The Chinese government pitched the new rules in shades of green, emphasizing the sustainability aspects of waste-not-want-not while Chinese netizens were talking about impending food rationing. Who knows where the truth lies?
From AgFunder:
The Chinese government has passed a wide-ranging law aimed at reducing food wastage in the world’s most populous country.
Among the provisions of the food waste law are a ban on competitive eating and hefty fines of up to ¥100,000 ($15,400) for making “binge-eating” videos where vloggers “usually leave a lot of food uneaten and often vomit what they have consumed,” according to the state-owned Global Times.
The social media phenomenon of livestream eating originated in South Korea where it is called mukbang, meaning ‘eating broadcast.’ The Chinese term for the genre, chībō, means the same thing. Chībō has become wildly popular throughout China in recent years – though not without controversy.The food waste law also introduces a fee which restaurants can charge to their patrons if they leave “excessive” amounts of uneaten food at the end of their meals. Vendors that “induce or mislead consumers into making excessive orders” can now be fined up to ¥10,000 ($1,540).
Restaurants that consistently waste “large amounts” of food face fines of up to ¥50,000 ($7,720).
The law was first proposed to China’s legislature, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, late last year after Chinese president Xi Jinping described the country’s food waste problem as “shocking and distressing.”
According to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, restaurants in the country’s major cities waste 18 million tonnes of food a year, which the Academy estimates as being enough to feed up to 50 million people in the same timeframe....
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