NIH Study: 40% of US Food Wasted
Last fall, researchers from the National Institutes of Health published a fascinating paper about food waste: The Progressive Increase of Food Waste in America and Its Environmental Impact. I met one of the lead authors, Kevin Hall, at a forum convened by the EPA in March focused on food waste reduction and diversion.
From the study:
The calculated progressive increase of food waste suggests that the US obesity epidemic has been the result of a ‘‘push effect’’ of increased food availability and marketing with Americans being unable to match their food intake with the increased supply of cheap, readily available food. Thus, addressing the oversupply of food energy in the US may help curb the obesity epidemic as well as decrease food waste, which has profound environmental consequences.
After looking at how much total food was produced in the U.S., and how much was converted metabolically into weight gain, the researchers were able to determine how much food was leftover as waste (based on calories produced).
The figure was 40%.
This is a big number – it represents massive resource consumption, great inefficiency, and environmental loss.
For chefs and managers, what is the takeaway?
That we have a food system producing tons of food we don’t use in America and - if operators could waste less by tracking food waste and preventing it - we would have more food dollars available to invest in quality and variety. Moreover, the availability of excess food may be a contributor to the obesity epidemic in America.
For so many reasons, working to prevent and minimize food waste is the right approach!
