Harmonizing “Use By” Labels To Reduce Food Waste

Confusion over "date" labels on foods is a major culprit in creating food waste. Once a "sell by" date has passed, lots of us toss out food that's perfectly safe to eat. The typical U.S. family spends about $1,500 on food it then throws away. A new initiative aims to harmonize "use by" labels around the globe. The Consumer Goods Forum, a network of 400 of the largest food and consumer goods companies around the globe — including Walmart, Kellogg, Nestle, Campbell Soup, and Amazon — is asking retailers and food producers to take steps to simplify date labels. The forum is asking producers to use two standard phrases on food packages in the future:

• "BEST if Used By," which describes the quality of a food product. This term is meant to convey that "the product may not taste or perform" its best after the specified date, "but it is safe to use or consume," and
• "Use By," which applies to highly perishable products. It means the products should be consumed by the date listed on the package and disposed of after that date.

Source: NPR, 9/20/17, Food Labels

Upcoming Hartford Food Issues Community Meetings

The Hartford Advisory Commission on Food Policy, will be hosting a Food Issues Community Meeting at  various Hartford locations during the summer months.

Hartford residents are encouraged to attend to share their experiences with school meals, grocery stores, SNAP, and other topics.

Click on flyer below for more details.

Going Digital to Rescue Food

"Last month, food rescue made a leap to a national scale...Until now, a restaurant, store or catering service with excess food (unless it was a regular on the organization’s pickup list) had to call around to various feeding programs to see which one wanted food and could come to get it. Or the store could call the food bank, which would pick up the food if the donation was large enough, then refrigerate it, and distribute it the next day.

Now Feeding America matches donors and recipients with an algorithm. A restaurant can go on Meal Connect to post an offer of, say, eight trays of fried chicken and biscuits. Meal Connect will automatically match that offer with the closest food pantry or soup kitchen that can get it up right away."

Feeding America's Chief Executive, Diana Aviv, made the following statement about the new digital resource, “This allows us to provide real hot meals,virtually at the same time that someone coming off the street and paying for it would get it.”


Source: New York Times, 5/2/17, Going Digital to Rescue Food

UConn is Helping our Hungry Neighbors

Foodshare would like to acknowledge UConn Help the Hungry, an initiative to end food waste within the UConn family. The five students set 3 goals: educating students, helping UConn give back, and putting healthy food on the table for our food-insecure neighbors. 

For more information, watch the UConn Help the Hungry campaign video above. #GYSD

New Tools To Combat Food Waste

ReFED, a data-driven guide for businesses, government, funders, and nonprofits to collectively reduce food waste at scale, has launched two tools to aid businesses and governments in exploring the best practices in turning the food waste problem into an opportunity for impact.

Policy Finder enables users to better navigate federal, state, and municipal laws and policies on liability protection, tax incentives, animal feed, and waste bans. Additionally, the tool will help users discover recommendations for policy improvements to encourage greater food waste prevention, recovery, and recycling efforts.

The Innovator Database enables users to explore the food waste innovation sector. It categorizes innovators by solution type, organizational status, and geography.  ReFED will use new data gleaned from the database to identify trends, growth areas, and gaps in food waste innovation, ultimately helping drive development of more efficient, scalable solutions.



Source: ReFed, 4/17/17, Food Waste

Food Date Labels...What Do You Really Know?

According to ReFed, a multi-stakeholder nonprofit that focuses on developing solutions to food waste, twenty percent of consumers waste food all due to the confusion of state regulated food date labels.

 Do you know about date food labels? Test your knowledge >

Rescuing healthy food...

One in eight Connecticut residents struggle with food insecurity. Foodshare makes every effort to educate our friends, partners and neighbors on the causes of, and solutions to, hunger. We are fortunate to have some wonderful partnerships with the Connecticut food industry that help connect our neighbors with good, healthy food that would otherwise be wasted.

Check out this video on food waste in the U.S. and learn how paying closer attention to the problem could solve hunger here at home!

Become a part of the solution...train to be a Retail Pick-up volunteer and bring surplus food from our local retail partners to neighboring food pantries!

SCSU Will Host Panel on Food and Sustainability

On Wednesday, April 26, Southern Connecticut State University will partner with the Regional Water Authority, to host a panel discussion on food sustainability. View the flyer below for more more information. Click here to register.

UCONN Panelists Focus on Food Waste

On Thursday, April 6th at 6pm,  UCONN's Science Salon will host a panel of faculty, and students,  who will be discussing current efforts on reducing food waste. The panel is formally entitled, Throwing It All Away: America's Food Waste Epidemic.

If interested in attending, click here for more information.

Plate Of The Union

The Environmental Working Group and Food Policy Action Education Fund are launching the Plate of the Union campaign, which aims to encourage consumers to become activists for policies that make food safer, make healthy food more accessible, and make food production better for our environment.

The campaign will focus on four main issues:

1. Stopping taxpayer subsidies going to Big Ag polluters; 
2. Protecting and improving anti-hunger programs like SNAP;
3. Increasing federal investments in organic agriculture; and
4. Expanding federal programs to revitalize land and reduce food waste.

The new initiative will deploy grassroots and online tools and tactics to raise awareness about farm and food policies, and show why consumers must demand their right to healthy food as Congress begins crafting a new Farm Bill.

Source: InsuranceNewsNet, 2/22/17, Plate of the Union

Landfill can no longer be an option...

