THIRD WORLD USA
'Will we have enough food?:' Millions of Americans are now unemployed and hungry. Food banks worry they can't feed them.

Paulina Cachero

San Antonio Food Bank workers give out food at drive-thru pop ups amid the coronavirus crisis. Courtesy of San Antonio Food Bank

Stay-at-home orders have put 22 million Americans out of work, leaving them without money to pay the bills or put food on the table during the coronavirus pandemic.

Around 95% of the food banks at Feeding America, a national network of food banks, reported an increase in demand for food assistance compared to last year. They've had an average increase of 70% since the pandemic began.

As food banks witness an increase in demand, they are also balancing a decrease in food supplies and a forced shift in the way they distribute food to keep people safe from infection.

Many food banks and food pantry leaders worry that they won't have enough to continue feeding the unprecedented number of hungry Americans if the coronavirus lockdowns continue.

Images of the miles-long lines of cars waiting to get a small box of groceries the San Antonio Food Bank painted a picture of the devastating impact of the coronavirus lockdowns that have put millions of Americans out of work — and have left them hungry.

"These lines that are forming that are longer than I've ever seen in my life. I mean, I just have never seen this kind of demand," Eric Cooper, the president of San Antonio Food Bank since 2001, told Business Insider.

His food bank saw an unprecedented number of 10,000 hungry families waiting to get food last week.

"The end of the crisis is not in sight, just like the end of the line of cars is not in sight," he said.
—ricburton 🐚 @ShellProtocol (@ricburton) April 10, 2020

The San Antonio Food Bank serves 16 counties in Texas, Cooper said. Before the coronavirus swept the nation, the organizations served 60,000 people on average a week. Now, they're serving 120,000 people a week, with as many as 10,000 families showing up to a single distribution.

Cooper said some families have begun lining up 12 hours before the food bank distribution time to make sure they're one of the lucky few to get a box of meat, produce, and more.

However, the San Antonio Food Bank is hardly the only organization struggling to keep up with the demand of the 22 million Americans who have been left unemployed.

The pandemic has created a 'perfect storm' of circumstances that poses an unprecedented challenge for food banks

School closures and sky-rocketing unemployment due to quarantine and stay-at-home orders have left many families without money to pay the bills and for meals needed on the table.

In Los Angeles, where more than 50% of the population is now unemployed, thousands of residents lined up outside of food banks. In New York, the epicenter of the US coronavirus outbreak, food banks are buckling under the weight of demand.

Feeding America, a network of 200 food banks across the country and 60,000 partner food pantries, including the San Antonio Food Bank, found that 95% of its food banks reported an increase in demand for food assistance compared to last year, with an average increase of 70% since the pandemic.

Feeding America estimates that they could see an additional 17.1 million people experiencing food insecurity if the virus continues to plague the country.

Many of those who now wait in miles-long lines have never experienced food insecurity before. Cooper said he has seen both unfamiliar and unexpected faces at food distributions.

"I've seen so many in our line who knew of the food bank because they had volunteered here — now they're being served here," Cooper said

However, the overwhelming surges of hungry Americans aren't the only obstacle food banks face.

As food banks witness an increase in demand, they are also balancing a decrease in food resources and a forced shift in the way they distribute food to keep staff, volunteers, the families they are serving safe from infection

Katie Fitzgerald, Feeding America's vice president and chief operating officer, told Business Insider that the pandemic has created a "perfect storm" of circumstances that has posed an unprecedented challenge in its 50 years of service.

Texas Army National Guardsmen are deployed to the East Texas Food Bank Courtesy of Feeding America

Although food banks are serving exponentially more people, many are working with skeleton crews to meet the demand. In some states, the national guard have been deployed to help hand out food and package produce.

"There is a lack of volunteers and workers now because people are unemployed or volunteers are afraid that they are going to catch the virus," Cheryl Jackon, the founder of Minnie's Food Pantry in Plano, Texas, told Business Insider.

To keep the volume of food moving and adhere to CDC guidelines for social distancing, food banks are doing 24-hour warehouse operations to space out packaging food, increase sanitization, and more. Fitzgerald added that many food banks are increasing to a six or even seven-day a week schedule.

"In four weeks we've had 22 million unemployment claims — it certainly has never happened in the history of modern food banking. We are navigating this as everyone else," Fitzgerald noted.

San Antonio Food Bank workers deliver food to hungry families through their car window. Courtesy of San Antonio Food Banks

At many food pantries, where the produce from food banks is given to distribute the food, they've had to revamp their entire operations to keep safe distances. Many have up a drive-thru to give boxes through open windows to minimize contact. Jackson said these precautionary measures have taken the heart out of her food pantry.

"People can't see the smile behind a face mask and we can't show you we care with a hug because of social distancing. Everything that shows that you care has been stripped from our country," Jackson said. "We're all walking like zombies."

Although the face masks and gloves she requires her food pantry workers to use take the personal touch out of the service they deliver, she worries she will run out the critical protective gear, forcing her to close her doors.

"These people are making sure families have meals," Jackson told Business Insider. "As their leader, I want to make sure that I'm protecting my food pantry workers as much as hospital leaders want to protect their nurses and doctors."

