âEat whatâs on your plate. There are starving children in India,â is what I and every other American child from the years 1620-2021 heard in some form or another when we were reticent about finishing our meal. My usual smart-alecky retort was something akin to, âWell, then, we need to wrap it up and mail it to India.â If we did, that would be one large package â about the size of Maine. This from a story in the New York Times: Studies have shown that a quarter to half of all the food produced in the United States goes uneaten.