What's Wrong With Half-eaten food

A discarded polystyrene bowl on a grass verge made me look away in disgust, the remnants of a meal rotting on its surface. Then this made me think, why was this image unappealing, I love food, what’s the difference? The answer was simple, because rotting food is not nice; it’s horrible and can cause disease, so leftovers are not pleasant. Then I suddenly answered a question I’d been wondering for a long time but never looked at in any depth. In the dining hall (not cafeteria, horrible word) at school the trays of finished meals are stacked in a mobile rack for later empting. I normally eat everything off my tray (including the plates and cutlery), not out of principle but because I love food, and so, when stacking up my tray, I happen to glance someone else’s muffin or something with one bite from it and I become hugely tempted to take it and eat said muffin. But I never do. Something stops me. I’ve always wondered why and now I realise the answer. It’s because anything half eaten is no longer the delicious meal of five minutes ago, but suddenly becomes waste, leftovers and immediately invokes images of rotting matter, bacteria, disease and all things nasty and for some reason this subconscious connection outweighs my hunger, even if the food is practically untouched, it’s not right to eat it. It’s a practical fear that separates us from the poop eating dogs and monkeys. I just realised another thing: I’ve never understood why chefs, mainly on telly always go on about how presentation is everything and if it doesn’t look nice it won’t taste nice. Now I realise that this because there is such a thin line between food and waste, and if the dish is laid out like it’s been half eaten or discarded, then those prejudices I’ve just stated come into being and a perfectly good meal no longer appears appetising, simply from its appearance.