Food banks worry they won't have enough food to feed millions of hungry Americans

The coronavirus lockdown measures have hit food bank's resources hard. With people panic-buying food at grocery stores and restaurants who usually donate leftover food closed indefinitely, the resources they usually turn to are dwindling.

"The has been a 40% to 60% decrease in donations. Food banks are having to meet this demand with less food," Fitzgerald told Business Insider

As food banks struggle to source groceries to give, farmers are dumping thousands of gallons of milk and burning millions of pounds of fresh produce due to a lack of infrastructure to distribute it to food pantries in need, according to a report from The New York Times.

However, Feeding American and the American Farm Bureau are working to get that produce and dairy to hungry families in need through the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which includes $1 billion in nutrition assistance, including $400 million for The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) — a program that helps USDA and farmers connect with food banks to get surplus food to people in need — and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — a federal entitlement program that gives qualifying families nutrition benefits on an electronic benefits card to purchase food at grocery stores.

People queue to pick up fresh food at a Los Angeles Regional Food Bank giveaway of 2,000 boxes of groceries, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues, in Los Angeles, California, April 9, 2020. Lucy Nicholson/Reuters

However, Cooper fears the nutrition assistance programs will not arrive in time. He said the first trucks from the USDA will likely come mid-summer, "but families have to eat in the meantime."

"I realize that the lines are just going to get longer before they get shorter in that we have to be prepared to feed them," Cooper said. " And that's the biggest challenge. Will we have enough food?"

Jackson said she can't even remember the number of times Minnie's Food Pantry has run out of food to give in the last three weeks. She has reached out to countless non-profits, food manufacturers, and restaurants to donate what food they can spare — but she worries about what will happen if the coronavirus continues for much longer.

"I'm afraid that we don't have the food," Jackson added somberly. "The longer this pandemic goes on, the more people we will have to serve. I'm afraid that a lot of food pantries will shut down because they will not be able to handle the load."

Cooper said they have been fortunate enough to receive enough financial support to keep up with the demand. However, he also fears the daunting challenges food banks face to make sure American families don't go hungry.

"I guess in a lot of ways we're praying for a miracle — I can't see how our food supply will last," Cooper worried. "But I'm gonna keep believing and exercise in the faith that the resources, the resources will come together and that we'll get through this."

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Food waste: cities can make the difference

CMCC FOUNDATION - EURO-MEDITERRANEAN CENTER ON CLIMATE CHANGE

Research News

 

IMAGE: APPLICATION OF THE FRAMEWORK TO THE ANALYSIS OF THE 40 EUROPEAN LEADING CITIES IN URBAN FOOD WASTE INITIATIVES. THE THREE HORIZONTAL AXES REPRESENT THE THREE PILLARS OF THE FRAMEWORK AND... view more 

CREDIT: THIS ARTICLE IS AN OPEN ACCESS ARTICLE DISTRIBUTED UNDER THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF THE CREATIVE COMMONS ATTRIBUTION (CC BY) LICENSE (HTTP://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/).

Food waste is one of the most important issues of current food systems: Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has estimated that more than one third of food is either lost or wasted along the entire food supply chain causing significant economic, social and environmental impacts.

From an environmental point of view, food waste represents between 8% and 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and the annual water footprint of the agricultural phase of food waste is about 250 km3, five times the volume of Lake Garda and higher than any national food consumption water footprint. The IPCC Special Report Climate Change and Land (2018) estimates that 37% of total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are attributable to the food system considering its complete cycle, from agriculture and land use, storage, transport, packaging, processing, retail, consumption and waste. In the European Union (EU), 88 million tons of food waste are generated each year (i.e., 173 kg per capita) with significant economic, environmental and social impacts. It has been estimated that 15-16% of the total environmental impact of the food supply chain in Europe can be attributed to food waste.

Cities have emerged as crucial actors in the global food security geography: today they occupy approximately only 3% of the total land, but the number of people living in urban areas surpassed for the first time the number of people living in rural areas, and urban contexts are therefore the biggest source of post-consumption food waste, using between 70% and 80% of world's food.

However, cities have proved to be crucial actors in tackling food waste, launching effective policies and initiatives to address it.

By looking at 40 cities across 16 European countries, a study recently published on Resources - Special issue Food Loss and Waste: The Challenge of a Sustainable Management through a Circular Economy Perspective presented a new framework for assessing urban food waste policies and initiatives.

"Food loss and waste is recognized as one of the most challenging distortion of current food system", explains Marta Antonelli, senior scientist at the CMCC Foundation and Head of Research at Barilla Foundation. "We talk about distortion because we produce tons of edible food waste every year. Food loss occurs from farm up to and excluding retail, whilst food waste occurs at retail, food service and household level. Causes range from poor handling, inadequate transport or storage, lack of cold chain capacity, extreme weather conditions to cosmetic standards, and a lack of planning and cooking skills among consumers. This year we have witnessed an increase in food loss and waste as a result of movement and transport restrictions due to the pandemic. COVID-19 aside, each year about 14% of the world's food is lost before even reaching the market."

Reducing food lost or wasted means more food for all, less greenhouse gas emissions, less pressure on environment, especially on water and land resources, increased productivity and economic growth, and more sustainable societies.

