Examining Nutrition and Food Waste Trade-offs Using an Obesity Prevention Context

Learning What Works: A Mixed-Methods Study of American Self-identified Food Conservers

OBJECTIVE

Identify psychosocial factors influencing food waste mitigation and explore motivations and strategies for successful conservation among self-identified food conservers.

METHODS

Mixed-methods study consisting of an online survey estimating food waste production and psychosocial factors and a focus group to explore waste mitigation strategies and motivations.

RESULTS

Sampled 27 self-identified conservers (female, aged 18-30 years, White/Asian). Mean household food waste was 6.6 cups/wk (range, 0.0-97.9 cups/wk; median 1.3 cups). Reported waste mitigation strategies include proactive mitigation and adaptive recovery measures in each phase of the food management continuum. Conservers reported various intrinsic and extrinsic motivations to reduce food waste and viewed barriers as manageable.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

Food conservers act on high intentions to reduce waste by consistently employing both proactive waste mitigation and adaptive food recovery measures. Future research is needed to determine if these findings hold in larger, more diverse samples and link specific behaviors to waste volume.

Food waste in primary schools: Evidence from peri-urban Viet Nam

Schools are a major source of food waste and an important setting for achieving dietary improvements. Few studies explore the links between food waste and nutrition. This study measured individual plate waste of about 1700 primary school children in peri-urban Viet Nam, adding to evidence on school food waste in low- and middle-income countries. We used survey data to explore whether food waste is associated with personal characteristics such as sex, knowledge and attitudes about nutritious foods. Qualitative interviews and focus groups with teachers, parents, food providers and children helped identify potential causes of food waste. The average student wasted 23% of the food served (approximately 85 g) during lunch, which roughly equates to 15.3 kg of food in a school year. Vegetables were wasted most: children left almost half of their portion unconsumed. Boys wasted less food than girls. Better knowledge and attitudes about fruits and vegetables are associated with less waste of these foods. A large portion was associated with a higher share of wasted food, suggesting the potential trade-off between efforts to cut food waste and efforts to increase consumption of nutritious foods. Students were dissatisfied with the quality of the dishes, especially vegetables were evaluated as undercooked, served too cold and too oily. To reduce food waste, it is critical for schools to prepare food in line with students' preferences. Food waste reduction could be treated as an intermediate step towards ultimate policy goals such as healthier food consumption.

Community-based nutrition education and hands-on cooking intervention increases farmers' market use and vegetable servings

OBJECTIVE

The objective of the current study was to evaluate the impact of the Market to MyPlate (M2MP) program on participants' reported farmers' market (FM) attitudes and shopping behaviours, frequency of serving vegetables to their families, food resource management behaviours and food security. A secondary objective was to identify facilitators and barriers to shopping at FM and food waste reduction techniques used by low-income families.

DESIGN

The current study used a mixed methods evaluation embedded within a cluster randomised trial of the M2MP intervention.

SETTING

The 7-week M2MP program was delivered at Extension offices and community centres in central Illinois.

PARTICIPANTS

Participants included 120 adults and their families. Class cohorts were randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups: (1) nutrition education and cooking classes with produce allocations (PAE, n 39); (2) nutrition education and cooking classes only (EO, n 36) or (3) control group (n 45).

RESULTS

Compared with control participants, PAE participants were significantly more likely to report shopping at FM (P = 0·029) and reported serving more vegetables to their families (P = 0·010) (EO participants did not differ from the control group on any outcomes). There were no differences between conditions in survey-based measures of food security or food resource management behaviours. Interview results describe facilitators and barriers to shopping at FM and a variety of food waste reduction techniques (including food placement and food resource management).

CONCLUSIONS

These findings suggest that fresh produce provision coupled with nutrition and culinary education can positively impact shopping and dietary behaviours.

