How to Reduce Food Waste with Science

KERRY K. TAYLOR
– Hey, I’m Kerry Taylor and welcome to The Cash and Kerry Podcast. Today we’re tackling an invisible and expensive problem in our homes. It’s food waste. So if your fridge is filled with good intentions but you still manage to garbage your groceries, this episode could save you big money. Plus, we’re going to unlock our food wasting habits and learn how to cut the cost and be more sustainable. I’m talking to behavioral scientist Angela Cooper. She’s an associate at BEworks and she has the recipe for cutting food waste.

KERRY K. TAYLOR
Hey Angela, thank you so much for doing this. Food waste is like my favorite topic of all time. I’ve been writing about it on my site for over a decade now. So it’s amazing to get a behavioral scientist to talk about some evidence-based strategies to reduce the amount of food waste in our homes.

ANGELA COOPER
– So I’m very excited to be here and to talk about this. It’s a really, really fun and interesting project that I got to be a part of, so.

KERRY K. TAYLOR
– Well, okay, so how big of a problem is food waste? What’s going on in our homes here?

ANGELA COOPER
– It’s pretty big. I’ll tell you that over $30 billion of food is wasted per year and about half of that is occurring in people’s homes. We might think it’s the restaurants or it’s the grocery stores, but we as consumers and as homeowners, we’re the culprits in many respects. And so Canadian households on average waste about over $1000 per year. And the really tragic part of that is over 60% of that food is edible. So this is what we call avoidable food waste, this is stuff that is possible to be eaten, but maybe it just doesn’t look as nice, it’s a little bit shriveled or not kind of the freshest looking stuff. And that stuff is what gets tossed. So I think one of the-

KERRY K. TAYLOR
– Just like this?

ANGELA COOPER
– Yes, exactly, just like the sad banana which is still-

KERRY K. TAYLOR
– The sad banana.

ANGELA COOPER
– Still has use, but a lot of people, they have an aversion to it. And so this has a massive environmental toll. In Canada, over two million tons of CO2 is produced from food waste which is about the equivalent of two million cars on the road. And there’s been some research that’s shown that if food waste were a country, it would be the third largest CO2 emitting country in the world after the China and the US, just from like the food waste that we produce. So it’s a pretty big challenge, it’s a pretty big problem.

KERRY K. TAYLOR
– So we’re throwing out over $1000 worth of food per year.

ANGELA COOPER
– Yeah.

KERRY K. TAYLOR
– That’s incredible. I did some math, that’s $92 a month, $21 a week, and $3 a day. That’s astounding, what foods are we throwing out?

ANGELA COOPER
– Some of the biggest culprits is fruits and vegetables, so tomatoes and those cucumbers and onions and things like that. Bread is also a big category of food waste, bread and grains and things like that. And I think a lot of that comes from the fact that these are things are relatively cheap. Things like meat, which are very expensive and that we’re careful with. We wanna make sure we use that up, but high, you know that 50 cents for half an onion or whatever, you don’t think about it as much. And so it’s much easier to just toss it. So those are the big categories anyway.

KERRY K. TAYLOR
– That’s amazing. I always think of my fridge as being filled with good intentions, right? I never go into a grocery store thinking, gee, I’m gonna buy all this delicious food today and just throw it out two weeks from now. Why are we doing this?

ANGELA COOPER
– So I think the real challenge about food waste is that we can’t really point to a singular root cause. Food waste is the result of a complex chain of different behaviors. Everything from how we shop, how we plan, how do we store, what do we do with our leftover ingredients? So all of those different behaviors conspire to result in food waste, but there’s been a lot of research in this area trying to pin down, like what are the factors that really lead to food waste and research that we’ve done as well? And some of the key factors that we pulled out and then subsequently used in our own work is the fact that we have a tendency to forget what we have. So as you say, we have these good intentions, we stock our fridge full, and then just forget what we’ve got, it gets buried in the back or in our freezers. And we just don’t realize to kind of pull something out and go, oh, I’ve got that pack of tomatoes that I still need to use that you forget. Another key factor is that, we’re often not always able to figure out what to make, we’ve got that feeling of opening up your fridge and just going, it might be stocked full, but you’re just like, what do I do with this? Particularly when you’re dealing with, we often call these left behind ingredients, things that you might’ve bought ingredients to make a meal, but then you’ve got leftover celery stalks or half an onion, or like, what do I do with this motley crew of ingredients? And so that can be a real barrier for people to just be like, I don’t know what to do with this, or I’m gonna go to a new recipe, go shopping, get new ingredients, start fresh, right? And another big factor is, as you say looking at that sad banana, aversion, people have sensitivities to food. We don’t like dealing with things that are maybe a little bit wrinkly or a little bit sad looking. We are just, we wanna feel like we’re eating the freshest things. And these all really contribute to us have a tendency to throw things away. And then another contributing factor is how much we throw away in food waste in a given week is relatively small for a particular person. It’s like five to six ounces per week. And so we don’t really think about it as really that being that big of a deal, it’s maybe half a potato here, a little celery stalk there, but that the problem is that a cumulative food waste is the real problem. It’s aggregated over millions of people. And that’s when we lead to these massive numbers of tons and tons of food waste. And so we think it’s sort of a, it’s not really our problem, we’re not contributing too much to it. And so we feel licensed to continue doing it.