"Food waste management is a very complex challenge" explains Marta Antonelli, "since it requires diversified but integrated actions that involve many public local authorities, such as cities, regions, metropolitan areas and provinces, and other actors including retailers, school canteens, hospitals, food markets, citizens and non-governmental organizations. All these actors and levels of governance need to work in a synergic way to ensure effective urban food waste policies.

Cities can have a crucial role acting on different sectors and levels of the urban food system. The City of Milan, for example, approved a waste tax deduction for actors that contribute to reducing food waste through donations. In particular, the City of Milan has explicitly declared its ambition to halve food waste by 2030 and its intention to adopt a food supply chain approach, in order to reduce food waste across all tiers of the chain from food production to final consumption."?The authors started from a review of the most recent literature on food waste policy assessment frameworks and on urban food waste initiatives to capture the specificities of urban contexts and identify the most interesting urban initiatives and policies implemented. Finally, they identified direct and indirect links with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), showing the role that cities can play in achieving the targets of the UN 2030 Agenda. The framework proposed identifies and sheds light on the links between the different types of policies launched (information based, market based, regulatory, nudging initiatives, etc), the main areas of interventions addressed, as well as the different actors intervening in urban food waste management.

The analysis highlighted that several urban food waste policies or initiatives (e.g. in Bari, Bologna, Milan, Turin, Genoa, Venice and Cremona, with public as well as and private initiatives) proved to be effective in tackling poverty and socio-economic exclusion through food donations and, also, through the creation of new job opportunities for some marginalised groups of the population.

"Tackling food waste can be a key component of wider initiatives based on integrated management of the urban challenges and that promote the collaboration and coordination of the urban ecosystem", Marta Antonelli adds. "If we look at urban food waste interventions, we have very few cases of integrated, multi-sectorial and multi-actorial management of food waste. Cities are currently promoting new models of governance, for instance launching new institutional settings like the Food Policy Councils, creating regional and global networks of mayors advocating for more sustainable food systems, and coordinating initiatives to address food waste-related challenges in an integrated manner, from food production to food distribution."

The study undermines the importance of providing city officials with effective tools to collect data on urban food waste levels, to understand the scope of the problem and design action. Gap in metrics and data are still many. Concrete metrics and publicly available quantification tools developed at city level are currently still missing.

"Moreover, it is essential that urban food waste policies and interventions are fully aligned with the targets of the Agenda 2030", Dr. Marta Antonelli concludes. "Only in four cases (Cremona, Liège, Milan and Montpellier), food waste interventions were explicitly put in relation with the SDGs. The research showed that cities seldom use the SDGs as a policy framework, thus limiting the evaluation of the impact of these interventions on the sustainability agenda.

Therefore, it is important to raise more awareness among local policy makers, public officials, the private sector, and citizens to fully monitor the link and the impact of food waste on the SDGs. Cities are implementing many urban food waste initiatives, but what it's still rare is an integrated vision in addressing these issues In this sense, the recently adopted 'Farm to Fork' Strategy, part of the broader objective of making the EU food system the global standard for sustainability, represents the first step of the European Commission to address food system-related challenges in an integrated manner, for example putting human health and sustainability on the same level."

The analysis could be easily expanded and replicated to other contexts, and in the future, the same framework could be valuable for other non-European cities that are starting to tackle food waste and are addressing similar challenges.

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Read the full paper:

Urban Food Waste: A Framework to Analyse Policies and Initiatives

Fattibene D., Recanati F., Dembska K., Antonelli M., 2020, Resources - Special Issue Food Loss and Waste: The Challenge of a Sustainable Management through a Circular Economy Perspective 9(9), 99; https://doi.org/10.3390/resources9090099

 

Demand for Charitable Food Remains Unnaturally High

JUNE 21, 2022

Food banks agree that demand for food assistance has remained unusually high, even as the pandemic has eased. Now Feeding America has put a number on that demand. 

In a report released last week, it found that an estimated 53 million people received charitable food assistance in 2021. That’s down from 60 million in 2020 when the pandemic was raging, but still well above the 40 million who received charitable food in 2019. Put another way, 33% more people were still getting charitable food in 2021 versus before the pandemic. 

Rising prices, combined with the pullback of many pandemic-related government food assistance programs, mean that high demand for charitable food is continuing into 2022. Eighty percent of the 200 food banks in the Feeding America network say demand for food assistance has increased or stayed the same from March 2022 to April 2022. 

“Local food banks, food pantries, food shelves and other community food programs have become an essential piece of a household’s food budget,” noted Claire Babineaux-Fontenot, CEO of Feeding America, in a press release.

Feeding America’s findings are borne out in other, more local reports. The Greater Boston Food Bank, for example, found in a survey released in June that 46% of food-insecure adults in Massachusetts used a food pantry in 2021, up significantly from 32% in 2020, and 27% in 2019.

Kyle Waide, CEO of Atlanta Community Food Bank, urged funding for TEFAP at a House Agriculture Committee hearing last week.

Similarly, Kyle Waide, President and CEO of Atlanta Community Food Bank, testifying last week at a House Agriculture Committee hearing on nutrition assistance, said his food bank distributed the same volume of food during April and May of 2022 as it did during those same two months in 2020, which was nearly 35% higher than pre-pandemic levels.

