As a restaurant manager of a four-star hotel in Beijing, 33-year-old Zhao Yu feels like he could be hit by lightning on any given day because his restaurant throws away too much untouched food.

"When I was a little boy, my mother often warned me that wasting food is a sin and people would be punished by being hit by lightning," Zhao said.

The approximately 8 million metric tons of food protein and 3 million tons of fat that is wasted in China each year, according to data from the China Agricultural University, would be enough to feed nearly 200 million people.

It was this waste which drove 43-year-old Xu Zhijun to launch the "empty plate" campaign.

In order to cut the waste from tables across China, Web users have begun posting photos of finished dishes online and restaurants have started to serve half-sized dishes and free packages for take-away leftover food to show their support.

Some scientists and legal experts have even gone so far as to suggest criminalizing food waste.

Zhao however, believes that there will also need to be action in terms of official banquets, which he says are responsible for large amounts of wasted food.

"This bad culture of waste has persisted in China as more people got rich. Corruption and vanity have changed most people's eating habits," Xu told the Global Times on Tuesday.

He also added that if the campaign could expand to the government level, not only would corruption be reduced, the country could worry less about food security and the environmental costs that are incurred when dealing with kitchen wastes.

Corruption and vanity

Xu, who is also a vice president of the China Land Source Newspaper under the Ministry of Land Resources, launched the campaign in April 2012, but received limited attention at the time. Things changed when national media including China Central Television and the Xinhua News Agency reported on the campaign in the wake of the unveiling of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee's "eight-point plan" to combat bureaucracy and formalism, which included high-profile measures to combat the luxury banquets of officials.

As far as Xu is concerned, the transformation from a non-government campaign to one with government support highlights the large amount of food wasted at luxury banquets.

 "The fight against food waste by officials is a fight against corruption," he said.

From Zhao's observations, officials' dinners are usually booked in advance in a private room and the average spending is around 800 yuan ($128.5) per person. Usually the government departments' names are printed on the invoices for reimbursement.

"During friends' gatherings and family reunion dinners people order less food and cheaper dishes, as well as take away the leftovers, but when it's a business dinner involving businessmen and officials most dishes aren't even touched as they're busy talking and drinking," Zhao said.

A government employee with the Shanghai Municipal Government told the Global Times that since the money spent on luxury food can be reimbursed with public funds after labeling them office expenses for stationary or other made-up items, officials do not care about waste.

New measures have been instituted by the central government in an attempt to curb this. In late December, 2012, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China announced that spending public funds on banquets was prohibited and the Central Military Commission said at almost the same time that military banquets would be banned, as would alcohol at receptions.

As many departments dropped their plans to hold year-end celebration banquets or changed the venues to less expensive alternatives, some just moved high-level banquets from restaurants to their own buildings, the Beijing News reported.

The government employee said that some banquet facilities are also helping conceal the extent of spending on wining and dining, by providing multiple invoices showing other expenses.

Jiang Ming'an, an anti-graft expert from Peking University, is skeptical that this kind of non-government campaign will be able to change government habits.

"Despite the central government's orders urging frugal working styles, some local governments are able to create fake spending invoices," Jiang added.

Zhao said that growing wealth gave people bigger appetites than they would usually have and when using public funds they care less about price and more about the decorations of the food.

 "The only measure that could prevent them from over-spending or abusing their privileges would be to make public spending transparent," Jiang told the Global Times.

A cook from Zhao's restaurant told the Global Times that decorations are very important in fancy restaurants, where customers want to show their status through the dishes they order.

"However, those vegetables used as decorations are often not eaten and sometimes can only be used once before being dumped," the cook told the Global Times.

Food security crisis

According to data from the General Administration of Customs, China's grain imports have been increasing on a yearly basis due to increasing pressures on China's domestic grain supply.

As China's urbanization process continues, arable land available for farming is decreasing, as is the number of farmers. This means the grain supply is not going to be sufficient to feed the increasing population, said Zheng Fengtian, a professor at the School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development at the Renmin University of China.

Yuan Longpin, one of China's most renowned agricultural scientists, attributes some of the blame to food waste.

He said that China has worked hard for increases in the grain harvest but much of that was wasted, as China Central Television reported last week. He even went as far as to suggest criminalizing food waste.

Yuan made the remarks after the UN Environment Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organization launched a global campaign on January 22, targeting consumers, governments and the food industry to help reduce the 1.3 billion tons of food wasted around the world every year.

Zheng said that food waste impacts the production of greenhouse gas emissions and consequently affects climate change.

He said plenty of resources like water, fertilizers, energy, and labor that have been invested to produce food are all wasted each time food is wasted.

Meanwhile, with less food being wasted, sorting waste would be easier and there would be fewer concerns over health issues such as the spread of gutter-oil made from kitchen waste, Zheng said.