E200: Learning which food waste reduction strategies people would actually do

The average American family of four loses roughly $1,500 annually, not eating the foods they purchased. This uneaten food, at best, ends up in a compost heap or goes to household pets, or worst, this wasted food ends up in the trash, a total loss. Of course, no one wants to waste food, but there is often a disconnect between what people know they should do, as opposed to what they would do. This podcast is part of a series on food waste. My colleagues, Agricultural Economist, Brenna Ellison of Purdue University, and Penn State’s Applied Economist, Linlin Fan, and I, asked people to tell us what food waste prevention measures they would support. And we asked which strategies they thought would work. The study was published recently in the “Journal of Cleaner Production.”