Trashed, But Not Forgotten: Recovering the Food System

COLUMBIA, Mo. –Throw 400 pounds of food down the drain or lose $1,800 for a family of four each year? The United States is doing just that – with little regard for its 42 million citizens facing food insecurity, according to a 2017 Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) study on food waste.  If food losses are reduced by 15 percent, an additional 25 million Americans could be fed, according to the same council report.

“Food waste is a loss of labor, the land and water used, and the overall passion for the people who prepared the food,” said Alma Hopkins, Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services nutrition specialist.

Entire fields are being left unharvested, produce is rejected on cosmetic reason alone, miscommunication in food labeling results in food being tossed too soon – at every step in the food system, food is being wasted, according to the same NRDC report.

A Name GameOur food labeling system encourages consumers to discard food that is perfectly safe, said Blake Hurst, president of Missouri Farm Bureau, an agricultural advocacy organization. There is no federal system regulating the “sell by,” “best by,” “use by,” and other date labels used on food products, often meant for manufacturer use only – and this has led to inconsistent regulations nationally and ultimately, an increase in wasted food.Research on date labeling in the United Kingdom by the Waste & Resources Action Programme shows that nearly half of all consumers misunderstand the meaning of date labels, and this confusion is linked to over 20 percent of household food waste.“The word ‘expired’ is technically not used in the industry anymore,” said Sean Ross, supervisor of Central Food Pantry, which serves individuals in Columbia, Missouri. “It’s really only used by people.”According to Ross, “sell by” is typically used on items that may rot, while “best by” means that an item is not at its peak chemical profile or flavor.“It’s certainly not harmful,” Ross said.“Our current food labeling system creates confusion for consumers and does not necessarily improve food safety,” according to a recent study by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic. There is no established federal guideline and Missouri is one of nine states without a food date label requirement. Food labels communicate qualitative information from manufacturers, based on consumer taste tests and product turnover rates, and have minimal to no reflection on product safety, according to the NRDC report.“We need standard date labels across the country,” said Amy Bachman, director of procurement and sustainability for DC Central Kitchen, the first community kitchen in the United States.Standardizing date labels could clarify which foods can and cannot be donated and consumed after the date safely, leading to waste reduction at all levels, said Emily Broad Leib, director of the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic during a May 2016 testimony on food waste to the House Agriculture Committee.The NRDC and Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic recent study on date labeling suggests the following for improved food date labeling:

• Use phrases such as “peak quality [or freshness] guaranteed before MMDDYY” to give consumers all necessary details.
• Provide disclaimers on any quality-based labels to remind consumers that there is no safety test involved.
• Include “freeze by” dates and freezing information on products that are “suitable for home freezing.” According to the study, in the United Kingdom, such products are marked with a snowflake label and consumers are educated on the benefits of freezing products.

Education is required to teach consumers what labels mean and the specifics about what should be thrown out, Bachman said.Over 80 percent of consumers “at least occasionally discard food close to or past the date on the label,” according to a national survey on consumer perceptions of date labels by the National Consumers League, John Hopkins Center for a Livable Future and the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic.“More education is needed to help ensure past-date food is not needlessly wasted,” Leib said.

From Field to Fork Food producers must abide by specifications for size and quality given to them from their buyers, said Amy Bachman, director of procurement and sustainability for DC Central Kitchen, the country’s first community kitchen.“It just creates so much waste at the beginning of the food chain,” Bachman said. “The question is ‘if I pick it no one is going to buy it, so why should I waste my time?’”Loosening the food grading system and making it easier to use imperfect produce would help eliminate food waste, according to Bachman.Imperfect items can find a new home in the hands of mid-Missouri farmers through Central Food Pantry, located in Columbia, Missouri. The pantry gives leftover bread and rotten produce to hog and chicken farmers, but in recent years, supply has gone down because of improved waste initiatives, according to Sean Ross, pantry supervisor. The practice of using excess food as animal feed can be beneficial for both businesses and farmers, as it reduces waste, lowers feed costs and improves sustainability, according to an animal feed legal guide prepared by the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic last year.Central Food Pantry picks up unwanted items, whether unsold retail food or dented produce, from restaurants and grocery stores every week to disperse to clients or farmers. An on-site composting bin is used to dispose of food waste.“Preventing food waste is at the core of what we do,” Ross said.

With Composting, Food Waste Isn’t a Total Loss When food is trashed and sent to a landfill, it is a total loss. To combat this, many communities, businesses and individuals are turning to food waste composting. Of the 38.4 million tons of food waste generated in 2014, only 5.1 percent was composted, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.“Anyone that has a cafeteria is someone that could potentially participate in a food waste composting program,” said Sara Koziatek, marketing coordinator for St. Louis Composting, the largest composting facility in Missouri. “We have over 400 partners from grocery stores to mom and pop restaurants to the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team.”Now in its sixth year of operation, Columbia, Missouri’s food waste collection program has expanded to include thirty participants, mainly grocery stores and restaurants. It is not available for residential use and only one-third of the area’s public schools participated this year.Over 30 percent of material found in the dumpsters of Columbia’s public schools was food waste that could have been composted, said Ben Kreitner, waste minimization coordinator for the city of Columbia.According to Kreitner, the city plans to collect all certified compostable fiber materials within the next year, expanding from its current system that composts only food waste. Students could throw away both the container and food contents without a separation process, a step Kreitner hopes will encourage more schools to join the program.Start at School Schools play a critical role in educating the next generation about reducing, recovering and recycling food waste, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. USDA encourages schools to participate in the U.S. Food Waste Challenge, which calls for a national effort to better manage food waste.“Get your public schools to invest in food waste containers and create an educational program that lets students know how to separate that material [if necessary],” Kreitner said.The annual cost of plate waste in the National School Lunch Program exceeds $600 million, with 12 percent of calories from food served to students going uneaten, according to a 2002 Economic Research Service report to Congress. In Missouri, two popular food service systems are a traditional “tray-up system” and an offer vs. service program. In a tray-up system, students are given all five food components: fruit, vegetable, grain, a meat or meat alternate and a dairy product. In the latter, students can decline foods, but the tray must meet federal meal pattern requirements for the school to be reimbursed, Hopkins said.“When students are not being offered what they like, food waste goes up,” Hopkins said. “It’s a very painful thing to see untouched foods thrown away.”In response, institutional food recovery initiatives are rising in popularity. “Sharing Tables” are designed to recover food that students have already taken, for example a milk that was grabbed but never opened, or a banana that was touched but not consumed, Hopkins said.“It’s a table or cooler of sorts that students can put a certain amount of certain kinds of whole, unpeeled fruits or packaged foods on,” Hopkins said. “Kids can have whatever is on the table for a snack or for afterschool programs.”Adopting smarter lunchroom policies can further reduce food waste in a school setting. Strategically arranging and naming food products, like “Laser Bean” for green beans, can lead to a 70 percent increase in fruits and vegetables consumed, according to an Economic Research Service study on food waste.Inverting lunch and recess times can cut food waste by almost 30 percent, yet only 4.6 percent of elementary schools were adhering to this schedule in 2001, according to a study conducted by the University of Southern Mississippi.“A poor little kindergartener is not used to being rushed for lunch, but it happens a lot,” Hopkins said.Teachers tend to prefer having recess before lunch because students are better prepared for classroom instruction after, according to Hopkins.“It’s a wonderful thing when students and even parents can participate in the food recovery process,” Hopkins said. “There are possible things we can all do to recover our food, and they are manageable.”......This article was written for a final project for an introductory news writing course at the University of Missouri. I am a student journalist, emphasizing in science and agricultural journalism.