Entertaining people can be difficult, and it's easy to have too much food. If you've thrown a dinner party, you've likely found yourself with too many leftovers. However, you probably haven't found yourself with 40 pounds of leftover lobster like this person's boss did.
The employee posted to Reddit in August about their boss' leftover frozen pre-cooked lobsters from last Christmas, saying they threw out 40 pounds worth about $1,000. Accompanying the statement are images of the big boxes of lobster left on a counter.
This is, unfortunately, "super wasteful" on many levels. It's a waste of perfectly good food, a waste of money, and a waste of all the resources it took to get the lobsters from the ocean, cook them, and transport them.
Lobster and other seafood can be unsustainable because of the high demand for the product and the diminishing wild populations. Lobster fishing, in particular, is linked to decreasing marine populations, water pollution, and habitat destruction.
It's a shame all those lobsters were never eaten. When we throw out uneaten food, we don't just waste perfectly good food; it also means all the upstream environmental and ethical harm happened for no reason. And when it's frozen food that was also already cooked, the risks are very minimal to eat later than a sell-by date.
One commenter noted: "If these were frozen the whole time they were likely still good. Best by dates refer to taste and not spoilage."
Generally, the commenters mourned the waste of the lobsters' lives, with one saying: "Personally I'd still eat em and just use extra seasoning so these guys didn't die for nothing."
This waste of perfectly good lobster also raised the question of why the boss wouldn't give it to others to actually eat. The food could have easily gone to a food bank or even been prepared for the staff.
"They couldn't even give you guys a crew lunch with it?" asked one. "It's getting wasted anyway, what's the difference?"
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