Published: Less than 20 min ago
Last year, school food corresponding to 35 million meals was thrown away, shows a new survey from the Swedish Food Agency.
The reason is that the lunch environment in the dining hall is too bad.
School kitchen costs for food are increasing. At the same time, every sixth portion of school food ends up in the bin, according to the authority that investigated the municipalities’ food waste last year. In total, 35 million school lunches are thrown away, either because the student throws the food away or because the food service does it. Food waste costs the municipalities SEK 360 million per year.
There is therefore money to be saved, but the Swedish Food Agency believes that schools should not cook less food. This is because students eat less than recommended at lunch, according to other surveys.
“It is easy to think that food waste is due to cooking too much food, but that is not true. The problem is instead that lunch is too stressful, that there is a high noise level and few adults in the dining hall, or that the students don’t like the food,” says Karin Fritz, project manager and food waste expert at the Swedish Food Agency in a press release.
Measures to reduce food waste should therefore be aimed at improving the lunchtime environment at school, she believes. It can be about increasing comfort in the dining room, changing the scheduling and having enough adults in place.
184 of the country’s 290 municipalities participated in the survey. It is the third survey on food waste that the Swedish Food Agency has carried out, but it cannot be compared with previous years’ surveys, partly because the municipalities that report food waste vary.