Food banks are recommending a broad array of interventions to reduce the need for food assistance. Capital Area Food Bank, in its own report released in June laid some responsibility for fixing the hunger problem on the private sector. 

The food bank urged companies to pay living wages, offer paid leave, and ensure upward mobility for workers, echoing similar thoughts expressed by Stacy Dykstra, CEO of Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma, in this article. “Companies have incredible influence over the problem of food insecurity … through their employment strategies,” Capital Area Food Bank said in its report.

At the government level, Capital Area Food Bank recommends permanently expanding the earned income tax credit and child tax credit, and finding ways to drive greater enrollment in SNAP (only one in five food-insecure households in the D.C. area use it) and to make more people eligible for social safety net programs, such as easing qualifications for college students and military families. The food bank also thinks that partnerships between social service organizations, such as food banks and healthcare clinics, can go a long way toward addressing hunger.

Greater Boston Food Bank centered many of its recommendations around improving the food pantry experience. It urged pantries to focus on best practices, such as paying extra attention to Black, Latino and LGBTQ communities; providing food in convenient, dignified and equitable ways; exploring alternative methods of delivery like grocery cards and home delivery, and partnering with other community-based organizations. It also highlighted the need for adequate funding of government programs like SNAP and WIC. 

In his testimony, Waide focused mostly on TEFAP, urging mandatory funding of $450 million for the program in the next Farm Bill, as well as $200 million for TEFAP storage and distribution. He noted that Atlanta Community Food Bank next year expects to purchase nearly 25% more food (17.5 million pounds) than it will get through TEFAP (14 million pounds). The purchases will cost it nearly $15 million, and presage a pattern the food bank believes is unsustainable, he said. 

The 14 million pounds of food the food bank will get through TEFAP in fiscal 2023 represents about one-third of the government food it received during 2021, Waide said. In addition, the amount is about one million pounds less than what the food bank received from the government pre-pandemic. A further complication is that about 13% of TEFAP shipments the food bank ordered this year have been canceled due to supply chain issues, he said. 

In closing, Waide urged the committee to “flood the zone” with access to food. “Doing so will help our families, communities and our country recover faster.” – Chris Costanzo

This article was made possible by the readers who support Food Bank News, a small, editorially independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit media organization. Food Bank News is not funded by any government agencies, nor is it part of a larger association or corporation. Your support helps ensure the continuation of our solutions-oriented coverage of best practices in hunger relief. Thank you!

Do not give food to food banks. Give money
Tristin Hopper 

© Provided by National Post

As a fresh wave of lockdowns shuts down whole sectors of the Canadian economy, chances are good that these holidays are going to be having a lot more Canadians relying on their local food bank for sustenance. Since 2015, the National Post has greeted the yuletide season by publishing the video below. With a simple message of maximizing charitable giving by donating money to the food bank instead of canned goods, it is one of our most popular videos. It has also prompted food banks to caution us that maybe our can-bashing is a little overzealous. This is correct, but the core fact remains: With few exceptions the absolute best way that you can help feed Canada’s hungry is to give your food bank cold, fungible currency. Let us explain …

NOTE: The subtext of this article is to get you to kick some money over to food banks, not to get mad and suspend donations entirely. Please use Food Banks Canada’s food bank finder to find your nearest food bank.


The food bank is way better at buying food than you are

The author of this column is a congenitally cheap individual. I buy utility turkeys in bulk, cook them all at once and portion the meat into freezer bags to be used later. I maximize the per-ounce cost of condiments by buying them in gallon quantities. I once had an inside guy at a fruit importer who tipped me off whenever a case of bruised but usable bananas was headed for the dumpster. And yet I must still kneel in awe at a food bank’s ability to stretch a dollar. They buy in bulk, they capitalize on surpluses and they get spectacularly good deals by playing the charity card. For every $1 donated to the Calgary Food Bank, they claim to be able to buy food equivalent to $5 at retail prices. In California, some food banks claim to be able to boost that multiple to $6 . One of the most misguided charitable endeavors at this time of year is to go to the grocery store with the goal of explicitly buying food to be tossed into the workplace food hamper. Even the most skilled shopper must appreciate that however many cans of tuna they can buy, a food bank would probably have been able to buy five times as many.

© Darren Makowichuk/Calgary Sun/QMI Agency There is a zero per cent chance that former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi, pictured here at a 2013 food bank drive, would be able to buy food with an efficiency coming even close to that of an established food bank.

Money doesn’t have to be sorted and stored

If you gather up $15 worth of pennies (that’s 1,500 coins) and dump it in your nearest Salvation Army kettle, the attendant Bell Ringer will smile weakly and thank you for your generosity. Once that mountain of pennies is counted, rolled, transported and deposited, however, it’s entirely possible that your donation actually resulted in a net loss for the Red Shield. A similar problem exists with food donations. Your average box of random pantry items needs to be sorted, stored and shoehorned into a family’s meal plan. While pantry items are better than no pantry items, that sorting isn’t cheap. Two years ago the Greater Vancouver Food Bank revealed that it was costing them up to $40,000 a year to sort out unwanted donations such as half-eaten bread, tinned alligator and Jello packages from the 1960s. In Nunavut, the exorbitant costs of shipping mean that a donated food parcel can end up costing a food bank way more than than the value of the food it contains. Money doesn’t have any of these pitfalls. It doesn’t go bad, it doesn’t take up space and it’s not heavy: It sits patiently in a bank account generating more money until it’s needed to buy a pallet of peanut butter or fresh vegetables.