"Those carrot tops you've lopped off are not garbage. Your snapped-off green-bean stems are not scraps. They are what Thomas McQuillan, sustainability director for Baldor, a specialty foods and produce distributor, calls sparcs — "scraps" spelled backward and pronounced like "sparks." And sparcs, despite popular assumption, are often just as edible as the rest of the fruit or vegetable.

The company, which provides produce and specialty goods such as caviar and olive oil to the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast's food-service industry, no longer produces any organic food waste as of this year, thanks to some clever reuse initiatives." Read More...

Source: Chicago Tribune, 11/7/17

CT Unveils First Food Waste-to-Energy Facility

"Quantum Biopower celebrated the completion of Connecticut’s first food waste to renewable energy facility in Southington with a ribbon cutting ceremony on Nov. 15. The ceremony, held on Connecticut Recycles Day, marked the completed construction of Connecticut’s first anaerobic digester.

The state of Connecticut’s food waste diversion mandate, which requires that certain food waste generators producing more than 2 tons of food waste per week or more separate out that waste from their other garbage and send it to a compost facility or digester for recycling, was a driving force in the development and completion of the digester."

Source: Renewable Energy From Waste, 12/20/16, Learn More...

USDA Releases "Fresh" Guidelines

Due to the large amount of food that is wasted daily by most Americans, the USDA has developed a fresh set of guidelines that will prevent this issue from recurring.

Sasha Stashwick, a representative of the the National Resource Defense Council stated, "9 of 10 shoppers are confused by the dates that are labeled on the product."

To lower the confusion; USDA has now required that the "best if used by" label be the only label used by meat, dairy, and egg manufacturers.

Source: CBS News, 12/18/16, Read More...

Americans Waste So Much Food...Why?

Despite the fact that over 42 million Americans live in food-insecure households, collectively, we manage to throw out an estimated 80 billion pounds of food every year. According to a survey by the American Chemistry Council, the average household throws out $640 of food each year. Why are we wasting so much food? A survey by researchers from Ohio State University found:

● 68% of Americans believe that throwing away food once its expiration date passes lowers their chances of getting sick from it.

● 59% believe that food waste is "necessary" to consistently produce fresh, flavorful meals.

● Only 42% feel that food waste is a major source of wasted money.

Source: Motley Fool, 11/3/16, Wasted Food

Eliminating Food Waste Can Feed Our Hungry Neighbors

"Imagine, if you will, a disaster movie monster wreaking havoc on the planet. Its thirst drains Lake Geneva of its water three times a year, its hunger devours a third of all of Earth’s food, and its breath emits greenhouse gases at a level outpaced only by the U.S. and China..."

Source: Time, 12/01/16,  Read More >

The Cultural Diversity of Food

Many thanks to Carissa, our Communications VISTA, who recently spent time with Mobile Foodshare, and had this insightful commentary to share:

"Gary and I visited the North End of Hartford at the Salvation Army, followed by the Church of the Most High God. One of the things that stood out to me most was that many people were deterred by certain food items--particularly butternut squash--either because they didn't know how to prepare it, or squash wasn't a part of their cultural diet. 

Upon hearing a volunteer share how to make butternut squash soup, a few people took her up on an offer to make them a batch. Other volunteers followed in suit, offering hesitant visitors new and different ways to prepare the vegetable, which resulted in even more people accepting the previously-abandoned food. 

I think it's important to understand the cultural and religious diversity of the people we serve, recognizing that not all households prepare meals in the same way, using the same types of foods. It could help us provide better options and more nutritious meals for people living in a particular community."

As a learning-organization, Foodshare is always discovering new and innovative ways to more effectively nourish our neighbors. Over the years we have developed recipe cards and forged relationships with UCONN Dietetics to promote healthier eating habits. But there is much more that can be done and experiences like the one Carissa shared can help us further explore this work.

Do you have a story to share? Become a Foodshare guest blogger and use your experience to help change lives.

Food Waste in Connecticut Will Be Reduced Thanks to Federal Funds

"A $50,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a $25,000 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have been awarded to the Massachusetts-based Center for EcoTechnology, which is executing projects across Connecticut to help businesses and institutions minimize wasted food. The center expects to provide technical assistance to up to 20 businesses in 2017 and ultimately divert 600 tons of wasted food."

 Source: NBC CT News, 11/19/16, Federal Funds to Help Reduce Foods Waste

Tasty Waste @ UCONN

Join our President and CEO, James Arena-DeRosa, at UCONN on September 13 for a discussion on the links between food waste and food insecurity. Learn how community partners are bringing about change to connect more people with healthy food. Then return on September 21 for a 'Tasty Waste Lunch' made exclusively from surplus food that would have gone to waste!

Faith & Justice Film Series

Join us on July 20 at Asylum Hill Congregational Church for the documentary “Food Chain,” a story about a group of Florida Farmworkers and their battle with a $4 trillion global supermarket chain that resulted in the Fair Food Movement.

Better Food Dating System Could Save Billions

James Arena-DeRosa, president of Foodshare of Hartford and Tolland Counties, said the existing "patchwork of laws" in different states and confusion over differing regulations have made food companies wary of donating lots of food. "Millions and millions of pounds of food are being wasted," he said."

 
"New federal food labeling standards to let consumers know how long food can actually be safely eaten would save billions of dollars in usable food that's now being thrown away, said a panel of experts who gathered at a Stew Leonard's store on Thursday.

Food bank officials, environmentalists, academics and food industry representatives met to support U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal's new legislation aimed at establishing a uniform federal food dating system." Read more >