From Farm to Trashcan, America’s Food Supply Is Being Squandered: A Look At Consumer Attitudes

Wealthy consumers in developed countries waste almost as much food annually as sub-Saharan Africa’s entire net production of food. Efforts to combat food waste garner significant global attention—indeed, tackling global food waste is a United Nations Sustainable Development Goal. However, consumer attitudes towards such a goal are not well understood in the US, where food waste is estimated to reach a whopping 40 percent.

According to the Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology, the lost nutritional value due to food waste is an estimated 1,249 calories per capita per day—an amount just over half of the recommended, daily caloric intake for “moderately active” 20 to 50 year-olds, according to the Department of Health and Human Service’s 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Simply put, two people on average waste enough food to support another person entirely.

Although researchers conduct consumer surveys to determine the perceptions and motivations behind this wastage, we cannot rely on self-reporting to paint a reliable picture of the quantity of wasted food per household. In a June 2015 study published in the Public Library of Science journal (PLOS One), researchers from the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future conducted a survey designed to measure Americans’ awareness of their own waste habits, and to what extent they would be willing to change their behaviors.

After reviewing similar studies conducted in the UK and Australia, the researchers hired the independent firm GFK Knowledgeworks to administer an online survey over a four-day period to 1,998 randomly selected adult participants. To improve respondent representation of minorities, the firm oversampled census tracts with high concentrations of African-American and Hispanic residents, and ensured that those without regular Internet access were accommodated. This resulted in a 51 percent response rate, which is slightly above average in the field of random sample web surveys.

Researchers were able to test for significant associations (at the five percent level) between outcomes related to food waste and demographic variables, such as household income, level of education, gender, age, and parental status. Many of the question sets like age [below age 65 or above 65], and parental status [having young children or not having young children], were found to display strong associations with food waste.

Age and parental status, for instance, were each significantly associated with personal discard responses. When asked how self aware participants felt regarding the amount of food they discard, 13 percent of all those surveyed reported not actually discarding any food at all; 56 percent reported discarding only 10 percent of purchased food, and only 10 percent said they discarded 30 percent or more. While the latter may seem to suggest a cause for celebration when compared with literature reviews and multiple global studies, the researchers determined that significant underreporting was taking place. Responses to these and other pertinent questions are summarized in the data visualization charts below.

In a similar vein, when asked about comparisons with others, 73 percent of the sample said they discard less food than the average American, while only three percent admitted to discarding more. These responses were significantly associated with age, gender, parental status, and household income.

When asked about primary reasons for wanting to avoid food waste, most participants reported ‘wanting to save money’ or ‘wanting to set a good example for my kids.’ Indeed, 22 percent said that environmental concerns were ‘not at all important’ motivators, and most respondents considered other behaviors more environmentally wasteful, such as letting the faucet drip (72 percent), or leaving the lights on (57 percent). Also of interest were the responses when asked about the reasons for wasting food: among the total number of respondents who do compost food scraps, 41 percent indicated that food waste does not bother them, due to their keeping organic materials as part of the food chain. Another 32 percent reported that they believe their individual actions would not make much difference. Commonly observed in the social sciences, the collectivist mindset has devastating consequences for those trying to enact policy or incentives of a wide reach.

Promising, though, was the relatively small percentage (12 percent) of respondents who answered that they were ‘not at all interested’ in learning strategies to combat food waste in the future. Around one third of respondents reported exerting ‘a lot’ of effort to already prevent food waste, and 45 percent claimed that they found the idea of reducing personal food waste ‘easy.’ Given this promising attitude, combined with the data from the motivational questions, researchers concluded that food waste messages concerned with a consumer’s wallet, rather than the environment, would have a greater chance of being internalized. Other efforts could include a retailer-led movement to shift consumer desires away from acquiring the freshest foods, and instead towards acquiring edible food—food that may not look appetizing but is still safe to eat. A possible strategy for this could be offering heavy discounts on items that are close to their expiration dates.

Recognizing their study’s limitations, the researchers also made sure to touch on the role of policy practitioners: researchers and practitioners must come together to champion larger data collection efforts that study impacts on behavior (aspirational reporting, cognitive dissonance, and social desirability bias, to name a few), as well as education projects that discuss the financial and social implications of wasting food, as well as the environmental ones. Most crucially, if we can frame food waste reduction as a tangible effort rather than a lofty goal that can only be tackled at the highest levels of international government, then we can start to mold consumer behaviors and perceptions to fit a more equitable future.

Article Source: Neff et al., “Wasted Food: U.S. Consumers’ Reported Awareness, Attitudes, and Behaviors,” PLOS One, 2015

Feature Photo: cc/(WxMom)