Too much food, glorious food

I recently went on a multi-family vacation with my brother's family and our Mother and Step-dad. The first thing we did after arriving at the house was go food shopping. And we bought an amount of food that was scary to me. The fridge and pantry were overstocked with food, and there was no way that we were going to go hungry.

And yet, throughout the week, I tried not to over-indulge in food. I did my best to not allow my son to snack between meals, especially since every night became a dessert night while we were on vacation.

I understood why we filled that house with food for our family vacation. We, like most families, show our love through food. Unfortunately, this is a detrimental correlation, as we are wasting a lot of food this way. Up to 40 percent of food is thrown away in families, and a good portion of that has been attributed to "parental over preparing." (Other times, it's us throwing away those aspirational vegetables we never got around to eating.)

I try not to needlessly fill up the pantry and fridge in our household, although I know it happens when we are having a stressful time in our lives - that is the time where I buy comfort food items that would not normally line our pantry shelves. Most weeks I try to focus on the monthly meal plans and grocery store lists to keep the amount of wasted food to a minimum.

As for the end of the vacation, as the last family in the house we did end up throwing away more food than I would like (our cooler only held so much), and it is definitely something I'll keep in mind the next time we all take a trip together.

Do you feel like your family is wasting too much food? Tell me why you think that in the comments.