KERRY K. TAYLOR
– Another issue I have found that’s come up when I’ve interviewed people about food waste is they feel virtuous than the fact that they compost it, right? They’re like, oh, Kerry, it’s not a big deal, I compost all my leftovers, right? And I said, but that doesn’t solve the problem because all you’re doing is making really expensive soil, right? We have these little tricks that we hide the food waste to make us seem like we’re more virtuous about it. We haven’t done anything wrong. We’re kind of money laundering our food waste, I guess, in the compost bin, It’s crazy how we do all these things to make ourselves feel better. You did this huge study with Unilever Hellmann’s and you worked with a company to tackle food waste. Can you tell me about this study and what that was like?

ANGELA COOPER
– Absolutely, no, this was as a massive project and a really kind of a brave endeavor for Hellmann’s to collaborate with us because it’s been over the course of a year now, we’ve been doing testing and trying out different things and really gathering a lot of evidence to support what this program, this behavior change program should look like, not just coming in with like, I have an idea, no, let’s really gather evidence and try and find like, what’s the best idea? And so how the study worked, the final study that we did was we recruited over 900 Canadian families. So we specifically targeted families with children because there has been a wealth of research that’s shown that they’re kind of the culprits or one of the culprits in terms of food waste. A lot of it has to do with just the number of people in your household. The more people you have, the more waste you’re gonna produce. So we recruited 900 families and then came the challenge of, well, what kind of program should we design? What interventions should we provide people? And so, like I mentioned earlier about this food journey, this chain of behaviors, planning, storing, and food preparation and all of that, and you can go, well, where do you start? Is it planning? Is it storage? And so what we did was think about this journey as we move into two categories, you have prevention. So how do we prevent excess food from coming in? And that’s better planning, trying to curb over purchasing, things like that. Those take a lot of top down cognitive resources. It takes a lot of mental energy to plan and make sure you’re doing the right thing.

KERRY K. TAYLOR
– Yeah, ’cause you need to make lists, you need to go through your pantry, I need to go through my fridge. And these are the kinds of things I’ve advocated people do, plan ahead before your shop, but that’s not always the best approach you found.

ANGELA COOPER
– Yeah, no, I think it’s not to say that if you can do it, that’s fantastic. But you know what? We decided then through some of the kind of foundational research that we did before we started this project, let’s focus on what we call recovery. So how do we recover the food that you’ve already got in your home? And basically we’re saying, planning is great, but the fact of the matter is we’re human and things are gonna fall into the cracks. We don’t always follow through on our plans, so let’s help support you for those moments when life gets in the way. And so we developed, we answered two hypotheses that we were interested in and that it’s related to the two factors that I talked about earlier is, how do we help people not forget what they have and how do we help people figure out what to make with what they have? And so we tested a couple of different tactics or interventions. So for this idea of rediscovery, we had a bunch of interventions designed to help make people see what they have in their fridge a bit better, very simple things like, what if I send you a basket that you put in your fridge and any kind of little piece or left behind ingredient that you need to use up like a little piece of onion or celery stalk, put it there so it’s all in one place. Pretty simple.

KERRY K. TAYLOR
– So something like this?

ANGELA COOPER
– Yeah, basically-

KERRY K. TAYLOR
– Just stick it in a bowl in your fridge.

ANGELA COOPER
– In your fridge, so we tried, we had a whiteboard to make a list of on the outside of your fridge of what you need to use up,same kind of concept. And we also had clips, so just tag brightly colored clips you could very easily see them and just tag the food in your fridge so your eyes go to them. It’s just about increasing salience. That was one hypothesis that we have.

