According to this paper, households in the Netherlands wasted 41kg of solid food per person in 2016 - a 15% decline since 2010. Furthermore, 57 litres per person of potable liquids such as coffee, tea and milk are disposed of via the sink or toilet each year. Rice, bread, pasta, vegetables and pastries are among the food types most likely to be wasted (as a percentage of purchased quantity).

FCRN member Tom Quested of resource efficiency organisation WRAP Global recommends the REFRESH Community of Experts, which is an online platform to find and share information (such as best practices) on food waste prevention.

This policy briefing from EU food waste research project REFRESH outlines policy options for reducing food waste at the consumer level, based on both desktop research and a survey of households in four countries.

This paper surveyed food shoppers in Toronto to find the links between socioeconomic status and food preferences. It finds that the shoppers with the highest socioeconomic status tend to be motivated by both aesthetic and ethical concerns when choosing food.

FCRN member Susanne Freidberg examines corporate sustainability practices in the food sector, noting that many early projects overestimated consumer interest in environmental impacts information and the ability of the supply chain to produce that data, and that effective initiatives often require businesses to partner with academia and NGOs.

A survey of Canadians finds that a high level of dedication to Christianity is negatively correlated with monetary donations to environmental causes, while being a believer without an affiliation to organised religion is positively correlated to such donations. However, being very religious was positively correlated with volunteering for environmental causes, while being strictly secular or nominally religious were negatively correlated with such volunteering.

FCRN member Laurence Godin of the University of Geneva has written a paper that uses social practice theory to map food prescriptions (i.e. guidelines on how best to eat) and their translation in practice. It identifies what elements are essential for taking up food prescriptions, beyond individual motivation and intention.

Redesigning restaurant menus to promote vegetarian dishes can change behaviour, but the effect depends on how frequently customers have eaten vegetarian food in the last week, according to an online survey. Presenting vegetarian dishes as the chef’s recommendation or using more appealing menu descriptions both make infrequent eaters of vegetarian foods more likely to choose the vegetarian option (compared to a control case), and frequent eaters of vegetarian foods less likely to do so. Putting vegetarian options in a separate menu section didn’t affect the choices made by infrequent eaters of vegetarian foods, but made those who eat them frequently less likely to choose a vegetarian dish.

This is a baseline report by research consortium INHERIT funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme. The INHERIT project aims to identify effective inter-sectoral policies, interventions and innovations that enable a ‘triple win’ by reducing environmental impacts, improving health and wellbeing, and generating greater health equity.