© Postmedia File A 1990 photo of workers at the London Food Bank preparing to sort through a mountain of physical food donations.

You don’t know what the food bank needs

Have you ever shown up to a potluck where everybody brought kale salad? Food banks face a version of this problem regularly. One month they’re drowning in peanut butter but desperate for tuna, the next they’re neck deep in creamed corn and need canned vegetables. Food banks also need to keep feeding people throughout the year, which makes it a little tricky when much of their donations come in a tidal wave of cans every Christmas. According to U.S. data up to 50 per cent of food bank donations are wasted, and the primary reason is because donations do not always jibe with the food needs of a community. Food banks would be more candid about this, but they know that if they look even slightly ungrateful they could swear off a donor for life. One reader emailed the National Post with a story of dropping off a hamper of pantry items at a food bank only to be told “what we really need is crackers” by a volunteer. “I now donate elsewhere,” wrote the reader.

© Mike Hensen/The London Free Press/Postmedia Network We really can’t stress enough how much time Canadian food banks have to spend sifting through random physical food donations.

If your food bank is inefficient, throwing more inefficiency at them is a terrible plan

Food banks know that many of their donors are happy to contribute food or time, but bristle at the idea of being asked for cash. “Some food banks … spend too much money on salaries & fund-raising. We will not donate money to them,” one reader wrote to the Post in 2016. This is absolutely not true of Food Banks Canada; it has been voted by Charity Intelligence as one of the most impactful spenders of donated money in Canada. But pretend that your local food bank does indeed suffer from financial mismanagement and high overhead costs. If that’s the case, how are these problems helped by following the equally inefficient route of exclusively donating food? As noted above, a dollar spent on food hamper donations at the grocery store could have purchased five times more food in the hands of a food bank purchaser. A loss of 80 per cent in your dollar’s efficiency is a terrible price to pay for mistrust of a charity. The practice makes even less sense when you consider it being applied to other charities. If people don’t trust the Red Cross, it’s not like they assuage their suspicions by only donating bandages and cans of gasoline. Conversely, one way for food banks to get around public mistrust of cash donations is to start allowing donors to contribute to funds in which the money will only be spent on food.

Food drives have their place, but you can still consider whether it’s the best use of your resources

This column should not be taken as an all-purpose indictment of food drives. By holding them, food banks are tapping into a subset of donors. People distrustful of monetary donations, people lured by the pageantry of a “fill the bus” campaign, people strapped for cash who can only donate spare cans from the pantry. If all food drives were shut down, these donors wouldn’t start cutting cheques — they would simply leave. “We are lucky because we are one of the only charities which has three legitimate and needed ways to donate. Food, funds and time,” said Lalonde. But for donors with spare cash who aren’t too interested in the means by which they help the poor, they should absolutely consider swearing off canned good donations. An increasing number of corporate donors are already taking the hint: Instead of dropping off truckloads of food at the food bank each year, they’re now handing out the much more impactful donation of a giant cheque instead.

© John Lappa/Sudbury Star See? Just as exciting as a truckload of food.

Food isn’t tax deductible

This is probably the most important point: Nobody’s going to give you a cut on your income taxes because you lobbed a few bouillon cubes into a cardboard box at the office. Not so with monetary donations. On the first $200 a Canadian donates to charity each year, 15 per cent of that is tax deductible. If you go above the $200 threshold in a given year, that rate jumps to 30 per cent . To review: If you hand your food bank a 30 pound office hamper filled with random food, you’re handing over a miniature logistical challenge that may or may not end up on the table of a hungry family. Hand over $20, and the food bank will be able to buy $100 worth of food, they’ll save on processing costs and Ottawa will kick you back up to $6.

UMD researchers seek to reduce food waste and establish the science of food date labeling

New study highlights the importance of interdisciplinary collaborations to reduce global food waste due to date labeling

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND

 

IMAGE: GROCERY MARKET view more 

CREDIT: MOHAMED MAHMOUD HASSAN

Minimizing food waste is top of mind right now during the COVID-19 global pandemic, with the public concerned about the potential ramifications for our food supply chain. But even before COVID-19, given concerns about a rapidly growing population and hunger around the world, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) issued a global call for zero tolerance on food waste. However, the lack of regulation, standardization, and general understanding of date labeling on food products (such as "best by" and "use by" dates) leads to billions of dollars per year in food waste in the United States alone. Many people don't realize that date labels on food products (with the exception of infant formula) are entirely at the manufacturer's discretion and are not supported by robust scientific evidence. To address this concern and combat global food waste, researchers at the University of Maryland have come together across departments in the College of Agriculture & Natural Resources with the goal of clarifying the science or lack thereof behind food date labels, highlighting the need for interdisciplinary research and global research trends in their new publication in Food Control.