KERRY K. TAYLOR
– And salience is being-

ANGELA COOPER
– Like the visibility, so it brings it to top of mind. So when you see this bright colored clip, you’re like, your eyes go there and you go, right, you need to use that onion. So something to kind of make you remember what you’ve got.

KERRY K. TAYLOR
– Right, it’s hard to miss the bowl of odds and ends and fruit and vegetables right in my face. It’s like, okay, there it is.

ANGELA COOPER
– There it is.

KERRY K. TAYLOR
– We’ve reduced all the friction. I have to come to terms with this bowl of fruit now.

ANGELA COOPER
– No, yeah, that’s the next stage is like, well, I’m staring at this bowl of fruit, but now there’s still that challenge, but what do I do with it? And so that was the other half of what we tested was how can we help people figure out what to do with it? And so what we did was we kind of leveraged behavioral economics and behavioral science and this use of heuristics. So this is a mental shortcut to help people think differently about the food that they have. And so it’s what we call the three plus one approach. And so how it worked was, step one is find a base. These are like kitchen staples like rice, bread, tortilla, pick a base. And then step two is like, okay, grab the things you need to use up, fruit, veg, things like that, pick a protein if you want. And then the plus one is add a magic touch. So that’s your sauces, of course, we’re working with Hellmann’s, so you’ve got your mayonnaise, you’ve got your spices and herbs, something for you to put your personal stamp on it. And so that was the basic heuristic which was designed to help people think a little bit more flexibly because recipes are very constricting. It’s like you need this specific set of ingredients and if you don’t have them, well, you gotta go to the store. And so this was meant to kind of encourage people to substitute, swap out. And so we provided this formula as well as kind of example flexible recipes, like we had a quick and easy wrap that was just like, oh, Tortilla, fruits and veggies, pick your meat, and then your magic touch of mayonnaise, for example. And so we had a bunch of different examples for people to help them learn the approach. And so that was another kind of intervention that we administered to families.

KERRY K. TAYLOR
– So families sat down, they were told, okay, today we’re gonna do this 3.1 system where we’re gonna take the base, special touches, use up what’s in the fridge, and it was that simple.

ANGELA COOPER
– Yeah, so the program that we administered to people was just asking them to select a weekly day that they would use up what they needed to use up. And then we give them, hey, here’s this approach to help you do that on that day. So on this day, here’s the three plus one approach. Look what you got, make a meal, and use up what you have, okay.

KERRY K. TAYLOR
– A use-up day. Was there more popular day of the week families you found did this like Fridays before the grocery hall on the weekend, or?

ANGELA COOPER
– Yeah, people were pretty spread out actually in terms of, ’cause I think people vary in terms of when they go to do their shop, their weekly shop. So we’re pretty well distributed across the week in terms of when they chose to do their use-up day, so.

KERRY K. TAYLOR
– Okay.

ANGELA COOPER
– Yeah, so that was the program. So some people got this flexible, only this flexible thinking approach and then others also got one of these tools, this little basket or these clips to see, does adding that extra visibility help even more? And so then each week we would send them a survey to kind of collect data on their food management behaviors, like how much do they shop? How much do they waste? So we can get to track over time because this was a five week program.

KERRY K. TAYLOR
– So do families have to weigh their food waste? Or were they dining with a behavioral scientist or honor system?

ANGELA COOPER
– It wasn’t an honor system. There was a lot of work that went into deciding what’s the best way to measure food waste and there’s pros and cons to all of them. So in terms of, ’cause we knew this was gonna be a long program, we wanted to make it as easy as possible for people. So it was a scale that we took from the literature that’s been validated, people fill in and they estimate different categories of food waste, grains and fruits and veg and things like that. And yeah, so they would report each week how they were doing in the program.

KERRY K. TAYLOR
– Oh, I’d rather dine with the behavioral scientists. That would be amazing, can you imagine?

ANGELA COOPER
– This was during the pandemic also.

KERRY K. TAYLOR
– I hear you, I hear you. So did you find that these changes were easy for people to do at home? I’m just wondering, did the changes stick? Is this something we can do that you found work short term or was it working long-term as well?

ANGELA COOPER
– Absolutely, so I should say what we found at the end of the program was the main findings, was that for those that received this flexible thinking approach, they managed to reduce their food waste by a third on average.

KERRY K. TAYLOR
– A third?

