Food Waste

The CLF Wasted Food Project aims to generate evidence that makes a meaningful contribution to the US goal of halving waste of food by 2030. We work primarily in the US but have several international projects.

Research and reports

• Impact of Messaging Strategy on Consumer Understanding of Food Date Labels. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behaviour. 2021
• “Maybe it’s still good?” A qualitative study of factors influencing food waste and application of the E.P.A. Food recovery hierarchy in U.S. supermarkets. Appetite. 2021
• Preschool Healthy Food Policy Did Not Increase Percent of Food Wasted: Evidence from the Carolinas. Nutrients. 2020
• Loss and waste in fish value chains: A review of the evidence from low and middle-income countries. Global Food Security. 2020
• Food Rescue Intervention Evaluations: A Systematic Review. Sustainability. 2019
• Wasted Food and Sustainable Urban Systems: Prioritizing Research Needs. CLF Report. 2019
• Misunderstood food date labels and reported food discards: A survey of US consumer attitudes and behaviors. Waste Management. 2019
• Introducing a dynamic framework to jointly address policy impacts on environmental and human health in a regional produce recovery and redistribution system. Journal of Public Affairs. 2018
• Addressing wasted food in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Journal of Biological Sciences. 2018
• Salvageable food losses from Vermont farms. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems & Community Development. 2018
• Climate Solutions: Shifting Diets And Reducing Wasted Food. Talanoa Dialogue Submission. Executive Summary. (2018)
• Government plans to address wasted food. (2017)
• Wasted Food, Wasted Nutrients: Nutrient Loss from Wasted Food in the United States and Comparison to Gaps in Dietary Intake. (2017)
• Consumer Perceptions of Date Labels: National Survey. (2016)
• Wasted seafood in the United States: Quantifying loss from production to consumption and moving toward solutions. (2015)
• Review of policies and interventions at the intersection of wasted food and public health. (2015)
• US consumer attitudes and behaviors related to wasted food. (2015)
• Proposal for Baltimore vendors’ market (Abell Award in Urban Policy). (2015)

Stories

• Urban Food Waste Interventions: Where To Go Next. Stories, February 5, 2020
• Wasted Food Means Wasted Nutrients. News Release, May 15, 2017
• Government Agencies Call for Reducing U.S. Food Waste By 2030. News Release, September 17, 2015
• America's food waste problem is bigger than you think. Johns Hopkins Public Health, Fall 2015
• Max Fresh: What the heck do “best by” and “sell by” mean?. Johns Hopkins Public Health, Spring 2015

Projects and activities

• Seafood Waste and Resource Use
• Frozen seafood as an intervention to prevent waste: retailer and consumer perspectives
• Nanotechnology and food waste prevention
• Comparing discourse about food waste in the US and UK (CLF-Lerner Fellow Katie Heley)
• Qualitative interviews with farmers about crop donation and incentives they value
• Simulation modeling of supply chains for perishable foods in low-resource settings (CLF-Lerner Fellow Marie Spiker)
• Identifying food recovery organizations in the Chesapeake region (2014)