"We have 50 different types of date labels that are currently used in the US because there is no regulation - best by, best if used by, use by - and we as consumers don't know what these things mean," says Debasmita Patra, assistant research professor in Environmental Science and Technology and lead author on the paper. "The labeling is the manufacturer's best estimation based on taste or whatever else, and it is not scientifically proven. But our future intention is to scientifically prove what is the best way to label foods. As a consumer and as a mom, a best by date might raise food safety concerns, but date labeling and food safety are not connected to each other right now, which is a wide source of confusion. And when billions of dollars are just going to the trash because of this, it's not a small thing."

According to the United States Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service (USDA-ERS), Americans discard or waste about 133 billion pounds of food each year, representing $161 billion and a 31% loss of food at the retail and consumer level. According to the FDA, 90% of Americans say they are likely to prematurely discard food because they misinterpret date labels because of food safety concerns or uncertainty on how to properly store the product. This simple confusion accounts for 20% of the total annual food waste in the United States, representing more than 26 billion pounds per year and over $32 billion in food waste.

"Food waste is a significant threat to food security," adds Paul Leisnham, associate professor in Environmental Science and Technology and co-author. "Recognition of food waste due to confusion over date labeling is growing, but few studies have summarized the status of the research on this topic."

This was the goal of their latest publication, gathering support and background for their future work to reduce food waste, and providing guidance for future areas of research in this field. In order to achieve this, Patra enlisted Leisnham in her own department, but also relied on computational support and food quality and safety expertise from Abani Pradhan, associate professor in Nutrition and Food Science, and his postdoctoral fellow Collins Tanui, both co-authors on the paper.

"We wanted to see the trends and give some suggestions, because the paper shows that we are some of the very few who are thinking about truly interdisciplinary research connecting food labeling to food waste," says Patra. "In fact, we were joking because one major finding was that environmental sciences and food science departments don't seem to collaborate on this topic, so we are doing something unique here at UMD."

"Our paper underlined the fact that future research on food waste and date labeling needs to take an interdisciplinary approach to better explore the perspectives of multiple stakeholders, adds Leisnham. "Expertise from environmental science, food science, sociology, Extension education, and other disciplines can more effectively develop interventions to reduce behaviors that may increase food waste. This is an environmental issue, but involves the knowledge, attitudes, perceptions, and social behaviors of multiple stakeholders, including retailers, food-service providers, and diverse consumers."

The collaboration between environmental sciences and food sciences at UMD is an example of this collaboration in action, with the goal of establishing what science, if any, already underlies date labeling and connecting this to food quality and safety.

"Utilizing my expertise in experimental and mathematical modeling work, we aim to scientifically evaluate the quality characteristics, shelf life, and food spoilage risk of food products," says Pradhan. "This would help in determining if the food products are of good quality beyond the mentioned dates, rather than discarding them prematurely. We anticipate to reduce food waste through our ongoing and future research findings."

Patra stresses the importance of further collaboration through University of Maryland Extension (UME) to have maximum impact on food waste. "Where is the confusion coming from?," says Patra. "If we understand that, maybe we can better disseminate the information through our Extension work."

Patra adds, "Food is something that is involved in everybody's life, and so everyone needs to be a good food manager. But even now, there is no robust scientific evidence behind date labels, and yet those labels govern people's purchasing behavior. People look for something that has a longer 'best by' date thinking they are getting something better. And when you throw that food away, you are not only wasting the food, but also all the economics associated with that, like production costs, transportation from the whole farm to fork chain, and everything else that brought you that product just to be thrown away. Food safety, regulation, and education need to all combine to help solve this problem, which is why interdisciplinary collaboration is so important."

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The paper, entitled "Evaluation of global research trends in the area of food waste due to date labeling using a scientometrics approach," is published in Food Control, DOI: j.foodcont.2020.107307.

Unfavourable attitudes toward genetically modified food predict negative feelings about other food technologies

by Nanyang Technological University

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Scientists at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) and the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH) have found that people who hold negative opinions of genetically-modified (GM) food are likely to feel the same about nano-enabled food—food with nano-additives to enhance flavour, nutrition or prolong shelf life.

In a survey of 1,000 respondents led by NTU comprising adult Singaporeans and permanent residents, close to a third found GM food unappealing, and their negative feelings influenced how they viewed nano-enabled food. Over a third felt neutral about GM food, while the remaining respondents welcomed it.

While the study focused specifically on reactions towards nano-enabled foods, lead investigator and NTU Associate Professor Shirley Ho said that the "spillover effect" they observed from GM food to nano-enabled food could possibly extend to other novel food technologies as well, given that mental associations that people make between similar technologies have shown to influence their behaviour towards a newer technology. This represents a cause for concern for policy makers as Singapore invests in food science and technology as one of its strategies to bolster food security.

With the COVID-19 outbreak extending into the second quarter of the year, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations has warned of global disruption in food supply brought about by movement restrictions and border controls in a protracted crisis.

The global pandemic has thrust the issue of food security and the necessity to explore cutting edge research in novel food technologies into the spotlight, said Assoc Prof Ho of NTU's Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information.

"The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of food security for a small country like Singapore, which imports more than 90 percent of its food consumed in the country. We don't have the problem of disrupted food supply yet, but we have to anticipate the possibility," said Assoc Prof Ho.

