School Food Waste: Reducing It at the Source

Background
The USDA estimates that 30-40% of the food produced in the United States is wasted, resulting in a loss of $218 billion in food. In addition to the economic cost of food, there is an additional cost in resources such as land, water, labor and transport that is not often factored into the cost of food waste.

Objective
This study sought to address many of the gaps in the current research on foodwaste intervention programs in schools by measuring a large sample size, measuring each food component and randomizing the selection of schools participating.

Study Design, Setting and Participants, and Intervention
The school district used for this intervention has a total of 46 school of which 30 schools were elementary/middle schools that prepare their meals on-site. A randomly selected 15 of the 30 eligible schools were selected to participate in our study.

Outcome Measures and Analysis
A total of 9,140 trays were measured for foodwaste, 4,637 for the pre-intervention and 4,503 trays for the post-intervention.

Results
Of the food and beverages served during our 60 visits to schools 2,473 pounds were wasted before the intervention and 2,123 were wasted after the intervention. Overall, 350 pounds of food was saved which was a 14 % reduction in foodwaste due to this intervention. A total of 150 pounds (28.3%) of fruit, 80 pounds (14%) of vegetables, 98 pounds(10.9%) of milk and 22 pounds (4.8%) of the entrée (grain and protein) were saved.

Conclusions and Implications
Overall this study showed the impact of a food service training program on reducing food waste. One of the limitations was that the study only measured plate/traywaste and did not include production waste.