Abstract
Abstract: About one-third of the world's food production is lost or wasted annually at different stages of food supply chains (FSCs). Food loss usually occurs in the early stages of FSCs, while waste is more prevalent in their final stages. Thus, the main objectives of the present study were to investigate the causes of loss and waste, as well as strategies that can minimize them. Decreasing food waste in collective catering organizations, including university restaurants, is situated in the context of these concerns. In order to contribute to this discussion, the authors investigated the causes of wastage in university restaurants and possible interventions recommended in the literature to reduce it. A search considering the “food waste” and “university restaurant” constructs in five different databases found 352 publications related to the theme, of which 21 supported to answer the two questions that guided this search: Q1: “What are the causes that contribute to food waste in university restaurants?” and Q2: “What are the interventions that can be or are used in university restaurants to reduce food waste?” The literature search identified 13 causes (portion size; quality; price; emotion; palatability; preparation/cooking; menu; time; satiety; storage; service; overbuying; security) and 14 possible interventions (campaigns; trayless systems; waste management; portion size; quality; changing menus; planning; preordering; charity/donations; nutritional information; coercion; changing the dishes; preparation/cooking; storage). From this perspective, the present article provides a holistic view of food waste in university restaurants, in order to guide mitigation interventions and future research on this theme.
Highlights
Food insecurity has increased worldwide (Warshawsky, 2011), and to fight against it, the United Nations included food security as one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) set by Agenda 2030 (United Nations, 2015)
The SLR sought to answer the following questions (Phase 1), based on the objective of identifying articles published in periodicals/conferences that deal with food waste in university restaurants: Q1: What are the causes that contribute to food waste in university restaurants?
The constructs used in the search were “food waste” and “university restaurant.”
Summary
Food insecurity has increased worldwide (Warshawsky, 2011), and to fight against it, the United Nations included food security as one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) set by Agenda 2030 (United Nations, 2015). While some people are struggling to access staple foods (Schneider, 2013; Douglas, et al, 2015; Purdam et al, 2015); food is been wasted worldwide (Schneider, 2013). About 1.3 billion tons of food are lost or wasted annually, which is equivalent to 30% of world food production, and represents a monetary value approaching $750 billion (FAO, 2017). Besides economic losses (Graham-Rowe et al, 2015; Thyberg & Tonjes, 2016), wasted food generates environmental impacts due to the natural resources used in its production, and the emission of greenhouse gases (Williams et al, 2015). Wasting food in societies in which people are still going hungry evidences lack of respect for food by affluent societies (Schneider, 2013), since food could be made available to people in need (Thyberg & Tonjes, 2016)
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