"Our study is a timely examination of the public's reactions towards novel food technologies. We may soon be able to make food last longer with the help of science, or dine on lab-cultured meat, but all these would be futile if a sizeable group of people reject these new food innovations."

"This study highlights the challenge in communicating safety of new food technologies as innovations advance to meet global food needs for a growing world population," added Dr. K. Viswanath, Lee Kum Kee Professor of Health Communication at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a co-author on the paper.

The study was published in the Journal of Communication on 5 June.

Tech-enabled food doesn't go down well with some Singaporeans

To study public opinion on engineered food, the NTU-Harvard team first surveyed 1,000 Singapore citizens and permanent residents on their thoughts on GM food—for example, asking whether they consider it to be delightful, nutritious, fresh and appealing.

Close to a third, or 305 respondents, showed unfavourable attitudes towards GM food.

The team then investigated how the respondents' pre-existing attitudes towards GM food affected their feelings about nano-enabled food, and found that those who had unfavourable attitudes towards GM food were also unfavourable about nano-enabled food—what the scientists called a spillover effect.

The scientists also found that participants who were unfavourable towards technology-enabled food may not be swayed to do the same after watching others eat this food.

Assoc Prof Ho, who is also NTU's Research Director for Arts, Humanities, Education and Social Sciences, explained: "This spillover effect could potentially be due to a general rejection of technology-enabled food and other notions associated with it. The mental associations that people make between similar technologies may influence their behaviours toward a newer technology. This is especially so in cases where the technology from which people draw cues is socially contestable."

Coronavirus pandemic worsens food insecurity for low-income adults

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More information: Past debates, fresh impact on nano-enabled food: A multi-group comparison of presumed media influence model based on spillover effects of attitude toward genetically-modified food, Journal of Communication. Publisher: Oxford University Press, DOI: 10.1093/joc/jqaa019

Journal information: Journal of Communication 

Provided by Nanyang Technological University 

The world's affluent must start eating local food to tackle the climate crisis, new research shows

by Arunima Malik and Mengyu Li, The Conversation

Low-income countries contribute far less to the problem of emissions from food 

transport.  Credit: Shutterstock

The desire by people in richer countries for a diverse range of out-of-season produce imported from overseas is driving up global greenhouse gas emissions, our new research has found.

It reveals how transporting food across and between countries generates almost one-fifth of greenhouse gas emissions from the food sector—and affluent countries make a disproportionately large contribution to the problem.

Although carbon emissions associated with food production are well documented, this is the most detailed study of its kind. We estimated the carbon footprint of the global trade of food, tracking a range of food commodities along millions of supply chains.

Since 1995, worldwide agricultural and food trade has more than doubled and internationally traded food provides 19% of calories consumed globally. It's never been clearer that eating local produce is a powerful way to take action on climate change.

A web of food journeys

The concept of "food miles" is used to measure the distance a food item travels from where it's produced to where it's consumed. From that, we can assess the associated environmental impact or "carbon footprint."

Globally, food is responsible for about 16 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions each year—or about 30% of total human-produced carbon emissions. The sources of food emissions include transport, land-use change (such as cutting down trees) and the production process.

Our study used an accounting framework we devised in an innovative platform called the FoodLab. It involved an unprecedented level of detail, spanning:

• 74 countries or regions
• 37 economic sectors
• four transport modes—water, rail, road and air
• more than 30 million trade connections: journeys of a single food from one place to another.

Our results

We found global food miles emissions were about 3 billion tons each year, or 19% of total food emissions. This is up to 7.5 times higher than previous estimates.

Some 36% of food transport emissions were caused by the global freight of fruit and vegetables—almost twice the emissions released during their production. Vegetables and fruit require temperature-controlled transport which pushes their food miles emissions higher.

Overall, high-income countries were disproportionate contributors to food miles emissions. They constitute 12.5% of the world's population yet generate 46% of international food miles emissions.

A number of large and emerging economies dominate the world food trade. China, Japan, the United States and Eastern Europe are large net importers of food miles and emissions—showing food demand there is noticeably higher than what's produced domestically.

The largest net exporter of food miles was Brazil, followed by Australia, India and Argentina. Australia is a primary producer of a range of fruits and vegetables that are exported to the rest of the world.

In contrast, low-income countries with about half the global population cause only 20% of food transport emissions.

Where to now?

To date, sustainable food research has largely focused on the emissions associated with meat and other animal-derived foods compared with plant-based foods. But our results indicate that eating food grown and produced locally is also important for mitigating emissions associated with food transport.

Eating locally is generally taken to mean eating food grown within a 161km radius of one's home.

We acknowledge that some parts of the world cannot be self-sufficient in food supply. International trade can play an important role in providing access to nutritious food and mitigating food insecurity for vulnerable people in low-income countries.

And food miles should not be considered the only indicator of environmental impact. For example, an imported food produced sustainably may have a lower environmental impact than an emissions-intensive local food.

But there is much scope to reduce food transport emissions, especially in richer countries. Potential measures include:

• carbon pricing and import duties
• investing in less-polluting vehicles
• encouraging businesses to cut emissions in their production and distribution chains
• planning laws that allow more urban agriculture projects.

