I find it difficult to appreciate this viewpoint. There's a certain elegance in using your resources efficiently and not wasting things. I find it significantly more satisfying to find a use for things rather than discarding them. This also applies to possessions, and more abstract things like writing code and not wasting lines of code or memory, or writing and not wasting words.
I prefer to buy fresh food because I believe it's healthier and I have the money to do so.
Anything spicy improves with a little time, and I've found the same to be true with tomato sauce and cooked cheese - so curries, chillies, lasagna etc etc all improve. soup is often better the next day too.
Sure, but it's time I enjoy spending. Some people play computer games or watch TV for an hour after work to relax, I cook dinner.
If you enjoy handling food then learning about handling left overs is a big part of that. If you go back and look at weekly food schedules from the past you will see patterns, were people cook one type of food day one to have base or ingredient for the next few days of cooking.
It obviously depends on the circumstances. I am more talking about the pattern of wasting, than accidentally wasting food now and then.
At the end of the gathering, everyone "fights" (politely, but very insistently) not to be the ones to take it home, 'cause they'll be forced to not let it go to waste.
I usually throw these because I don't mind binning unhealthy food I can easily replace rather than further harming my health. The latter is a far more useful and expensive acquisition than a quarter-pound of $25/lb cheese.
A staggering 50% of the food produced is wasted somewhere along the line. If you look at moving towards a sustainable society, food waste is actually a huge sub-problem of that, which has to be solved at some point, instead of cutting down ever more rainforest every year etc. etc. to sustain the current wasteful lifestyle.
Our parent generation didn't waste food, and the next generation will probably not be able to either (simply from rising prices).
In a world that sustainably generated enough food for everyone, it would not be wrong to throw away food. It might be that we can get there. Food production today is not sustainable, so at least let's not waste it.
If you press me, yes, I'm sure there's an element of "it's in bad taste" there too that made me react so strongly (it's similar to how rich kids pour out good champagne on the floor to display their wealth). That's closer to your suggestion.
On the other hand, my parents put away all leftovers and eventually also eat it. It is pretty similar with many other every-day things.
I just lived with my parents for a few weeks after living abroad for 5 years and noticed how they have kept so many things that I have seen when I was a child. I am not even talking about 1 or 2 things, but many (or most) things.