Canadians represent about 0.5% of the world’s population, produce about 1.5% of the food in the world, and purchase about 0.6% of the total food produced throughout the world. Unfortunately, they also wasted over 6 million tonnes* of food in 2009, equating to roughly 183kg per person, according to Human Activity and the Environment: Annual Statistics 2009.
For many of us, January is a time for New Year’s resolutions, both personally and professionally. After a few weeks in holiday mode, we all return to the office mentally recharged and ready to tackle the year ahead. It’s the perfect time to review your priorities and goals for the year.
So I challenge our readers: have you created a food waste reduction goal for 2015? If so, what is the specific target you want to reach?
Portland, OR – December 11, 2014 Today LeanPath and the National Foundation to End Senior Hunger (NFESH) announced that they are teaming up to help feed more hungry seniors by focusing on food waste prevention across community-based, nonprofit nutrition programs that provide meals to seniors. LeanPath technologies, which enable kitchens and food programs to easily measure, monitor and diagnose food waste issues, will be used from the pantry to the kitchen to the dining room to evaluate how much of the food that’s supposed to be feeding seniors has been going to waste.
The program, called “What a Waste™,” is an innovative anti-hunger initiative, designed by the National Foundation to End Senior Hunger. It teaches senior nutrition programs how to identify unnecessary food waste and reduce it, so the programs are able to feed more seniors with the limited resources they have available.
Early this month the National Restaurant Association released its “What’s Hot in 2015” forecast which includes the chef-predicted top culinary trends for the year. Nearly 1,300 chefs were surveyed and asked to prioritize and categorize a list of 231 items. The top four items for 2015 were consistent with those ranked in 2014 at the top of the list: locally sourced meats and protein, locally grown produce, environmental sustainability, and healthful kid menus.
In the foodservice and restaurant industry, pleasing customers is core to success: a happy customer is more likely to return to a restaurant, more likely to refer friends, and as research now shows, more likely to shell out some extra money if the operation shares values committed to sustainability.
Research from the Sustainable Restaurant Association (SRA) shows that diners place food waste, health and nutrition, and locally sourced ingredients as the top three issues they'd like restaurants to focus on. And they're willing to pay for it.