Food Waste Intelligence

As Leanpath's full time Executive Chef, I've trained and coached hundreds of chefs and managers on preventing food waste in their operations. One of the most persistent issues is also one of the most avoidable: food waste from items expiring in storage. Avoiding this waste takes establishing and following strict processes to ensure everything in storage is used before it can expire. Here are three questions to ask yourself or your team to find out how effective your kitchen is at avoiding expired food waste.

Healthcare is the most complex foodservice segment by far. Most have some mix of retail foodservice, catering, physician dining, other services like day care, and, of course, patient feeding with its clinical demands. Perhaps as a result of the complexity, healthcare foodservice, compared to other segments, also sees the highest rates of food waste, based on Leanpath data.

All facets of the foodservice industry have been affected by COVID-19, including food suppliers. The vendor partners we get our meats, seafood, and produce from are also seeing significant challenges as demand for products has reduced and supply in some areas is excessively high. The problem is, because demand is reduced, suppliers have more product on hand. This can sometimes lead to deliveries coming later in the window of freshness, which increases the risk of food waste. This is creating two issues: one, kitchens have to retrain their staff on inspecting produce; and two, operators need to figure out ways to use produce faster when they do get poor quality.

If you want your work addressing food waste to have the biggest impact on greenhouse gas emissions, prevent food waste to begin with, don’t rely on anaerobic digesters to deal with it. That’s the finding from a new report from UK-based food systems research group Feedback Global.

As food insecurity and hunger rise globally due to COVID-19, China launches a campaign to reduce food insecurity by preventing food waste. 

According to a recent report from the United Nations World Food Programme, people in 25 countries are facing “devastating levels of hunger” in the wake of the pandemic. The Global Network Against Food Crises reports that in the 50 most food insecure countries, the number of people in “crisis or worse” rose from 112 million to 123 million over the last year. Even high-income nations like the United States are seeing increased hunger. Feeding America estimates the pandemic will lead to 54 million American’s becoming food insecure.