Plate Waste in School Feeding Programs: Individual and Aggregate Measures

摘要

Methods of measuring plate waste were reviewed and evaluated in order to select, pretest, and develop the method best suited to an economic analysis of waste in school feeding programs. Aggregate selective plate waste was the method chosen because it appeared to be fast, accurate, and easy to learn. Six other methods considered all had serious drawbacks. Aggregate selective plate waste mesurement involves collecting trays from all, or a sample, of the students in a lunchroom and separately scraping the waste from each food item. Waste is accumulated across students before being weighed at the end of the meal. During development and pretesting, it was determined that aggregate selective plate waste can be collected from approximately 300 students during typical lunchroom operation. In lunchrooms serving more than 300 students, a sample of 300 students was found to provide acceptably accurate measures of waste for most food items. Recommendations were developed for staff, equipment, sampling procedures, and scraping procedures. (Author)