Consumer and Technology

Research proposal:

„The relationship between the use of vegetables in hot meals and vegetable waste in families with young children (<12 years).”

Introduction and the conceptual design of the research

The world is currently experiencing a demographic change since birth rates are dropping as a global trend while consumption figures have risen tremendously and still rise (Monbiot, 2013). An infinite supply of commodities and foods accompany our Western society’s everyday life and raise our standards and expectations unconsciously. Supply markets, advertisements and social networks contribute to the on-going rhythm of our consumption culture which establishes new norms that influence – often unconsciously - quantity and quality of food production and intake. This phenomenon has led amongst others to vast amounts of food waste; roughly one third of the total global food production is thrown away reaching a value of 1.3 billion tons per year (WRAP, 2009).

Food losses occur in every stage of the food chains, whereas most waste is considered to be at the two ends of the food chain, namely at the farmers’ fields and on the dinner table inside households (Kantor et al, 1997). Possibilities to optimize food dynamics inside the household require more study in order to contribute to a reduction of food waste. Therefore the objective of this research is to gain insights into behaviours of consumers at home during preparation of the hot meal, by investigating the relationship between the use of vegetables for the hot meal and vegetable waste. The focus of this research will only lie on waste during the preparation of vegetables. This clarifies the concept ´preparation´ instead of use in the general research question.

This brings us to the following general research question:

‘What is the relationship between the preparation of vegetables for hot meals and vegetable waste in families with young children (<12 years)?

It would be difficult to find an immediate answer to the general research question. To make this easier, the research will consist of different smaller research questions that in the end

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cover the whole general research question. The research has only a short time span (5 weeks), so it will not be possible to cover every factor that influences the use of vegetables in relation to vegetable waste.

You can think of many factors that influence the use of vegetables in hot meals. Such as the price of the food, awareness, knowledge and skills, portion size et cetera (Roels & van Gijseghem, 2011) Because the focus in this research is on the families with young children, special attention will be paid to the factors that the researchers think play an important role in these families. The first factor that can play a role, is the families’ lifestyle. With lifestyle, it is mean the way in which families consume their food. For example: where do they consume their meals, do the children have to finish their plate, does the whole family eat at the same time, do the children eat the same meals as their parents, how health conscious is the family and so on.

To cover these questions the first specific research question will be:

‘How does the household lifestyle influence the vegetable waste of the hot meal?’

Parents are assumed to eat more than their children, but the question how it is with the division of the proportions of food. If, for example, as a standard in one family the children get half of the proportion of the parent. Does this provide differences in vegetable waste compared to a family where the children get one third of the parents’ proportion. Parents base these proportions on the amount of food their child is assumed to eat according to prior diners activity’s, age and health status. In other words we expect the majority of children to eat less though waste a bigger proportion of their initial portion then their parents. This leads to the following specific research question:

‘How does the food division between parents and children influence the vegetable waste of the hot meal?’

There are more general factors that may cause vegetable waste, for instance the type of meal prepared (pasta, salad etc.) and the type of preparation. Furthermore, preparation styles may influence vegetable waste. For instance, ready-made vegetables might cause different wastage than fresh cut vegetables. Besides, preparation styles also include activities like cooking, frying, blending, steaming, et cetera. From here, two questions can be asked.

‘How does the type of meal have influence on the vegetable waste?’

‘How does the type of preparation have influence on the vegetable waste?’

After answering these four research questions, the general research question can be answered as complete as possible.

A brief thorough literature study will be conducted to examine the existing body of knowledge in this topic. Furthermore, empirical data will be collected from 10 households

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concerning product choice, preparation and lifestyle characteristics. For practical reasons we focus on the preparation of vegetables. Moreover, we look for specific behaviours related to the presence of young children (<12) like the effects of consuming their meal in front of the television on vegetable waste. By the integration of literature results and empirical data we hope to gain more insights in the dynamics of vegetable preparation of consumer households which might contribute to new discussions about the quest to reduce food waste.

