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A new way to stop food waste?

Food waste has been in the news quite a bit recently. As I've previously mentioned, it is unlikely economically optimal to completely eliminate food waste.  That said, one thing that most folks can probably agree on is that we do not want to enact government policies that encourage more food waste.  

Yet, according to a couple recent papers by Cornell economists, the school lunch program is doing just that.  

The first study, in the journal Public Health Nutrition, the authors (Just and Price) used in-school experiments and found that requiring schools to place additional servings of fruits and vegetables on kids' plates in a school lunch line (as is required by new standards), causes a small increase in fruit and vegetable consumption but also a huge increase in waste.   The authors report (from one of their two studies) that:

However, as more items were served the fraction of items being thrown away more than doubled for those students taking just one serving (from 39 % up to 82 %) and also increased for those students taking two or more servings (from 45 % up to 60 %).

Some of the media discussion surrounding the article suggests that:

For every one to two children who eat fruits or vegetables under the new federal guidelines, five throw them away, the researchers said.

Which results in $3.8 million being thrown away each year.  The authors other research suggest that it may make more economic sense to provide financial incentives for kids to eat fruits and veggies rather than simply requiring more be placed on a tray. 

In another study by David Just (this time with co-authors Andrew Hanks and Brian Wansink) appearing in PLoS ONE, looked at the effects of another school lunch policy: banning chocolate milk.  Again, the authors compared treatment and control schools that had different policies (or before and after policy changes) and found the following:

Removing chocolate milk from school cafeterias may reduce calorie and sugar consumption, but it may also lead students to take less milk overall, drink less (waste more) of the white milk they do take, and no longer purchase school lunch. 

Although more students took white milk after the chocolate milk ban, they wasted about 29% more than before the ban.   

David Just and his colleagues at Cornell have been studying all kinds of ways to increase fruit and vegetable consumption among school children by doing things link re-orienting lunch lines, placing kid-friendly stickers on fruits and veggies, providing economic incentives, changing payment methods, etc.  I like this experimental approach to seeing what works - particularly when paired with research on cost-effectiveness.  But, as their research shows, simply banning foods or mandating that schools plate more fruits and veggies is largely ineffective and wasteful.  

Food Demand Survey (FooDS) - The First Year

The Food Demand Survey (FooDS) has now been ongoing for a full year!  

We've pulled together summary statistics on the key variables we've tracked over time.

For example, here is an index of awareness (how much people have heard or read about an issue in the preceding two weeks) and concern over the past year, for the four issues that seem to top the lists each month (in total, we track 17 items). 

Awareness is much more variable over time than is concern.  

The spike in awareness for Salmonella in October, 2013 corresponds with a widely publicized Salmonella outbreak from a California poultry processor (Foster Farms).  

It interesting to compare the Salmonella spike in awareness with external data sources.  I searched the term "Foster farms" (shown in blue below) and "Salmonella" (shown in red below) in Google trends over the past year.  Google trends, according to Wikipedia,  "shows how often a particular search-term is entered relative to the total search-volume."  The volume of searches measured by Google, both the October spike and the smaller rise in January and February, match up quite will with our measure of awareness shown in figure 2 above.  

Of course, the thing we have that Google analytic doesn't, is information on concern for issues on on willingness-to-pay for chicken and other meat products.

Curiously, despite the spike in awareness of Salmonella in October, we did not observe big changes in concern for Salmonella  or huge changes consumer willingness-to-pay or plans to buy chicken.  

Of course, our survey is more than just about this single incident or issue, but the preceding discussion is an example of the kinds of insights we hoped FooDS would deliver.

Read the whole summary here. 

Organics, misinformation, and fear-based marketing

I ran across this paper discussing some of the research on consumer preferences for organic, and it delves into the tactics used my marketers of organic products.

The authors conclude:

This review of published research, documented organic and natural produce industry practices and advocacy collaborations shows widespread, collaborative and pervasive industry marketing activities, both transparent and covert, disparaging competing conventional foods and agriculture practices. Further, these activities have contributed to false and misleading consumer health and safety perceptions influencing food purchase decisions. These findings suggest a widespread organic and natural products industry pattern of research-informed and intentionally-deceptive marketing and advocacy related practices that have generated hundreds of billions in revenues.

I agree that much of the marketing (and writing) on organic has led to false beliefs among many consumers.  I've written a lot about that, and I've tried to provide research evidence on the scientific basis (or lack thereof) of such claims.  Thus, I share the author's sentiments.  

But, I personally am much less bothered by marketers.  Isn't this what marketers do?  Why does Nike show LeBron James or Michael Jordan flying through the air wearing their shoes?  What message is Nike trying to send?  It probably has next to nothing to do with how high I'm able to jump or even how well a Nike will fit me should I buy them.  Their commercials are trying to install false beliefs.  

So, I sort of expect those things from marketers and companies trying to sell products (although overt lies and falsehoods expose companies and marketers to legal liability, and for good reason).   What bothers me more is when supposed "objective" journalists or academics spread the same sort of mis-information that flies in the face of scientific evidence.  Moreover, we certainly don't want tax dollars subsidizing false beliefs.  

That's why I found this passage a bit more disconcerting:

As a result, the American taxpayer funded national organic program is playing an ongoing role in misleading consumers into spending billions of dollars in organic purchasing decisions based on false and misleading health, safety and quality claims. Further, U.S. government agencies, including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Department of Agriculture, which entrusted with the authority to enforce truthful, non-misleading consumer protections against such abuses have either ignored or become complicit in these marketing abuses.