#National Clean out your Fridge Day

This morning, I was driving down Bowman listening to 105.1 the Wolf, our local classic country music station. As I turned on Markham, they started to talk about #National Clean out your Fridge Day, encouraging the listeners to put on their rubber gloves and old t-shirt and purge that fridge. Obviously the holiday season is upon us, which means food, food and more food. Food also generates tons of leftovers, which will find their home in a Tupperware bowl (or a butter bowl if you're from the South), and will slowly migrate to the back of your refrigerator and be forgotten until spring cleaning.

As the commentators laughed about some of the nasty foods they have found in their fridge, they discussed finding literally brand new, unopened packages of food and encouraging people to throw it away.

Many people listening to that station this morning were probably laughing and thinking "Wow, that is me." But personally, this struck me on a totally different level.

Now I am by no means a food waste police, and I am fairly bad about chunking food or allowing it to waste myself... but today something struck me about this time of the year in a different way.

Yesterday, I was driving home from work, and there was a man on the side of the street, standing in the snow, holding a sign that said "Hungry." That man will not be participating in #National Clean out your Fridge day, because he doesn't even know where his next meal will come from. Somewhere around the world right now, there is a mother with three children, sitting in a clay hut, wondering how she is going to make her baby's belly stop growling because none of her children have eaten in two days. The oldest has to help with chores and needs the energy, the middle child has to walk three miles to school, and the baby is only a few months old and won't develop correctly without proper nutrition.

Yet here we are, with these "first world problems" of having to reach into the back of our refrigerator and clean out BRAND NEW packages of food that we bought at Walmart months ago and let spoil in that beautiful ice box.

So, as the radio commentators were just doing their job this morning: talking about something entertaining that will make people laugh on their way to work, they missed this wonderful opportunity to shine a light on hunger. So I will.

Next time you decide to buy two packages of tortillas instead of one, or think you need that extra jar of salsa -- why don't you take that food and give it to a homeless man, or use those dollars to invest in a program that helps create opportunity for better nutrition in countries around the world. Because we all know on #National Clean out your Fridge Day in 2019, you will all be reaching to the back of the shelf to scrap that ruined, soggy food out and throw it into the trash can; when it could've fed a hungry belly to begin with.