ANGELA COOPER
– Third, which was one of the biggest reductions actually that’s been reported. So we were pretty excited about that and excited about the simplicity of it. Because as you say, we wanna make sure this is something that has some legs that people could continue to do. And we actually followed up with these participants two months later at a seating just to ask them, what are you doing with this? Are you still doing the behavior? The use-up day and that kind of thing. And actually, about 80% reported that they were still doing some kind of use up-day or making this kind of use-up meal. And about a third of them are doing it still on a weekly basis. So that was really encouraging to see that, even without us talking to them, these were people who were participating in like a market research panel. So they’re incentivized to participate even after that was all gone, they were still continuing to engage in and do these behaviors. So a lot of the questions that we asked them at the end of how easy did you find this? Did this make you feel more confident in the kitchen? And the majority reported that this was something that was very easy to do. It made them feel more resourceful. It made them feel more confident in the kitchen. It made them see more meal possibilities from what they had which is really what we wanted. That was the crux of what we wanted was to make people feel more resourceful. And that was kind of one of the really interesting aspects about this work and this program and thinking about, the sustainability initiatives in general is that this was not actually pitched, as this is a food waste reduction program to these people. They didn’t really know it was about food waste. This was about, we want you to be more resourceful. We wanna solve a problem that you have, but not knowing what to make. And so it wasn’t about you need to reduce your food waste for the environment. It’s like, no, let’s fix a problem that you’ve got is not knowing what to make. And the downstream impact of that happens to be, it actually helps to reduce food waste. And so I think that’s the power of the program is tackling a behavior or behavioral challenge that people already have rather than trying to convince them that this is something they should do, like this is important for the world and for the environment.

KERRY K. TAYLOR
– Right, ’cause shaming and blaming people we know works really well.

ANGELA COOPER
– Yes.

KERRY K. TAYLOR
– Right, making people feel really, really bad about this. The other thing is doing the math, if they’re cutting their food waste by one third, they’re saving about $367 a year by doing this. And I thoroughly believe that sustainable consumers save money. And this is just reinforcing that with evidence and science backed research. So that’s amazing, that’s almost $400 and that’s just if you’re doing one third reduction, you can do 50%. You’re looking at closer to five to $600 saved not going to waste. And for Canadian families, American families too for that matter, that’s a lot of money. That could be like a whole month of groceries, give or take a week. So that’s significant.

ANGELA COOPER
– And that’s from something very simple, I think one of the really interesting things about this program was, is it simplicity? It’s not, we got some new fangled gadget or a really complex procedure that we need you to do in order to help reduce your food waste. It’s just about, let’s give you just a different way of thinking about what you’ve got, as I say this mental shortcut and just picking a day that you’re gonna decide to use it. And that’s it, really, and just doing, it’s about doing it diligently week to week, but you start to get into that habit of like, yeah, okay, you start to see your food differently and like, oh, that’s a good base. All right, what do I got that I can add to that? And you just start to, it’s math, it’s food math in a way.

KERRY K. TAYLOR
– And the families with kids didn’t have issues with this? I have a daughter at home and I like to blame her for all the food waste in the house because they’re picky, right? They’re hungry one minute, they’re not hungry the next. And then you end up with all these leftovers, like did you have a system for dealing or learning to love our leftovers?

ANGELA COOPER
– Well, oh, I see with cooked leftovers.

KERRY K. TAYLOR
– Yeah, like all of that stuff, that’s the stuff I can never give to my daughter ’cause she turns her nose up at it. I’m like, it’s great, leftovers are my favorite thing ever.

ANGELA COOPER
– Yeah, well maybe, we didn’t tackle that specifically in this project because we were dealing with leftover ingredients basically, but the same principle really can be applied. And I think one of the challenges for children with their picky eating-ness is that they see it as the same meal. And so it’s sort of, I don’t wanna eat the same thing. And so maybe it’s about transforming it into something new like creating a new meal out of, you’ve got, let’s say some leftover burgers or something like burger patties that you didn’t use up. So maybe it’s about chopping them up and putting them in a taco, for example. So then it’s just a new reincarnation of something. So that for kids it’s like, oh, this is a brand new thing. It’s not the same sad burger that I had for two nights in a row.

KERRY K. TAYLOR
– Right, or add some cheese and some magic sauce and off we go.

ANGELA COOPER
– Yeah.

KERRY K. TAYLOR
– Okay, so looking at all the behavioral science behind this with the three plus one system, why does this work for so many families? What is it about the steps and the behavioral science key behaviors that really helps families waste less food?

