The festive season is over. We made merry, feasting and drinking till the cows came home. Many forgot about health and obesity and overindulged, filling their glasses with alcohol and piling their plates with mountains of food.
And when our stomachs could take no more, we dumped the food into the bin without a second thought.
While rich households don't care about food wastage, the biggest culprit is the hospitality industry, especially hotels, airlines and cruise liners. It's disgusting to see so much good food, some of it not even touched, go to waste on a cruise liner.
After gorging themselves on meat and desserts, passengers lie sprawled out like crocodiles on the sun deck. It's the eyes not the stomach which make them dish up more than they can eat.
According to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation, the world produces more than enough food to feed its burgeoning population of 7billion. Yet 1billion go to bed hungry. The reason?
Roughly one-third of all the food produced on earth is lost or wasted. In monetary terms it amounts to a staggering $1 trillion. So much wastage.
But it's not only the rich nations that waste food. Poor countries also do. India, with its population of over 1billion, throws away R14billion of food every year.
Every day I see the poor rummaging through refuse bags looking for food. Even monkeys have learnt there's food in the refuse bags and tear them open, scattering the rubbish on the verges.
Bread, rolls, curry, fruit and drinks are thrown away by the rich. Some of the packaged food has just passed the sell-by date and is still edible. There are also some enterprising individuals in First World countries who make a comfortable living salvaging valuable items dumped with the garbage.
I grew up in a large family where food was a critical issue. Nothing went to waste. We even ate stale bread we got from the white homes on the Bluff. Nothing went wrong with us.
It's a trend among the nouveau riche - not to eat food when the sell-by date has expired, or leftover food. It goes straight into the bin. It's a sin to waste food. We'll pay dearly for it.