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Japanese government doggie bag initiative asking restaurant to let customers take leftovers home

13 Comments
By Casey Baseel, SoraNews24

I once was eating lunch in a small cafe in Tokyo with a friend from overseas, who was full but had about half of the portion of roast pork he’d been served left over. When he asked the staff for a doggie bag to take the leftovers home in, he was informed that the restaurant couldn’t accommodate him, out of concern over the food potentially spoiling on his way home and causing him to get food poisoning if he then ate it. This isn’t an unusual stance for restaurants in Japan to take, either. Though the country has a rich dining culture, characterized by attention to thoughtful hospitality, restaurants in Japan generally don’t provide doggie bags.

In the end, my friend surreptitiously slipped his leftover hunk of meat into a plastic bag he happened to have on him, which he then stuffed inside of his shoulder bag and smuggled out of the restaurant. Such duplicity might soon become unnecessary, though, thanks to a new initiative from Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.

A recently concluded study found that in 2022, Japan had roughly 4,720,000 metric tons of food waste, roughly half of which came from restaurants and food shops. In order to reduce those numbers, the government is looking to promote the use of doggie bags, so that instead of going into the trash, diners’ food that they don’t finish at the restaurant will go into their refrigerators, and later their stomachs.

Screenshot-2024-07-31-at-13.03.26.png

Last week, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare held its first meeting of a newly formed investigative committee on the subject, with members of the ministry convening with university researchers and consumer advocacy groups. Their goal is to put together a set of guidelines which can then be presented to restaurants, izakaya (Japanese-style pubs), hotels, and other dining establishments covering topics about which foods are and aren’t safe to allow customers to take home leftovers of, who should package the leftovers and in what ways, and a notification framework in the event of someone contracting food poisoning after consuming the contents of a doggie bag.

Another key point of the discussions so far is communicating that even for foods that are doggie bag-permissible under the eventual guidelines, the final responsibility for determining whether the leftovers are safe to eat or not lies with the customer, not the restaurant.

In theory, establishing safety guidelines doesn’t seem like it should be terribly difficult. It’s not like food poisoning is rampant in countries where taking home restaurant leftovers is common. Even within Japan, there are plenty of restaurants that offer to-go orders, not to mention tons of bakeries, bento shops, and food stands selling everything from grilled chicken to roasted sweet potatoes on a to-go-only basis.

It’s hard to believe that the 30 minutes or so that restaurant leftovers might have been on a customer’s plate mean that the food has crossed a threshold beyond which it’ll be unfit for human consumption by the time it gets home. And if the customer doesn’t go straight home? That’s the same risk as with any other buy-it-here, eat-it-somewhere-else scenarios, and it’s not like there’s an epidemic of people in Japan collapsing at home after eating fried chicken they picked up at the convenience store.

▼ If Japanese supermarkets can let us take home prepared food like this, restaurant doggie bags aren’t an impossibility.

Screenshot-2024-07-31-at-13.03.35.png

It’s possible that the bigger challenge to getting restaurants in Japan to proactively provide doggie bags won’t be health/hygiene-based, but instead one of image and operations management. It seems pretty clear that if they’d wanted to, restaurants in Japan could have started providing doggie bags long ago, seeing as how takeout and grab-and-go restaurants have flourished in Japan. So it’s at least a little likely that “We can’t provide doggie bags for health reasons” actually has more to do with not wanting to make a sit-down restaurant look like a cheap takeout joint, or not wanting to pull workers off of preparing and serving new orders to have them package up something that’s no longer bringing in any additional revenue for the restaurant.

The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare hopes to have its doggie bag guidelines finalized and available to restaurants sometime this year.

Source: NHK News Web

Photos ©SoraNews24

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© SoraNews24

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.

13 Comments
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In other countries, you can easily ask for waitress for doggie bag and they'll happily provide for you, however in Japan everything tend to be complicated. Even for simple doggie bag.

-2 ( +12 / -14 )

in Japan the portions are relatively small and easy to finish. Order responsibly.

-7 ( +4 / -11 )

Bring your own doggie bag!

5 ( +9 / -4 )

I'm trying to recall a wedding or funeral that I've been to where plastic trays were NOT given out at the end of the meal and participants divided the leftovers amongst themselves. The practice is widespread. I don't know when this became an issue. I've never had a problem with taking leftovers home.

2 ( +5 / -3 )

In my whole life I might have asked for 5 "doggie" bags. When I was a kid, I had to eat what I put on my plate. I still do that. If I'm not hungry enough, I don't go out to eat. I don't order gobs an gobs of food and will ask for another order (same thing or different) if I'm not full. I find that it's not a hard thing to do. (I used to have a dog. Only one of my "doggie" bags was for a dog.)

-6 ( +1 / -7 )

Common in USA.

One Chinese restaurant I go to, their helpings are enough for two lunches.

The food and service is excellent.

Everyone who eats there, orders a doggy bag.

1 ( +4 / -3 )

Jind, I believe that is a Chinese tradition. Chinese often order far too much at lunchtime with the intention of having enough left for dinner on the same day.

6 ( +6 / -0 )

I always have a daiso tupperware in the car for these occasions.

I use it very quickly, not giving a damn about the occasional looks.

Better than wasting half an hour to finish your plate while wanting to leave or getting hungry at night and crying over all that steak, yangnyeom chicken, lasagna you left in your plate.

4 ( +6 / -2 )

I order what I can eat and leave empty dishes. No doggy in my window.

2 ( +6 / -4 )

People should be able to take leftovers home especially the families with small kids.

5 ( +6 / -1 )

Just serve smaller portions - Japanese restaurants do tend to serve massive numbers of dishes

-4 ( +1 / -5 )

or not wanting to pull workers off of preparing and serving new orders to have them package up something that’s no longer bringing in any additional revenue for the restaurant.

Don't sweat it. Just give us the bag - we can package the food ourselves. No need to do it for us

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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