The relationship between traditional and common Japanese childhood education and adulthood towards avoiding food waste behaviors

Japanese parents and educators teach children to refrain from leaving food in their plates. Their teachings have direct (advising children to refrain from leaving food uneaten) and indirect (meal-related rituals before and after mealtimes) influence in enhancing gratitude for food in daily life. This cross-sectional study aimed to examine 1) the interaction of direct and indirect approaches to avoiding food waste behaviors and 2) the mediation of gratitude for food by preventing such behaviors. Overall, 400 Japanese adults (female: n = 200) responded to a self-administrated anonymous questionnaire survey measuring: the present food waste avoiding behaviors; current gratitude for food; direct and indirect childhood approaches for avoiding food waste behaviors. Participants' mean (standard deviation) age and body mass index were 40.0 (11.6) and 21.9 (3.9), respectively. A significant main effect of the indirect approach and the interaction of direct and indirect approaches were obtained by adjusting the participants' background. Moreover, through mediation analyses with percentile-corrected bootstrap confidence intervals, it was observed that gratitude for food mediated the association between direct and indirect childhood approaches and avoiding food waste behaviors. Despite no information on the current meal-related rituals of the respondents, this study suggests the potential of these approaches in enhancing gratitude for food as a new approach to reduce food waste worldwide.

Enablers and barriers of harnessing food waste to address food insecurity: a scoping review

Despite producing sufficient food for the global population, the growing prevalence of food insecurity in developed countries is cause for concern. The millions of metric tons of food wasted each year could be used instead to drastically lower rates of food insecurity and address food sustainability. In this scoping review, we aimed to identify barriers to and enablers of harnessing food waste across food sectors, including food retail, households, and food rescue organizations, to address food insecurity in a developed country, Australia. The findings demonstrate that research on and responsibility for harnessing food waste for food insecurity has predominantly fallen on ill-equipped food rescue organizations. Three primary policy advancements paramount to harnessing food waste to address food insecurity include (1) improving partnerships and subsidies to minimize transportation costs for redistributing imperfect or surplus food from farmers and retailers to those who with food insecurity; (2) enhancing existing partnerships and subsidies to stably involve more nutrition experts in food rescue organizations to improve the quality of foods being redistributed to those facing food insecurity; and (3) initiating interventions and campaigns that combine the following 5 characteristics: free to the participants; address food literacy; use multiple mass-media tools; are age tailored; and frame messages within personal values.

The Efficacy and Cost-Effectiveness of Replacing Whole Apples with Sliced in the National School Lunch Program

The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) serves 29.6 million lunches each day. Schools must offer ½ a cup of fruit for each lunch tray. Much of this fruit may be wasted, leaving the schools in a dilemma. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the consumption of whole vs. sliced apples and determine the cost-effectiveness of the intervention. Researchers weighed apple waste at baseline and three post-intervention time points in one rural Midwest school. The costs of the intervention were collected from the school. The cost-effectiveness analysis estimates how often apples need to be served to offset the costs of the slicing intervention. A total of (n = 313) elementary student students participated. Students consumed significantly more sliced as compared to whole apples in intervention months 3 (β = 21.5, p < 0.001) and 4 (β = 27.7, p < 0.001). The intervention cost was USD 299. The value of wasted apple decreased from USD 0.26 at baseline to USD 0.23 wasted at post-intervention. The school would need to serve 9403 apples during the school year (54 times) to cover the expenses of the intervention. In conclusion, serving sliced apples may be a cost-effective way to improve fruit consumption during school lunch.

Using Qualitative Interviews to Better Understand Differences in How Local Health Departments Inspect School Share Tables

ABSTRACT

Environmental and health advocates are increasingly promoting food donations to reduce landfilled food waste and feed hungry people. Share tables are locations where students can put unwanted school food or beverage items, allowing their uneaten food items to be "shared" with other students and providing food donation opportunities for the 4.9 billion lunches served annually in the U.S. National School Lunch Program. The purpose of this qualitative study was to identify differences in health inspector interpretations of the Food Code as it relates to share table operations and risk mitigation techniques preferred by inspectors for preventing foodborne illness from recovered food. A snowball sampling technique was used to identify Illinois health inspectors (n = 13) engaged in share table inspections. Telephone interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. The transcripts were coded using a hybrid process of deductive and inductive content analysis. Participants considered contamination, rather than temperature abuse, to be the primary risk factor for foodborne illness. Those participants with permissive Food Code interpretations considered contamination risk in the context of the overall school environment. Participants had the lowest degree of consensus on whether to allow whole apple recovery via a share table. Participants also lacked consensus on reuse of unclaimed share table items in future meal programs (reservice). This lack of consensus indicates that further research is needed to develop data-driven strategies to assess and manage the microbial risks associated with share tables and ultimately to facilitate increased food recovery.

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