Like most of us, I try to be mindful of food that goes to waste. The arugula 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.
和大多数人一样，我尽量避免食物浪费。芝麻菜就是做一份美味的蔬菜沙拉，配上一顿烤鸡晚餐。但我最后工作到很晚，然后朋友们打电话邀请我共进晚餐，我只好把鸡肉放在冰箱里。几天后，芝麻菜坏了。更糟糕的是，我瞎买了很多；我扔掉的菜足够做六份沙拉。

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 quiet eatable) vegetables rejected by grocers to large amounts of uneaten dishes thrown into restaurant garbage cans.
在一个每年有近8亿人挨饿的世界里，正如伊丽莎白·罗伊特在本月的封面故事中所写，“食物浪费违背了道德准则”。从杂货商拒绝采用“丑陋的”（但可以吃）蔬菜到扔进餐厅垃圾桶的大量未吃的菜肴，美食被扔掉的数量之多令人瞠目结舌。

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.”
生产无人食用的食物会浪费水、燃料和其他用于种植的资源。食物浪费成为一个环境问题。罗伊特写道，事实上，“如果食物垃圾是一个国家，它将是世界上第三大温室气体排放国。”

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 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.
如果这很难理解，那就让我们像冰箱后面的芝麻菜一样简单吧。迈克·柯廷一直在看我的芝麻菜故事——对他来说，这更像是生命临近结束前捐赠的12盒草莓。柯廷是华盛顿特区中央厨房的CEO，该公司负责回收食物并将其转化为健康食品。去年，它通过接受捐赠和收集有瑕疵的农产品（不然只能在田里腐烂），恢复了807,500多磅的食物。草莓呢？志愿者将清洗、切割、冷冻或晒干这些食物，以便在路上用餐。

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.
这样的方法似乎显而易见，但我们往往只是不去思考。科廷说：“每个人都可以在减少浪费方面发挥作用，可以是在每周购物时不要购买超多的食物，也可以要求餐厅不要给你提供你不吃的配菜”。