I was talking about food waste on Minnesota Public Radio today and many of the callers were school or day care workers lamenting their facility’s level of food waste. Meanwhile, I’ve been thinking a lot about that topic lately. Then Indiana’s Food Rescue org sent me this inspiring video of a school objecting to throwing away food, which led to an entire school district redistributing nutritious, packaged food.
Given federal caloric and/or food type requirements, school cafeterias have to put certain foods on each tray, even if a child says they don’t want to eat those items. Yet, as we see in South Madison, Ind., that doesn’t mean those foods have to be thrown away. This needs to change. We need to stop teaching kids that wasting food is A-OK, as most schools currently do.