Food waste.
Five hundred years ago, it was not uncommon for a housewife to serve her family a supper of garbage, a meal they would devour with relish. The family relished such a meal because back then the word garbage did not mean trash or rubbish but instead referred to what we now call organ meat or viscera. These inner parts of the animal were originally highly prized, as they were thought to be sources of strength and vigour; for a time, in fact, one of the officers of the British royal kitchen—specifically the one in charge of preparing chicken carcasses—was honoured with the title of Sergeant Garbager. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, however, internal organs—or garbage—began to fall out of favour as culinary treats, reaching a nadir in 1983 when I chose to go hungry rather than eat my mother’s kidney pie. As organ meats declined in popularity, the word garbage started to mean worse and worse things until it finally acquired its current sense of filth, trash, or rubbish. The ultimate origin of the word garbage is unknown, but likely it was adopted into English from French cookbooks in the early fifteenth century.