Hold It

"Hold The Green." That's the slogan for a new campaign against wasting food.

Take a look at this tasty seafood platter from a local restaurant. Notice anything missing?

That's right. The garnish isn't there. The reason the parsley is missing is because I requested the server not put any on the plate. Why? Because it is wasted. Hardly anyone eats the sprig of parsley, not even the curly Italian kind. It usually ends up in the trash or in the case of really cheap restaurant managers, re-used for another guest if it can pass a visual test for freshness.

According to the U.S. Parsley Council some 59,000 pounds of parsley is used yearly as garnish and in cooking. As a garnish parsley offers little except to take up platter space that could be filled with precious bacon and to add a hint of color on a plate consisting primarily of brown and gray hues. This is ridiculous and wasteful. Studies have proven that of the parsley-as-garnish that is eaten, 95% is consumed only by misbehaved children in restaurants who jump up and down on the chairs, scream, throw their fun-menu crayons in the iced tea of the people in the next booth. Parents, obliviously allow their children to eat the parsley even though there are health risks associated with extreme consumption of the herb. The remaining 5% who clean their plates are just cheap bastards who squeeze a nickle until it screams for mercy. Outside of the restaurant venue parsley is consumed in bunches by the stupid and those who believe in magic. They tout the homeopathic benefits of parsley but science says a diet high in parsley is pretty darn silly and is useless if not actually detrimental to a person's health.

PARSLEY MAKES IT CLASSY!
It is guesstimated that annually some 50,000 pounds of garnish-related parsley is wasted by being uneaten. That amount of green vegetable matter could feed 7,000 dairy cows for a year or a Maryland family of three for two months as a supplement to their food stamps. If there existed sin then such waste would be indeed sinful.

So be an Earth Warrior and do your part with very little effort at all. When dining out tell your server to "Hold The Green" and if they do not let them know you will be "Holding The Green" yourself, in the form of their tip, which they will not receive. If enough people decline parsley as a garnish then eventually restaurants all over America will stop ordering it and all that wasted food will be diverted to where it really should go, as the main ingredient in limited edition bobble-head statues based on the San Diego Padres or converted to cheap bio-fuel to run our cars. At the very least the parsley market will collapse and Italy will starve and then die before falling into the ocean.

As a side note savvy consumers also fight against the wasteful parsley scourge by frequenting those establishments that serve not the useless Petroselinum plant as a garnish but instead a crisp leaf of lettuce with a single cherry tomato placed onto it. Some people treat this lettuce and tomato combination similar to parsley and it goes uneaten. However the wise diner views this type of garnish not as future trash but as a potential bonus mini-salad. Most restaurants will freely and without question supply a customer with dressing of their choice on the side if they request some. Frugality for the win in this instance because making a tiny Caesar salad out of the spare and space-hogging veggies the customer gets more for their dollar by eating the typically unwanted garnish.

For more information click the Hold the Green search label.