DC Central Kitchen Case Study

organizations that directly try to help reduce food waste. One of these organizations, called the

The article “Waste Not” by Elizabeth Royte was published in March of 2016 in National Geographic Magazine. It depicts the wastefulness of the food industry and shows the path of food from field to consumers’ homes. During the article the story focuses on Tristram Stuart; a food utilizing activist and naturalist, who is gathering wasted food for a food conservation event for the public. Stuart visits many different farms and markets to receive food that is not desirable. Throughout the world nearly one third of food that is grown is thrown away or wasted due to consumer needs and wants. This means that because there is a need and want for good quality food products that not only meet food eatable standards but also

The USDA claims that each year, 25.9 million tons of America’s food is thrown away, the equivalent to a quarter of the total amount produced. Nationally, the wasted food is a damaging financial setback, amounting to $1 billion just to get rid of during a time of ascending food prices, nonetheless (Oliver, 2007). Food waste has skyrocketed since 1970 at an astonishing 50% increase rate, yet according to the FAO, one-sixth of America doesn’t get enough to eat.

While everyone may love to go out and enjoy a fine meal with friends and family, most will never stop to think the process of how the food came about, or the production thereof. John Oliver’s piece on “Food Waste” outlines all the problems of food waste and how they can impact society, animals, nature, and even the farmers who harvest the produce. America and its businesses should try to decrease the amount of food being wasted. By doing so, not only are we a contributing factor to help reduce waste, save time and money, but we are also aiding the less-fortunate in a society, while still saving natural resources and the planet as a whole.

Denny’s can impact childhood hunger in the US by working closely with food banks across the nation, creating food pantries, and creating community gardens in low income areas. Food banks collects food from many different sources and it also distributes its resources. Furthermore, creating a food pantry in high schools that are in low income areas can help families. Students who attend these high schools will also be from families who struggle with obtaining food. Moreover, students can come to the pantry and get some food for their families. In addition, a high school is a central location for numerous families. High schools Students can volunteer in expanding the food pantry, who will also work closely with the city’s food banks.

The Greater Cleveland Food Bank is a non profit food distribution organization that serves Northeastern Ohio and was founded in 1979. The organization seeks to bring nutritious meals those that are most affected by hunger and poor nutrition in the region, such as low income families and elderly. The organization is headquartered on the eastern side of Cleveland, OH. 1

Since its implementation, S.P.A.R.R have experienced a surge of students seeking to utilize our resources, but since our program is run by student-parent with limited times, the structural changes needed for our program has failed to keep up with its rising physical demands. As a result, many of the student parents who are in need of food security are turned away. Therefore, with the support of your organization, we hope that S.P.A.R.R Food Donation Program will meet with its structural demands by improving the consistency of their food services through better pick-up and coordinated food practices, its efficiency by hiring a group of interns that will be responsible for collaborating with other food justice programs and by helping us quantify our needs, so that we can present these changes to Financial Aid and make our program no longer

Food waste is an issue that is present at Cornell College. By going into Bon Appetit, the issue becomes clear. Students are given more food than they can eat. To go boxes are not available for students who dine in, and most students do not bring reusable containers with them. Most do not think about how much food they waste. By going over to where we put out plates when we are finished, it is easy to see many students leave a good portion of their meals on the plate. Whether they did not like what they were eating or they were in a hurry and had to leave, big amounts of food are wasted during each meal of the day. Steps can be taken to decrease the overall amount of food that is wasted on campus. Ideas such as smaller plates, vermiculture, competitions, and others can be utilized in the efforts to decrease food waste on campus.

The New York Common Pantry is such a wonderful organization which is dedicated to reducing hunger throughout New York City while promoting dignity and self-sufficiency. They do this through an array of programs including Choice Pantry, where participants can select nutritious food packages to bring home and cook for their families; Hot Meals, where participants can come enjoy a warm breakfast and/or dinner most days of the week; and Nourish, which helps low-income seniors by supplementing their diets with nutritious foods. In their last fiscal year they served over 493K New Yorkers and distributed over 6 million meals!

If the leaders of today had the qualities of determination and strong will to progress, one can only imagine the advances that could have been made in our society. From my own experience in the microcosm of Seaholm High School, it was up to me, as a chairperson of the annual charity food drive, to embody what I have seen lacking in the outside world. For the past 4 years, our school has been the largest donor of canned goods to Gleaners Food Bank of Southeast Michigan. This year it was made much more difficult by the school administration to collect cans and donations. My initial reaction was that we would not be able to collect the quantity of food that we needed in order to fulfill our goal to the food bank. This was infuriating to me, but it made me want to find a way to push forward and work with the administration to make it as successful as in the past. After recognition of the fact that they were unwilling to compromise on the policies set out, I feared that our group would lose sight of the real goal, collecting food for people in need. Working within the parameters given to us, we developed a plan to raise money so that we could buy the food ourselves. This enabled us to meet the goal we set for ourselves at the beginning of this process. I learned from this experience that in order to serve the

This reflection paper focuses on my experience at Just-Harvest (Action Against Hunger)'s 21ST annual Empty Blows Dinner event. This event occurred in North Oakland. I attended the 4:30-6:30pm session on March 20th. The event represented potters, both professional and non, chefs and cooks, restaurants, bread makers, a temple youth group, volunteers, walk-in communities' members, communities’ leaders and more.

In a world in which millions of people do not have enough food available to them in order to lead a healthy life, it is saddening to think of how much food goes to waste everywhere. The Food Recovery Network works to reduce the impact of that issue; it is a national network in which students recover food. The Food Recovery Network here at Wagner College’s campus is run through Wagner Cares and we recover food twice a week from the Main Dining Hall. People volunteer and work with those of us in the Food Recovery Network and together we work to both be less wasteful and help those in need of food.

During the second half of the year the VISTA Nutrition Education Program Developer from the Ohio Association of Foodbanks received a $1,000 grant from the Center for Clinical and Translational Science and Training (CCST) to develop a Food Room Demo program that utilizes 2 stipended community volunteers and nutrition students to prepare food samples for customer using food available in the Food Room in an effort to promote better use of food available in the agency’s food

Many resources and labor go toward the production and manufacturing of food products, but these precious resources and labor go to waste when massive amounts of unwanted food products are disposed of. In the U.S, around 10% of the energy budget goes into packaging and transporting food products, as well as 50% of the land and 80% of the freshwater is used up in the production of food products (Ganders 1). In America 40% of the food produced goes unused, and is instead thrown away and transported to a landfill. The sheer amount of food discarded in America is estimated to be about $165 billion per year (Ganders 1). Decreasing food waste by only 15% could feed more than 25 million Americans in need of food (Gunders 1). As much as 1/6 of Americans

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), food wastage, “food produced and not eaten,” emits enough greenhouse gasses (GHG) to be ranked third amongst global emitters (FAO 2013, 6). In New York City (NYC) it is estimated that businesses “produce more than 650,000 tons of food waste annually” (Turso 2017). This specific food waste is classified as food scrap, cooked food which is still edible, but no longer useful to the business due to a myriad of reasons. Whatever the reason may be for the company, this tonnage of food has the potential and possibility of being recovered for redistribution to food banks, soup kitchens, and other food rescue organizations. For example, two of the largest organizations in NYC, City Harvest and Food Bank NYC, will collect around 59 million and 24 million pounds in 2017 respectively, of unprocessed/non-perishable food. This is equivalent to about 42 thousand tons or 6.5 percent of annual food waste from scraps. Despite having warehouses, fleets of vehicles, and numerous volunteers, two of the largest organizations barely make an impact on the total amount of food rescued versus food wasted.