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

Abstract

Obesity and food waste are related issues, both exacerbated by an overabundance of food. Efforts to reduce food waste can have varying unintended, obesity-related consequences, which further underscores the need for a systems approach to food waste reduction. Yet, these 2 issues are rarely examined together. It is the authors' point of view that for nutrition educators and other public health practitioners to develop interventions that simultaneously address food waste and obesity, they need to understand how actions at the consumer-level may impact waste and its related food system consequences earlier in the supply chain.

What Food waste solutions do people support?

“…Real-world examples include the city of Seattle in the U.S. imposing penalty fees for compostable food waste thrown in landfill garbage dumpsters in large apartment complexes (Radil, 2015). However, the majority of waste disposal systems in the U.S. currently charge a flat fee, regardless of the amount wasted, offering little incentive to reduce waste (Ellison and Prescott, 2021). Moving to a food waste tax would likely require significant advances in waste tracking and monitoring which do not currently exist, particularly at the household level.…”

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

“…Though food resource management (as measured by the survey) did not improve significantly, interview findings suggest that participants improved other food resource management skills (e.g. proper food storage techniques, planning meals/using recipes to reduce food waste) that have been recommended as effective techniques to reduce food waste (21,27,28) . Discrepancies between qualitative and quantitative findings in the current study suggest that the current EFNEP Food and Physical Activity Questionnaire may not adequately measure food Pre-program means are displayed to provide information about average scores in each group at baseline, while betas quantify differences between experimental groups in change scores.…”

“…Food waste is a major concern worldwide, as it contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change (17) , and has a negative impact on global food security (18) . In developed countries like the USA, waste at the household level is the largest contributor to food waste (19,20) and is also the most costly type of food waste from both an environmental and economic perspective (21) . Due to these concerns, experts have recently called for the implementation of interventions that target reduced household food waste (22) .…”

“…Food shopping practices that utilise food resource management skills (such as comparing food prices, planning meals ahead of time or using a shopping list) are associated with healthier dietary intake (32,33) . Experts suggest that interventions targeting improvements in food resource management skills, nutrition knowledge and meal preparation skills could be an effective way to help families of low income consume healthier diets, optimise household food budgets and avoid exacerbation of wasted food concerns (21,31,34) .…”

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

“…In 2017, 2 million diet-related deaths were attributed to low fruit consumption globally [ 4 ]. Additionally, wasted food is a major concern across the global supply chain, [ 7 ] as inputs to food production, such as land, waste, and energy, are squandered when food is discarded instead of eaten [ 8 ].…”