Sifting through the food loss and waste terminology

In October 2023, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a new guide to preventing and managing food waste called the Wasted Food Scale. This horseshoe-like scale replaces the Food Recovery Hierarchy released in the 1990s and aims to reduce the social, environmental, and economic impacts of wasted food. But what even is wasted food, and how does it differ to food waste, food loss, or food surplus?

Food streams intended for human consumption that do not ultimately get consumed fall under the umbrella term of food loss and waste, commonly abbreviated to FLW. There are a range of definitions and methodologies for quantifying food loss and waste, but both the academic body and grey literature agree on the broad distinction between food loss and food waste based on the stages of the food supply chain during which these food streams arise. Food loss refers to the unused food and agricultural products lost at early stages of the food supply chain, from production through distribution. Examples of food losses are unharvested crops, spoilt produce from sub-optimal storage conditions, or by-products from manufacturing and processing stages, such as skins, pulp, and seeds. Food waste, on the other hand, is associated with consumer-facing stages and covers retail, food service, and residential levels, such as unsold supermarket products, food kept beyond its expiry date (not best-by date, which relates more to food quality/taste than food safety) and left to spoil, or and uneaten plate leftovers.

Importantly, the term food waste applies to food streams arising from consumer-facing stages that are either discarded or recycled. In 2021, the EPA revised its definition of food waste, which covers uneaten food streams sent to the following destinations: landfill, controlled combustion (i.e. incineration), dumping, land application, as well as sewer and biological food waste recycling strategies, including co- or anaerobic  digestion and compost or aerobic digestion. Thus, food waste does not only consider the origin of uneaten food streams – from retail to households – but also, and importantly, their destination.

In contrast, according to the EPA, the term wasted food encompasses “food that was not used for its intended purpose and is managed in variety of ways” and includes food donations, repurposing into new, value-added food products – referred to as upcycling – or animal feed, as well as food waste destinations mentioned above. The term was coined to convey the notion that a valuable resource – food – is being wasted.

Here’s where things get extra sticky. Wasted food is also referred to as surplus food by some sources, including ReFED, the leading U.S. non-profit tackling food waste (and food loss, technically!). Meanwhile, food surplus and food excess are often used interchangeably to refer to food not used for its intended purpose that is donated to feed people in the process of rescuing food. Furthermore, whether inedible fractions (e.g. peels, stones, bones) are considered food waste, and how inedible fractions are defined in the first place (e.g. potato peels or kiwi skins are commonly discarded but are technically edible) depend on individual definitions. 

What then distinguishes food loss and waste from wasted food? One way of looking at it is by thinking about the emphasis each term brings. Food loss and waste is more concerned with understanding what, where, why, and how much uneaten food streams arise along the food supply chain. Wasted food is arguably more interested in the original purpose of food production and how those uneaten streams are being managed.

Next time you stumble upon any of the terms discussed in this article, ask yourself: at what stage of the food supply chain does the mentioned food stream arise? Does it re-enter the food supply chain through food donation, upcycling, or animal feed, or is it discarded, or recycled? And, ultimately, how can we prevent some of these streams from occurring in the first place?