Having gone to quite a few weddings, it's all going to waste there too.
They don't use buckets, they use carts to dump the left over food.
I assume they sell it to farmers to feed the pigs.
I don't mind ordering too much. But I do reminding people how precious food is. (no matter how big their car and wallet is). Parents and grand-parents all over China starved to death during the 2nd WW and during the great turnaround/revolution. And most people in Europe know WW2 all too well as well.
Being a foreigner you can mention this and get away with it. Just take it home after dinner. Interestingly it can also give you respect and it does often open the eyes of your guests as they darn well remember it themselves or have heard their (grand) parents tell stories how they had to eat rats and cockroaches to survive (that's the mild version of the lucky ones).
I am just wondering of how fast it will change. I'm just happy they have doggybags and boxes everywhere now to take food home.
PS: want to know how it really was in China? Watch the movie: "Back to 1942"
China's diabetes rate passes 11 percent
发布者Of what I have seen the problem lies in the amount of sugar used in cooking rather than the amount of junkfood consumed (which tends to be very high in salt). People don't like too much sugar as in pure sugar or sugar in drinks and snacks, yet if you see how much they use in cooking (they put in bread, sticky rice milk, etc. too), my goodness how much that is.
Many dishes people like to eat are very high in sugar content. Orange Beef has a ton of sugar as far as I know. But it's soo tasty!