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Master's in food studies project examines campus food waste

By Clayton Baumgarth

Posted May 12, 2023

From left, project volunteers Erin Hosein, Anitra Higgins and Elissa Booras empty food waste into containers. (Courtesy of IU Bloomington Today, photo by Kaeley Geschke)

A capstone project from IU’s new master’s program in food studies is helping guide IU Dining’s efforts to reduce food waste.

Kaeley Geschke graduated in December and was the first person to earn a Master of Arts in food studies degree at the university. Her “Weigh the Waste” project monitored two residence dining halls in the fall.

Geshke says says that the buffet-style system encourages a lot of unnecessary waste.

"Students kind of can take however much they want, and they don't have to worry about paying extra for it," she said. "And so taking three cheeseburgers suddenly is really appealing, right?”

The data showed that each person generated an average of 67 pounds of food waste per semester.

Brian Gilley, a professor of anthropology and overseer of the program, found the results surprising.

“I didn't realize we were both very modest about what she was going to find, and I think everyone was shocked all the way around,” he said. “Even IU dining were like, ‘Oh, wow, this is significant.’ So, the importance of that is it engages students in thinking about their waste.”

Geschke says that students don’t realize how fast the little amount they throw away at each meal adds up.

“Whenever you're actually physically scraping the plates, you see that there's globs of ketchup, there's like five green beans and some rice, like, you don't think of it as whole meals,” she said.

The idea for the project was born out of a desire to create awareness around the issue of food waste. Gilley said it’s a tricky line to walk when talking about students that pay for meal plans.

“They're paying a lot of money for their food plans,” he said. “So, there's this sense of their right to eat as much as they want or to take as much as they want, because they've paid for it. And that's a mindset that I think is going to end up being a challenge in general.”

Surveys conducted after the study showed that many students put more thought into how much food they took from the dining hall. Moving forward, IU Dining has plans to continue to collect data on food waste for both awareness and research purposes. They are also trying several methods to try to cut down on the waste per student such as using smaller plate sizes and rotating menus to use up leftover ingredients.

Gilley said the master’s program was created to help answer questions about the role food plays in our society.

“What are the challenges in a food system? Really what we're doing is we're teaching students how to engage in examining food systems,” he said. “What are their impacts on human health? How are race, class and gender involved in this and things like that.”

Other research topics being worked on from the program include how bipoc farmers are engaging with different programs and systems, comparing food allergies between rural and urban populations, and how education on gardening and food prep may be tied to a positive self-image.

Liz DeSantis contributed to this story.