Consumers also have the power to reduce food transport emissions by adopting a more sustainable diet. For instance, next time you go to buy fruit out of season—which may have been grown overseas or on the other side of the country—perhaps consider whether a local alternative might do.

The problem of food transport emissions will only worsen as the global population grows. Governments, corporations and everyday people must work together to ensure the production and consumption of food does not make climate change worse.Fifth of global food-related emissions due to transport, research finds

Provided by The Conversation 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

THIRD WORLD U$A

LA County faces dual challenge: Food insecurity and nutrition insecurity

USC Dornsife study finds 1.4 million adults are affected by both food and nutrition insecurity, with young adults, Hispanics and Asians at greatest risk, potentially compromising their health. 

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

While food insecurity has long been the focus of local and national policymakers and researchers, nutrition insecurity has largely been overlooked. A new study by the Institute for Food System Equity (IFSE) at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences aims to change that.

This is the first study in Los Angeles County to identify the populations most affected by nutrition insecurity, distinct from food insecurity. Nutrition insecurity refers to a lack of access to healthy food that meets personal preferences, including cultural, religious and dietary needs, whereas food insecurity simply focuses on a lack of access to enough food.
The study also examined specific health outcomes linked to a lack of nutritious food versus a lack of food in general.

Why it matters: The vast majority of Americans don’t eat a nutritious diet because many factors, such as cost, access and time, make it very difficult to do so.

• Nutrition insecurity has not been analyzed as extensively as food insecurity, leaving gaps in information about how to address this issue, and the specific health problems linked directly to nutrition insecurity.
• Nationally, poor diets are a leading cause of death. To address the problem, it’s essential to know which demographic groups are most impacted by nutrition insecurity.

In her words: “To tackle the leading causes of chronic diseases such as diabetes and mental health issues, we need to track both nutrition insecurity and food insecurity in L.A. County,” said Kayla de la Haye, founding director of IFSE at USC Dornsife’s Center for Economic and Social Research. “Addressing food insecurity is critical to ensuring people have enough food, but we must also understand who faces barriers to eating a healthy diet.”

What they did: The researchers surveyed more than 1,000 adults in L.A. County from Dec. 5, 2022, to Jan. 4, 2023, to determine the rates of food and nutrition insecurity among county residents.

What they found: In 2022, nearly one in four residents experienced food insecurity. A similar proportion reported experiencing nutrition insecurity. Interestingly, almost half of those who experienced nutrition insecurity did not report food insecurity, and vice versa.

• 24% of Angelenos were food insecure, and 25% were nutrition insecure, while 14% were food and nutrition insecure. That means that 1.4 million residents don’t have money to buy enough food and can’t access food that is both healthy and aligned with their personal preferences.
• 6 million Asian residents — 16% of the county’s population — were more than twice as likely as white residents to be nutrition insecure, despite not being at higher risk for food insecurity. This disparity may be due to lack of access to foods that are both healthy and culturally appropriate rather than an inability to afford enough food.
• Conversely, Hispanics, who make up almost half of the county’s population, are twice as likely as non-Hispanic whites to experience food insecurity but were not at higher risk for nutrition insecurity. This signals a challenge in affording sufficient food overall but not a challenge in accessing healthy food that meets their personal preferences.
• Adults 18–40 and those 41–64 are about 5 times more likely to face both food and nutrition insecurity compared to people 65 and older.

Big picture: Nutrition insecurity is widely tracked in low- and middle-income countries confronted with food shortages and malnutrition. In high-income countries such as the United States, however, access to healthy options is often unequal despite an abundance of food.

• The White House emphasized the importance of access to nutritious food by announcing in February that nearly $1.7 billion will be allocated to end hunger and increase healthy eating by 2030.

Zoom in: Both food and nutrition insecurity are valuable predictors of diet-related health outcomes in L.A. County, including diabetes and poor mental health, but not cardiovascular disease, according to the researchers.

• People who were either nutrition or food insecure were 2 times more likely to report having diabetes than those who were both nutrition and food secure.
• The research suggests that nutrition insecurity is more closely linked to diabetes than food insecurity.

What else: Both food and nutrition insecurity are equally linked to poor mental health. The study’s findings align with a new field of research on ‘food and mood’ documenting how poor nutrition, a consequence of food insecurity, increases the risk for depression, anxiety and stress.

• Those who are food insecure are nearly 4.5 times more likely to have poor mental health compared to those who have access to enough food.
• Those who are nutrition insecure are 3.5 times more likely to have poor mental health than those who are well-nourished.
• Experiencing both food and nutrition insecurity triples the chances of poor mental health compared to those experiencing neither.

Next Steps: The researchers recommend that governments and public health officials monitor both food and nutrition insecurity and that food programs strive to address both issues to improve food access and address barriers to healthy diets.

L.A. County government has long tracked food insecurity and added measures of nutrition insecurity to their public health surveillance for the first time in 2023.

 

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JOURNAL

Journal of Nutrition

DOI

10.1016/j.tjnut.2024.05.020 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Food and Nutrition Insecurity: Experiences That Differ for Some and Independently Predict Diet-Related Disease, Los Angeles County, 2022