Still, with so many restaurants serving man-size portions, sometime it is impossible to finish–but you don’t want it to go to waste. Conundrum.

Doggy-bags are here to stay, however, there are a few situations where you may consider sending the unfinished food to the “starving children” (sense of humor required here)instead of wrapping it up to-go.

For example, when dining at an exclusive restaurant; especially when dining with your boss, client(s), on a job interview, on a first date, or if you are attending a function or traveling immediately after the meal.

On the occasion when I ask for a doggy-bag, I appreciate it when the server prepares it and hands it to me in a nice little package. If I have to slop food around, I might as well stay home. Bon appetit.

Apologies, your general “Contact Us” form didn’t seem to work. My name is Zachary Nowak and I am a professor of Food History at the Umbra Institute in Perugia, Italy. A colleague, Dr. Simon Young, and I have a scholarly blog on Italian food history, and we recently linked a post to your site, to this post on doggy bgs. We think our blog could appeal to your readers. We would request that you take a look at it and, if you deem in worthy, add it to your list of blogs that you read. The blog is at http://www.foodinitaly.org .

Thanks much, arrivederci,
Zachary Nowak

I’d like to take this opportunity to highly some funny and relevant wordplay from the Daily Feed. In a review of Ubuntu in Napa, California, an amazing “vegetable restaurant” that has a yoga studio on the second level, reachable only by going through the restaurant, the Daily Feed team wrote “We were glad that we didn’t order more, otherwise we would have had to take home a downward facing doggie bag.”

And let me also offer a suggestion for this era of limited resources: when going out to eat, try to remember to bring a plastic container or two to use for leftovers. This not only reduces waste, but can help you avoid overeating by enabling you to pack up extra food right away instead of needing to get a server to do it (and, for germ-phobes: do you really want your leftovers going back into the kitchen? Wouldn’t you rather keep them in sight?). I try to bring a few small containers so I can store part of the appetizer, part of the main course, and (rarely) part of dessert.

I tend to ask for a “to go” container these days. =)