We all waste food, you and me, every day, millions of tons of it. In China, enough food is wasted in restaurants every year to feed 200 million people. And the amount (数量) of food wasted by Chinese consumers (消费者) is increasing fast. So our nation is being encouraged to stop wasting food.

So what should Chinese consumers do to prevent food waste?

♦ Keep a kitchen diary

All of us should keep a kitchen diary, and we can know that how much food we waste at home. The first thing for us to do is to stop throwing away food that we can still eat. We should eat everything we buy and if we cannot, we should buy less.

♦ Buy only what we need

We should ask for smaller portions (部分) in stores. We should also check how much food we have before buying more. We shouldn’t bring much food we don’t need home even if large posters ask us to do so.

♦ Develop the habit of packing food

Chinese consumers are generous (慷慨的) and friendly. In restaurants, often too much food is ordered and served. So when ordering out, we are supposed to exclude (排除) the food if we don’t plan to eat it. And order smaller servings in restaurants and take home what we cannot finish.

Don’t put it off! Let’s stop food waste today!

In the Hollywood movie Mean Girls, three pretty high school girls always hang out together. They make fun of other students. They won’t let you sit with them at lunch if you don’t wear the same cool clothes as them.

In the US, a group of girls like this is called a clique（小圈子）.They look down on and laugh at other people.

Some girls say “Oh, my God!” “We aren’t like that. We don’t have cliques or anything.” But we do have cliques. They may not be as extreme（极端的）as the clique in Mean Girls, but they exist. It’s just that a few extreme cases make the whole clique thing seem a much bigger deal than it really is.

It’s usual for people to get together with others who share their hobbies, and in many cases, clothing styles. There’s a group for girls who like to shop. There’s a group for kids who like movies. The science nerds（书呆子）hang out with each other. Sports people like each other’s company.

You might think the popular groups would make fun of the needy ones. But that’s actually not true. In my experience, people are too caught up in their own lives. They don’t have time to make fun of others. The way teenagers behave in school is really not different from the way adults behave. After all, adults still want to hang out with people whom they like and have things in common with.