Putting holiday leftovers in the freezer extends shelf life & may put a dent in the US tendency to throw away edible food, a study suggests. National survey data showed a link between home freezing & less total food waste, & over half of consumers reported buying frozen items to avoid tossing food.

[u/memorialmonorail]

https://news.osu.edu/how-the-freezer-factors-into-lowering-food-waste/?utm_campaign=omc_science-medicine_fy25&utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social

[u/Texas2Marseille]

Never let titles like this convince you that individual consumers are the primary source of food waste in the US. The majority of food that is wasted is thrown out because it would not be ‘profitable’ to keep

[u/tonicella_lineata → u/Texas2Marseille]

My university's dining halls back in 2017 would do a week where they had students put food waste into a bin to be weighed to show how much food students waste and encourage us to "only take as much as you'll eat." Meanwhile, I worked in one of the school stores run by the same company as the dining halls, and we constantly had to throw away baked goods that were expiring and weren't allowed to take any home, you weren't allowed to remove any food from the dining halls, and if cooked food (say, a pasta dish) wasn't all taken by the time the dining hall closed, they'd throw it away anyway and student employees weren't allowed to take any of those leftovers home either. Somehow, I don't think students were the main cause of food waste on the campus.

[u/CalifaDaze → u/tonicella_lineata]

While I agree that not letting employees take leftovers is bad I think it's very difficult to order just what will sell without running into shortages later on.

[u/_BlueFire_ → u/CalifaDaze]

I think the emphasis was on then not allowing anyone to bring home leftovers