Our cover story this month serves up a challenging exploration of our food and dietary habits.

I had my first lesson in showing proper respect for our food while attending the Buddha bathing ceremony at a large Buddhist temple a number of years ago. After the ceremony, the temple’s disciples had served a vegetarian lunch that included a soy dish I wasn’t very fond of. I had a little bit of this left in my bowl when the meal was complete, prompting one of the female disciples at the table to remind me that we should show proper respect for our food by eating everything in our bowls. To make her point, she poured a bit of water into her own bowl to free a few grains of rice stuck to the sides, then drank it down.

My second lesson came while we were working on this month’s cover story on food banks. I had thought that homeless people fishing large quantities of tiramisu and prawns from restaurant dumpsters was a rare developed­-world phenomenon. Our reporting on food banks showed me that it happens far more frequently than I had imagined, even here in Taiwan.

In Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal, food-industry critic and Cambridge University graduate Tristram Stuart calculates that the world wastes enough food to feed 100 million hungry people. Restaurants and supermarkets often manage their food inventories poorly and fail to consider the environmental consequences of their practices, which together result in enormous amounts of food waste.

Surprisingly, much of the “mountain of waste” they throw away is still fresh and edible. Stuart describes acquiring 25 boxes of mangoes that market traders were preparing to throw away because they thought them overripe. He peeled and sectioned them, and stored them in his freezer at home. He ultimately used them to make delicious icy beverages that he served to the guests at a friend’s wedding.

The world’s first food bank was established 40 years ago in the US, in an effort to ensure that excess food was efficiently transported to where it was needed. Taiwan became a part of the global food bank network last year. As part of our reporting for this issue, we visited non-profit organizations in Tai­pei, Chang­hua, and Tai­chung to understand how volunteers go about delivering donations of baked goods, hot meals, and daily necessities to families in need.

But getting excess food to needy people is relatively easy. The real challenge is keeping food from being thrown away, which flies in the face of the food industry’s business model: producing in large volumes and stimulating consumption. It also requires people to rethink their understanding of freshness and expiration dates.

Stuart notes that the European Union requires packaged foods to be marked with either a “use by” date or a “best before” date. While expiration dates result in thousands of tons of edible food being thrown away, best-before dates serve as a reminder to consumers that the food is likely to taste better before a given date, without suggesting that it is dangerous to eat it once that date has passed. Factors such as temperature, storage method, and cooking technique are all far more important to food safety than its nominal expiration date.

Stuart’s book prompted physician and author Li Wei­wen to change his shopping habits. Having learned that supermarkets throw away large quantities of food that is approaching its expiration date, Li has stopped buying the items with the most distant expiration dates, and now chooses those with the nearest.

My personal takeaway from this month’s cover story is that we need to recognize the food waste problem and make changes, neither producing nor purchasing too much. Food should be enjoyed, not thrown away.