--What a lot of wasted food!
One day at a morning assembly, our principal said, "Well, boys and girls, do you know how much food our school leaves after a school lunch? The amount of three classes' food is thrown away after lunch time every day. And most of the leftovers are burnt as garbage. I want all of you to think about it."
What a lot of food! Of course I've known this serious fact. When I was a member of the student council, I often saw a lot of uneaten bread, rice, meat, vegetables, fruits and so on. The heavy carrying cases of lunch were brought back to storage from classrooms after lunch. Today I want to think about food in my school.
My grandparents live in the countryside and grow vegetables there. Every August I visit to see them and help them to reap the vegetable. One summer day I was in a green house to reap green peppers. The shining Sun, no wind, busy noise of a lot of cicadas. Can you imagine how hot it is in a green house? It was a terribly hot summer day! Sometimes standing, sometimes lying on the ground, my grandparents and I cut green peppers off the tree one by one with scissors and picked them up from the ground. Then we shifted to the next tree. We continued this work from early morning to late in the evening. I was very hot and very tired. I even suffered from a serious backache. Everyday my grandparents have to do this kind of hard work during the summer season. I guess this is very hard for old people like them.
Then I noticed farmers do such hard work to supply us rice or vegetables. My grandparents take a lot of care growing them. They are trying not to use agricultural chemicals in order to provide the consumers safe and nutritious vegetables even if it makes their work much harder. All of us should appreciate their efforts. Through this experience I realized that "Thanks to many people's efforts, we are able to eat and taste various kinds of foods. Not only the farmers or fisherman's effort, but also the people who work at the market, the people who transport the products, and the people who cook them."
Now let's go back to our school lunch again. Most of us students don't consider many people's efforts when we leave food at lunch, saying, "I don't like this", "It isn't tasty", "It smells bad" or something. We should stop such wasting as soon as possible.
It seems to me that we waste quite a lot of food in our daily life in Japan. On the other hand, many many people are dying or suffering from hunger in some countries. It is not natural to be filled with enough various food around us. We should be thankful for foods and for the people who supply them. Let's start something right now not to waste food in our daily life.
So what am I trying to do? Well, for example, my family tries to use a whole green pepper for a dish without wasting any parts of it. We always remember my grandparents' hard work. We also do not buy vegetables more than we can eat because we have let vegetables go bad in the refrigerator many times. Aren't there any uneaten old food in your refrigerators?
--Thank you.
It really takes me back and I was impressed by this amazing script written by my English teacher back then. Memorizing and practicing pronunciation were very hard for me especially because I had studied English just for two years at that time. Still, it was a great opportunity to improve my English and keep motivated.
