Agricultural News
Food Waste Habits the Focus of this Month's Food Demand Survey by OSU's Dr. Jayson Lusk
Fri, 13 Jan 2017 12:09:16 CST
In the January edition of his Food Demand Survey (FooDS), Dr. Jayson Lusk, Oklahoma State University Regents Professor, found that after reporting a decline in the willingness-to-pay (WTP) by consumers for most all food products in last month's survey, the WTP rebounded by at least 7 percent for all food products. Furthermore, there was a slight uptick in how much consumers spent on food eaten away from home while at the same time, they also expect to pay more money for meat products compared to a month ago.
In addition to the normal survey, an ad hoc question was posed this month pertaining to food waste. Based on questions formulated in a journal article by Violeta Stancu, subjects were asked to specify how much of each food item from an attached list, did they buy and/or grow are thrown away in their household in a regular week. The food items listed included: food, milk and dairy products, fresh fruits and vegetables, meat and fish, and bread and other bakery products.
Subjects could answer from five listed responses: hardly any, less than a tenth, more than a tenth but less than a quarter, more than a quarter but less than a half, and more than a half.
Lusk reports that the most common answer for each item was "hardly any."
Participants were asked to estimate a percentage of food thrown away in their homes for each item. Fruits and vegetables were ranked the highest at 12.7 percent, with meat and fish ranked the lowest at 9.8 percent.
With more analysis, Lusk hopes to explore the extent to which food waste behavior is related to risk and time preferences. It is interesting to compare food waste habits when broken into demographic profiles, which are explained in further detail in Lusk's survey analysis.
To read Lusk's blog about his findings, click here, or to view the results of this month's FooDS survey for yourself, click here.
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