Video of man packing leftover food at restaurant goes viral; netizens laud desi dad's hack

When you are dining at a restaurant, you are often left with excess food. In this case, what do you do? While some diners ask waiters to pack the food in plastic containers, others simply leave excess food behind. In a now-viral video on social media, a man is seen packing the excess food left behind in a tiffin box that he brought from home.

The aforementioned video was shared by Nayana Premnath, who is a digital content creator, in the video, her father was seen packing the leftover food at a fancy restaurant into a steel container that he had got from home.

 “The ones who are still embarrassed about packing up the leftovers in front of their friends or family. My parents did not change overnight probably took me 3 whole years to see these changes. Today, my mom is the one who reminds me to take a Dabba whenever we go to a restaurant. My sister carries her own stash of steel straws to use at the cafés. My dad shocked me by taking the Dabba from me and putting in the leftovers by himself. This made me the happiest. By doing this, he prevented us from taking home a plastic packet of food. Also, this happened at a very fancy restaurant. My husband always says no to the disposable water bottles kept at the restaurant tables and asks for normal water for all of us,” she wrote. 

“If I had maintained embarrassment and held back from doing all of these in the first place, I’m almost sure that none of these habits would have become developed by my close ones, over the years. Please don’t be shy to take sustainable steps in front of your loved ones. Whether they criticize you right now, they will definitely notice the change and eventually realize that it isn’t a big deal and start doing it themselves. Yea, the changes may be slow. But you keep doing what you do. And don’t keep any expectations either. Let them find their pace for the transformation,” she added.

Why did the video go viral?

The now-viral video presented the significance of sustainability. Nayana Premnath shared a long note along with the video and explained why it is significant to adopt such sustainable efforts in our lives. Nayana said in the video that the goal is to normalise such practice when it comes to packing leftover food without being shy about it. It went viral as the man, Nayana's dad was seen packing the food in steel Dabba. Meanwhile, everyone lauded the family for taking such a sustainable initiative. “Truly recommended and inspiring,” a user wrote. “I am currently facing this challenge right now. My family is amused when I do this and they stop me from doing it,” another comment read.

(Image: Instagram/@nayana_premnath)