INCORPORATING FOOD WASTE IN FOOD POLICY RESEARCH: METHODS AND APPLICATIONS

The overall goal of the project is to achieve accurate, comprehensive measures of consumer food waste and apply them to analyze a wide array of consumer-oriented food policies. Specifically, the project team will (1) develop an empirical framework of household utility maximization and incorporate food waste as a choice variable; design appropriate estimation procedures such as partial identification to tackle the estimation of unobserved food waste;(2) estimate household-level and food category-specific food waste in the IRI Consumer Network and the IRI MedProfiler sample annually from 2009- 2020; assess the overall trend in U.S. consumer food waste and link food waste to household and food product characteristics;(3) calculate the implied actual household food intake in the IRI data and a waste-adjusted Healthy Eating Index, a frequently used dietary healthfulness measure; explain the differences between the indices calculated from waste-adjusted intake quantities and from the purchase quantities and articulate policy implications;and (4) assess the effects of food access and environment on consumer behavior after adjusting for waste; investigate whether better access to retail stores reduces food waste and improves dietary quality measured by actual intake.