugula (芝麻菜)was to make a nice green salad, rounding out a roast chicken dinner. But I ended up working late. Then friends called with a dinner invitation. I stuck the chicken in the freezer. But as days passed, the arugula went bad. Even worse, I had unthinkingly bought way too much; I could have made six salads with what I threw out.

In a world where nearly 800 million people a year go hungry, “food waste goes against the moral grain,” as Elizabeth Royte writes in this month’s cover story. It’s jaw-dropping how much perfectly good food is thrown away — from “ugly” (but quite eatable) vegetables rejected by grocers to large amounts of uneaten dishes thrown into restaurant garbage cans.

Producing food that no one eats wastes the water, fuel, and other resources used to grow it. That makes food waste an environmental problem. In fact, Royte writes, “if food waste were a country, it would be the third largest producer of greenhouse gases in the world.”

If that’s hard to understand, let’s keep it as simple as the arugula at the back of my refrigerator. Mike Curtin sees my arugula story all the time — but for him, it’s more like 12 boxes of donated strawberries nearing their last days. Curtin is CEO of DC Central Kitchen in Washington, D.C., which recovers food and turns it into healthy meals. Last year it recovered more than 807,500 pounds of food by taking donations and collecting blemished (有瑕疵的) produce that otherwise would have rotted in fields. And the strawberries? Volunteers will wash, cut, and freeze or dry them for use in meals down the road.

Such methods seem obvious, yet so often we just don’t think. “Everyone can play a part in reducing waste, whether by not purchasing more food than necessary in your weekly shopping or by asking restaurants to not include the side dish you won’t eat,” Curtin says.

In many cultures, it is considered unlucky to spill salt. Fortunately, many cultures also have a solution to the problem, which usually involves throwing a pinch of salt over your shoulder. It may seem confusing to modern humans, but knowing that salt was once incredibly valuable can change this perspective.

For thousands of years, salt was an extremely rare commodity. It was difficult to obtain so that the price was very high. Many trading routes were set up to carry salt, people were paid in salt, and salt was sometimes worth more than its weight in gold. Therefore, spilling salt was considered wasteful.

Because of its high value, salt was also associated with friendship and good fortune. Offerings of salt were included in many religious ceremonies, and people might bring salt to a new home for good luck. These associations would have suggested that it would be bad luck to spill salt, since it would seem to violate salt’s fortunate properties.

Salt is also an excellent preservative. It prevents food from going bad. As such, it came to be linked with health and longevity. In some cultures, spilling salt was thought to reduce one's well-being. In Britain, for example, each spilled grain was said to represent a tear, while in Germany spilled salt awakened the devil, bringing misfortune.

The fear of spilling salt was also adopted into the Christian faith. It is said that Judas spilled salt at the Last Supper, and since he later turned out to be the betrayer of Christ, spilled salt is considered unlucky by many Christians.

Should you be unfortunate enough to spill salt, you might throw a pinch over your left shoulder to blind the Devil.

【小题1】 The use of health supplements such as multivitamin tablets has increased greatly in the western world. People take these supplements because advertising suggests that they prevent a range of medical conditions from developing. However, there is concern that people are consuming worryingly high doses of these supplements and the European Union (EU) has issued a directive that will ban the sale of a wide range of them. This EU directive should be supported.

【小题2】 Research suggests that people who take Vitamin C supplements of over 5000 milligrams a day are more likely to develop cancer. This shows how much damage these health supplements do to people’s health. A spokesman for the health supplement industry has argued that other research shows that Vitamin C supplements help prevent heart disease, but we can dismiss this evidence as it is from a biased source.

【小题3】Science fiction of the 1960s and 1970s predicted that pills would replace meals as the way in which people would get the fuel they needed. This, it was argued, would mean a more efficient use of time as people wouldn’t have to waste it preparing or eating meals. The EU directive would help prevent this nightmare of pills replacing food becoming a reality.

【小题4】 People already take too many pills instead of adopting a healthier lifestyle. For example, the consumption of painkillers in Britain in 1998 was 21 tablets per year for every man, woman and child in the country. People do not need all these pills.

【小题5】 Some might argue that the EU directive denies people’s right to freedom of choice. However, there are many legal examples for such intervention when it is in the individual’s best interests. We now make people wear seatbelts rather than allowing them to choose to do so. Opposing the EU directive would mean beneficial measures like this would be threatened.