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Podcast Topic: Food Waste & Implications

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The Leading Voices in Food

Podcast Topic: Food Waste & Implications

MITRE podcastE231: Insight from a national household food waste study

February 27, 2024

If people knew how much food they threw away each week, would they change their food-wasting ways? That’s a question scientists explore in the 2023 State of Food Waste in America report. The research goal was to understand why and how households waste food, and what would motivate them to prevent food waste. In today’s podcast, we’ll talk with MITRE scientists Laura Leets and Grace Mika, members of a team who developed and launched the MITRE Food Waste Tracker app. This is a first of its kind app for households to log information about discarded food and learn ways to save money by reducing food waste. The Food Waste in America study team includes the Gallup Survey Company, researchers from the Ohio State University, the Harvard Law and Policy Clinic, ReFED, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the World Wildlife Fund.

Related podcasts: Climate Change, Environment & Food | Food Waste & Implications |

 

Jasmine Crowe Houston podcastE225: Efficient Food Recovery and Waste Prevention – a Business Strategy

January 17, 2024

Our guest today is Jasmine Crowe-Houston, social entrepreneur, and founder of Goodr.co. Jasmine started her journey cooking soul food for hungry unhoused people in her kitchen in her one-bedroom apartment in Atlanta. She fed upwards of 500 people a week for years with pop-up kitchens and parks and parking lots. Then in 2017, she founded Goodr, a technology-based food waste management company that connects firms with food surpluses to nonprofit organizations that can use the food. She has worked with organizations that have food waste issues, such as the Atlanta International Airport, Hormel Foods, and Turner Broadcasting. Today, Goodr has expanded nationwide and sponsors free grocery stores and schools. She has combined charity, innovation, and market-based solutions into a for-profit waste management company that Inc. Magazine called a rare triple win.

Related podcasts: Climate Change, Environment & Food | Equity, Race & Food Justice | Food Banks, Food Pantries & Soup Kitchens | Food Insecurity | Food Safety & Food Defense | Food Waste & Implications |

 

Podcast Kathryn Bender and Brian RoeE206: Results from a National Household Food Waste Survey

June 6, 2023

No one actually wants to waste food, right? And yet, a new national study on food waste at home shows we’ve become more wasteful recently. US families self-reported a 280% increase in discarded food between early 2021 and early 2022. What’s more, households tossed out more food during weeks they ate out. Today, we will explore results from a national tracking study published in the Journal of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association. Our guests to help us learn more about this topic are economist Kathryn Bender. Katherine studies consumer behavior and food waste at the University of Delaware. We also have Brian Roe, who is an agricultural economist from the Ohio State University. Brian’s research focuses on food waste and consumer economics.

Related podcasts: Climate Change, Environment & Food | Food Waste & Implications | Food, Psychology & Neuroscience |

 

Podcast - Brenna Ellison, Linlin FanE200: Learning which food waste reduction strategies people would actually do

March 29, 2023

The average American family of four loses roughly $1,500 annually, not eating the foods they purchased. This uneaten food, at best, ends up in a compost heap or goes to household pets, or worst, this wasted food ends up in the trash, a total loss. Of course, no one wants to waste food, but there is often a disconnect between what people know they should do, as opposed to what they would do. This podcast is part of a series on food waste. My colleagues, Agricultural Economist, Brenna Ellison of Purdue University, and Penn State’s Applied Economist, Linlin Fan, and I, asked people to tell us what food waste prevention measures they would support. And we asked which strategies they thought would work. The study was published recently in the “Journal of Cleaner Production.”

Related podcasts: Food Waste & Implications |

 

Podcast - Larian & KablanE199: How USAID is working to reduce wasted food in developing countries

March 14, 2023

Today we’re looking at food waste and loss on an international scale. Did you know that over 1/3 of the world’s food is lost or wasted? In low- and middle-income countries, over 40% of food loss occurs before a crop even makes it to the market. This food loss undermines efforts to end hunger and malnutrition. Wasted food contributes 8 to 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Addressing this challenge is critical to global food security, nutrition, and climate change mitigation.

Related podcasts: Agriculture & Tech | Climate Change, Environment & Food | Food Insecurity | Food Policy | Food Waste & Implications |

 

Jean Buzby podcastE195: How USDA is tackling food waste and loss

February 1, 2023

In the United States, over one third of all available food goes uneaten through loss or waste. That is a hard number to ignore when more than 10% of the US population is food insecure. What’s more, uneaten food is the single largest category of material sent to landfills. So what is the USDA doing to address food loss and waste? Our guest today is Dr. Jean Buzby, the Food Loss and Waste Liaison in the US Department of Agriculture’s Office of the Chief Economist.

Related podcasts: Climate Change, Environment & Food | Food Policy | Food Waste & Implications |

 

Podcast Thomas Trabold, Ned SpangE193: Challenges and opportunities: turning food waste into valuable products

January 17, 2023

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, food is the single largest category of material sent to landfills in the US, where it emits the greenhouse gas methane. It would be a win for climate if food waste could instead be transformed into commercially valuable products. Today, we’re talking with two researchers who are working out the feasibility of just that. Welcome to the Leading Voices in Food podcast. Our guests for today are sustainability and energy science researcher Thomas Trabold of the Golisano Institute for Sustainability at Rochester Institute of Technology. And second, we have food science and technology researcher Ned Spang from the University of California Davis Food Loss and Waste Collaborative.

Related podcasts: Climate Change, Environment & Food | Food Policy | Food Waste & Implications |

 

Podcast Garrett Graddy-LovelaceE191: Is today’s food waste a consequence of historical public policy?

December 14, 2022

Today’s podcast is part of a series on food waste. When farmers produce more of a product than people are willing to buy, or when the demand for a product falls unexpectedly, food is wasted. What role do agricultural policies and politics play in creating and perpetuating cycles of supply challenges? Our guest today is Dr. Garrett Graddy-Lovelace of American University. Garrett is an agricultural policy expert and she studies the problem of food gluts through the lens of social sciences, international affairs, history and analysis of USDA data.

Related podcasts: Agriculture & Tech | Food Industry Behavior & Marketing | Food Policy | Food Waste & Implications | International Food & Ag Policy |

 

Podcast - Callie Babbitt, Celeste ChavisE188: Can we achieve sustainable management of food waste?

November 28, 2022

When you hear the words food waste do you think about forgotten leftovers? In the journey from farm to stores to the dinner table, some food is lost during the processing and transportation and at home some purchase food simply goes uneaten. How can transportation science help reduce food waste and loss and make the food system more resilient and climate friendly?

Related podcasts: Agriculture & Tech | Climate Change, Environment & Food | Food Waste & Implications |

 

Roni Neff/Brian RoeE185: How and why do households waste food?

November 2, 2022

Did you know that each year the average American family of four loses $1,500 to uneaten food? What’s more, consumer food waste is the largest category of waste sent to landfills. When food is wasted, so is the land, water, labor, and energy that were used in producing, processing, transporting, preparing, storing and disposing of the discarded food. So why does household food waste and plate waste happen? We have two guests today to help us explore this topic. First, Dr. Roni Neff from Johns Hopkins University. Roni studies wasted food, food system resilience, and climate change through a public health lens. Second, we have Dr. Brian Roe from the Ohio State University. Brian focuses on food waste and behavioral and consumer economics.

Related podcasts: Climate Change, Environment & Food | Food Waste & Implications | Food, Psychology & Neuroscience |