Reducing Food Waste (Research)

Analysis helps fine-tune food, agricultural, and nutritional programs to reduce food waste

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Problem

How can we reduce the amount of food that is discarded in the United States?

Up to 40 percent of the total food supply in the nation goes uneaten, but food waste levels for individual households has been nearly impossible to estimate.

Findings

Penn State researchers developed a novel approach to estimate household-level food waste by comparing household food acquisition data with food energy needed to maintain body weights. Food acquired in excess of metabolic energy needs represented waste.

The study identiﬁed household characteristics associated with different levels of food waste.
They found that American households waste, on average, almost a third of the food they acquire, or about $1,866 annually, with an estimated aggregate value of $240 billion annually.

Impact

The ﬁndings from this research could help inform revisions in food, agricultural, and nutritional programs, with an eye toward reducing the amount of food discarded by Americans and furthering research on individual household food waste.

Beyond economic and nutritional implications, reducing food waste can help decrease the signiﬁcant greenhouse gas emissions it causes.

Related Research Area: Integrated Health Solutions

Research Credit

Team

Edward Jaenicke, Yang Yu

Participating Departments

Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and Education

Competitive Funding

USDA NIFA (Agriculture and Food Research Initiative), USDA Economic Research Service

Federal and State Appropriations

USDA NIFA Hatch Project PEN04709, Accession #1019915

Emerging Discoveries

Study suggests U.S. households waste nearly a third of the food they acquire

January 23, 2020

American households waste, on average, almost a third of the food they acquire, according to economists, who say this wasted food has an estimated aggregate value of $240 billion annually. Divided among the nearly 128.6 million U.S. households, this waste could be costing the average household about $1,866 per year.