| Kippreport.com

Should you be fined for wasting food?

August 5, 2012 3:30 by Eva Fernandes

A restaurant in Saudi Arabia is making headlines for its unusual policy of penalizing customers for ‘wastage of food.’ According to the owner of the restaurant based in Dammam, in the Eastern Province, the penalty was put into place after many customers failed to consume their large orders of food—the owners stress wasting food goes against the teachings of Islam.

In a culture of excess, a ‘food wastage’ policy may sound absurd, but this isn’t the first time a restaurant has opted for this kind of a penalty. Consider the £20 (Dh114) fee owners of the Chinese restaurant Kylin Buffet charge those diners who do not eat all the food of their plates. The restaurant’s policy received much coverage after they fined Beverley Clark, a 40-year-old mother, after her son and niece left two onion rings, a prawn toast and a spring roll at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Or consider the standing policy in a Japanese restaurant in New York called Hayashi Ya which fines a customer 3 percent of their bill, if they do not finish what they serve themselves from the all-you-can-eat buffet.

Other restaurants opt for forms of positive reinforcement to encourage good eating habits. A Japanese restaurant called Wafu just outside of Sydney, Australia, gives its customers a 30 percent discount if they eat all the food they ordered. The company’s website begins with a special plea to its customers to: “Please be mindful of the amount of food you order – consider ordering just the right amount, in harmony with your appetite!”

Food wastage fines isn’t altogether a strange concept—but Kipp can’t help but think it would be very strange if it was every enforced here in the Emirates. After all, for a city like Dubai which has given birth to the institution of the Friday all-you-can-eat-and-drink brunch, it is difficult to think of such penalties being put in place. Yet given the country’s burgeoning obesity problem, perhaps a food wastage fee is exactly what is needed.

Tags: food penalty saudi, wasting food, wasting food penalty