Week 10 - Masterchef Australia!

What is big going on in Australia now? If you asked me this question, as a foodie, I would be very likely telling you that please stick to Channel Ten because it's the annual Masterchef Australia time!

Masterchef Australia is a live television cooking show, which happens annually.  For each season, 24 ordinary people but extraordinary home cooks will be selected all over the country, then go through a series of competition and eliminations on the Tv show. 

I am a big fan of the show. I really enjoy watching how the home cooks turns all the beautiful ingredients into even more beautiful dishes. It is like a magic show. Along the show, there are advertisements from the food supplier supermarket, about how fresh and nice are their ingredients. Of course, the show itself has claimed they insists to use organic food and source their food locally repetitively throughout the show.

It was nice to know all these informations, and as they intended, I appreciate their response to the sustainability topic nowadays. Until one evening, I watched this particular theme and it triggers my thinking. The theme is about how to use "scrap food" from last round cooking to create a dish. By hearing this, I suddenly start to realised, no matter how many times they claim they use organic food and locally sourced food in the Tv show, the amount of food waste behind the scene must be unbelievably huge!

Dish created by contestant in Masterchef Australia

As shown in the picture above, every dish is well presented with a spoonful of source and a few pieces of meats. However, when you watch through the show, you can find out that in order to cook the beautifully tendered and juicy meat, the contestants actually need to cook up a whole portion of meat and a big bowl of source. When I see this beautifully presented dish and the emptied benches, where did all the leftovers go? Did they end up in the bin and became a part in the landfill? 

Well, I cannot deny that there is a chance they donated all the leftovers for charity, to soup kitchen and those places where people are suffering from food shortage. As a piece of news from last year states, all the scrap food goes to SecondBite, which is a charity providing food and nutrition to people in need across Australia. However, it is also said that food sold in the charity is very likely not to be sold and the staffs end up the eat the food by themselves. I personally do not believe that the staffs can eat up that huge amount of leftover food from the show.

Just for one commercial show on the Tv, lasts for a few months per year, how many tons of food is wasted? We don't know, and no one seems to be challenging this particular issue. Thinking about those people who is actually lack of food in Australia, or in elsewhere, this amount of food waste is unacceptable.

I think this is not only the issue for commercial food waste. It also alarms us to minimise food waste, cherish every spoonful we have. 










Resources:
https://masterchefreheated.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/mc6_ep05_kira-2.jpg
http://www.realityravings.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/masterchef-1.jpg
http://tenplay.com.au/channel-ten/masterchef
http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/what-happens-to-all-of-the-uneaten-food-on-masterchef/news-story/3d7165dbf04909d9c54a5d0f6544ac4d