People don't realize that we're spending money throwing food away

Host: The marketplace was closing.
The sun had begun its slow descent behind the hills, painting the city in shades of honey and rust, the kind of light that makes even waste look almost sacred. Vendors packed their stalls with tired rhythm — crates of tomatoes still glistening with the day’s sweat, bruised peaches left unsold, lettuce wilting under plastic. The smell of fruit and rot mingled in the air — sweet, sad, human.

Jack stood near a dumpster behind one of the stalls, staring down at the heap of discarded food — bread, vegetables, half a watermelon, all tossed away like stories that didn’t sell. Jeeny approached, her shoes crunching against the gravel, a brown paper bag of leftover oranges in her hands.

Jeeny: “Marcela Valladolid once said, ‘People don’t realize that we’re spending money throwing food away rather than feeding people.’”

Jack: grimly “Yeah. Welcome to the age of abundance and absence.”

Jeeny: “It’s obscene, isn’t it? We spend billions growing, packaging, transporting — only to dump it when it doesn’t look good enough to photograph.”

Host: The air was thick with flies, but neither of them moved to swat them away. There was a quiet reverence in their stillness, as if to disturb the scene would mean admitting guilt.

Jack: “You know, when I was a kid, my mom used to say, ‘Finish your plate — someone’s starving somewhere.’ I used to roll my eyes. Now I think she was warning me about this exact moment.”

Jeeny: “The irony is that the starving ‘somewhere’ is right here — under bridges, in shelters, in our own cities. We just built walls high enough not to see them.”

Host: A stray cat darted near the dumpster, sniffing cautiously, finding a piece of bread. Jeeny watched, her face softening, then hardening again with realization.

Jeeny: “Even the stray knows how to make use of what we waste. Meanwhile, we throw away a third of what we grow — and we call it economics.”

Jack: “Because in capitalism, waste is profitable. Freshness sells faster than compassion.”

Jeeny: quietly “But Marcela’s right — it’s not just moral waste, it’s financial madness. Every calorie tossed is labor lost — fuel, water, energy, time. We’re paying to destroy value.”

Host: The light dimmed further, the market now a ghost town of half-empty crates and silent regrets. A lone vendor swept the floor, pushing wilted leaves into piles.

Jack: “You know what’s crazy? It would cost less to feed the hungry than to maintain all this waste. Less. But we’d rather preserve the illusion of perfection — shiny apples, straight cucumbers — than face the fact that ugly food still nourishes.”

Jeeny: “Because we don’t treat food as life. We treat it as brand.”

Jack: looking down “We’ve turned nourishment into vanity.”

Host: The streetlights flickered on, their glow catching the bruises on discarded fruit, making them look almost beautiful.

Jeeny: “I saw a report last week — supermarkets lock their dumpsters to stop people from scavenging. They’d rather pay for security than give food away.”

Jack: “Because giving away food makes them look guilty. Like admitting the system failed.”

Jeeny: “It did fail. Not because we ran out, but because we stopped caring who gets left out.”

Host: The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was full — of anger, compassion, futility, hope.

Jack: “You ever think about how much of life is like that? We waste kindness, too. Time. Love. We hoard things that could feed someone’s soul.”

Jeeny: “Because we confuse ownership with value.”

Jack: “Yeah. We’d rather throw away than share. Even with food, even with love.”

Host: Jeeny set her bag of oranges on the ground, opening it gently. The scent — citrus and sunlight — rose up into the air. She took one out and handed it to Jack.

Jeeny: “You know, when she said that quote, Valladolid wasn’t just talking about food. She was talking about blindness. How we’ve lost the ability to connect consumption with consequence.”

Jack: “We’ve lost reverence for the ordinary.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. We think progress means abundance. But progress without empathy is just decay in disguise.”

Host: Jack peeled the orange slowly. The rind released its oil in a tiny mist, the scent cutting through the heaviness. He handed half to Jeeny.

Jack: quietly “You know what this reminds me of? A meal I had once in a refugee camp. Bread, soup, nothing more. They ate it like prayer. Every bite was gratitude.”

Jeeny: “Because hunger makes holiness out of crumbs.”

Jack: “And we, with full bellies, have forgotten how to pray.”

Host: The cat had finished its bread and sat watching them now, tail flicking lazily, patient for more.

Jeeny: “We spend millions marketing food, billions wasting it, and pennies feeding people. And somehow we call that civilization.”

Jack: “Maybe civilization’s not measured by how much we produce — but by how little we waste.”

Jeeny: nodding “By how we treat the unseen — the hands that plant, the mouths that hunger, the soil that gives.”

Host: The last vendor waved goodnight and walked away, leaving behind a small pile of unsold tomatoes. Jeeny walked over, picked them up, wiped them on her sleeve, and placed them in her bag.

Jack watched her, quietly moved.

Jack: “You’re going to give those away?”

Jeeny: “Of course. To the shelter down the street. They’ll turn this into soup by morning. Warmth out of waste.”

Jack: softly “You sound like redemption.”

Jeeny: “No. Just sense.”

Host: The night had fallen fully now, the stars faint above the glow of the city. The two of them stood amid the ruins of a day’s commerce — surrounded by what others had deemed useless — and found, within it, the pulse of something holy.

Jeeny: “You know, if food is life, then throwing it away is a quiet kind of murder. Not dramatic. Just steady, invisible, accepted.”

Jack: “And the cure isn’t more production. It’s more compassion.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. Because the hunger we’re fighting isn’t just in stomachs. It’s in hearts — the hunger for empathy.”

Host: She looked up at the sky, the faint hum of the city still in the air, the faint glimmer of stars above.

Jeeny: “Marcela saw what most don’t — that we’re not running out of food. We’re running out of perspective.”

Jack: “And perspective might be the rarest resource of all.”

Host: They began to walk, the sound of their steps soft against the pavement, the bag of oranges glowing faintly in the dark — small suns carried by human hands.

And as they disappeared into the city’s quiet veins, Marcela Valladolid’s words hung in the warm night air — both indictment and prayer:

That in a world of plenty,
we are starving not from scarcity,
but from waste —
from the blindness that throws away nourishment,
and the indifference that forgets
someone else could live
from what we choose to discard.