system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why restaurants have policies to throw out food at the end of the day instead of donating/eating it?
gpt
A policy of allowing staff to eat the food tends to encourage staff to "accidentally" prepare more food than what's actually required.

A policy of donating food causes issues of liability if someone should suffer from food poisoning from food they haven't paid for, that may not be eaten immediately and may have passed its "sell by" time before it gets eaten.