ANGELA COOPER
– I think it’s a couple of things. The first of which is just the simplicity of it. You’re not asking people to do multiple different behaviors. It’s just a simple formula that’s very easy to recall and memorable, but I think it’s also thinking about the behavioral science of it. We as people rely on these mental shortcuts or heuristics in our daily lives to make decisions and figure out what to do. It’s in every domain, finance, from finance to what you make for dinner, it’s all types of decisions. And so what we’re able to do is leverage a type of shortcut that we already use, these types of shortcuts and just give you a new one, we’re leveraging our people’s ability to do this to rely on these types of shortcuts and then just substituting a new shortcut that’s actually helpful for helping people to reduce food waste. So I think part of its impact is that it’s really helping people to rely on something that they already do anyway, in terms of, I need something to fall back onto. We often when we’re stressed and you think of what we’re dealing with families, with children, they’re time strapped, they don’t have the energy to think about things. They need something simple to fall back onto, a simple rule or a simple rule of thumb. And that’s what this gives them is just like, I just need, when I look at my fridge, I need something simple. Okay, remember, think base, think what I have, think add this, throw in a magic touch, and you’re good to go. So I think that’s part of the power of this particular program is that it’s simple, really.

KERRY K. TAYLOR
– Are these steps that you’re able to, are you doing these steps at home too? Did you feel inspired after seeing these results?

ANGELA COOPER
– Absolutely, working on this project for the last year, I’ve been so hyper-conscious of the food that I produce and how much I waste. And so I definitely shocked differently as well. When I’m looking in the store, I think about bases. I’m like, well, that’d be a good base, I should make sure I have that. And so it does shift how you look at things. And so I think that’s part of the appeal is it’s not a very top-down kind of prescriptive program. It’s really a bottom up approach where it’s just about a mindset shift. It’s about recalibrating how we look at food as to not be components of a recipe that you are required to fill up, but more looking at a kind of bottom up of like, this is what I have, what can I do with it? And here is a way of thinking about it to help you pull things together in interesting and creative ways.

KERRY K. TAYLOR
– Is there anything else we should know that you found or anything behavioral science related that you’d like to share with us?

ANGELA COOPER
– Yeah, I think maybe the one thing to end with is thinking about, I think a lot of people are daunted by trying to change their behavior, and particularly things like food waste, or we ask questions about how much control people feel over their food and their kitchen. And often, it’s not high, people feel like, I just don’t, I have no way to do anything about this, I recognize me, they may recognize that I know I waste food. I just don’t see a way out basically. And I think one of the wonderful things about behavioral science is that it teaches us that there are certain strategies to help kickstart behaviors like this. One of them is as a great, it’s called foot in the door. And it’s about a small behavior, that’s often used in sales and things like that. Just get people to do something small to start. Don’t ask for the big ask, right upfront, don’t overhaul your life. It’s not practical, we’re never gonna do it. So it’s just take a small step, get that foot in the door that wedge in and that will start to kickstart a sequence of good behaviors and good habits. And that’s what this is, it’s just a foot in the door of like, let’s get you started with just one day a week, something simple, use what you have. And then that can snowball and lead to maybe another day that you do it or other good behaviors. Maybe it leads to, maybe I’ll shop a bit better now that I’m aware of what I’m doing, or maybe I’ll make a better plan, but it’s just about starting something small. And that can be incredibly powerful. We saw a small change can lead up to a third reduction in food waste. So you can imagine what could happen if you did more, but starting small is not inconsequential in terms of the impact it can have.

KERRY K. TAYLOR
Thank you so much. I appreciate so much of your time, Angela. This has been absolutely amazing. Where can we find you?

ANGELA COOPER
– Where can you find me? All right, well, I’m at BEworks. So I have a LinkedIn page. You can find me there, but I’m happy to talk more if anyone has more questions, people feel free to reach out at me, reach out to me, I should say, if they have questions.

KERRY K. TAYLOR
– And now I want to hear from you. Is food waste an invisible problem in your home? And are you shocked with the amount of money you waste? I want to hear your insights in the comments. Now because the best conversations happen over at Squawkfox.com, head over there and leave a comment right now. And please subscribe to my email list to become a Squawkfox Insider. You’ll get my free budget bundle and priority access to all my science-backed content in your inbox. Thank you so much for joining us on The Cash and Kerry Podcast, and I’ll catch you next time.