Throwing away food is NOT wasteful Frugal

Buying food that you'll throw away is.

Suppose you have some food that's gone bad in the refrigerator or that you didn't like when you tried cooking it. You reason that you should try to force it down anyway (unless the food has gone so bad it would be dangerous to eat) because throwing it away would be like throwing your money in the trash. This actually is not a valid line of reasoning. Economists call it the "lost value" or "sunk cost" fallacy.

Whether you throw it our or force it down your throat, you're not getting satisfaction from what you've spent your money on. If you're worried about wasting money, you already wasted your money when you bought it.

It could be compared to seeing a movie you don't like in a theater. Many people reason that they should just sit through it to avoid wasting the money they've spent on the ticket (if it's nonrefundable), but the truth is they already wasted their money when they bought the ticket. If nothing else, they're just wasting 2-3 hours forcing themselves through it.

Now, you could argue that even if you force feed yourself, you're still getting the nutrition from the food. But, if you're only concerned about nutrition and not about how it tastes, there's probably more affordable food you could buy in the future that tastes bad but will be very good for you. Maybe if you need the nourishment right away and can't afford to buy more food for a while you could justify forcing it down. Surely if you could afford the food in the first place you could afford to walk down to the grocery store and spend a couple of bucks on some fruit and bread to tide you over.

It would be smarter to just buy food that you know will keep well or will be palpable to you in the first place. Or just schedule your meals so you'll eat it before it goes bad.

Maybe I'm not looking at it correctly.

Submitted January 15, 2015 at 10:39PM by NextWeekMan http://ift.tt/1yguDoL Frugal