Operationalization

The aim of the research is to gain insight in the way the preparation and use of vegetables influences food waste. In this case, the focus is on preparation since households waste the most foods in the preparation fase.

Food wastes depend on households’ consumer behavior. Consumer behaviour encompasses the processes with which individuals and groups choose, purchase, use and dispose of products, services and experiences in order to satisfy their needs and wants. (Solomon: Consumer Behaviour, 2010). This behavior includes: buying food (promotion, package size), storage (place; first in, first out), preparation (amount, assessment of quality/safety) and life style and preferences (attitude, taste). For this research, we mainly focus on the aspect of “preparation”. Other studies should be done in order to gain a full insight into the behaviour of consumers at home, related to the principal hot meal. Under the concept of “preparation” we comprehend: the selection, measurement, combining of ingredients and heating style in an ordered procedure to achieve a desired result that is optimum amount of food and assessment of changed quality or safety. Source ? or is this just our definition

Other concepts are used in the research questions and during the research that will be further clarified here. Another concept could be leftovers, which is the food remaining from a previous meal (FreeDictionary, 2013). In this case these are the remaining vegetables from the hot meal. Leftovers will not be measured because in case of a mixed dish, the vegetables cannot be separated again from the other ingredients.

To prevent ambiguities, the concept hot meal will be defined as well. In the data collection phase, when data are collected about vegetable waste during the hot meal, the hot meal consists of the starters and the main dish.

The following concept that has to be clarified is waste. Food waste can be used in general terms to appoint all the loss and waste in the food chain (Roels & van Gijseghem, 2011). In this case the focus is not on food waste as a whole, but on vegetable waste in the preparation phase. The waste can be divided into three broad categories: avoidable (suitable to be eaten), possible avoidable (peel of an apple or cucumber) and unavoidable waste (peel of a banana, bones) (Lecture 2 Butijn & Steenbekkers, 2013). These three categories will appear throughout the research.

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In order to research vegetable waste in relation to the use of vegetables, a diary will be filled out 3 different days in one week by the household members who have children under the age of twelve.

Cooking vegetables as hot meal may result in waste due to excessive buying, lack of proper storage plan, life style and preferences of consumers and so on.

The plan is to ask households to write down the weight of the vegetables before cooking. They can read it from the package or if it is not provided, they have to weigh and record it in grams in the diary on a given 3 day basis. The families only have to measure the vegetables in the preparation phase by using a weighing scale.

Another tool will be used as well in order to get reliable data. They have to take 2 photos during preparation: the first one has to depict the total amount of vegetables they bought and the second one has to show the vegetable waste after preparation.

In this way the amount of waste is expressed as a percentage of the weight of the initial product (namely the vegetable). The difference between the actual amount of purchase and what is used for cooking is the waste.

Technical design

Research strategy

To give an answer to the research question, the following strategy is used. In this research families with young children (age <12) are asked to keep track of their vegetable food waste of their daily hot meal by filling out a diary. The diary will contain questions about the prepared meal, the ingredients used, the preparation style, eating time, preparation time, where they consume their meal, proportions between family members (and if different, why). The families will also be asked to fill out a questionnaire on background information and questions about usable parts of vegetable products and their lifestyle: where do they consume their hot meal, are their children obliged to eat all their vegetables et cetera.

Sampling method

This research is part of a bigger cross sectional study about the correlation between food preparation and food waste. In this particular research the focus will be on families with young children. In this case young children are defined as below the age of 12. A total of 10 families with young children of different ages will be asked to participate in this study. These families will be recruited from the social network of the researchers. The amount of families is chosen upon our time limitation.

Data collection

The questionnaire will give insight into the consistency of the perception of food waste between the different families and provide information about what they perceive as edible/

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usable parts of a vegetable product. The diary will provide information about what is being prepared and to what quantities. What is being prepared will be split up in questions about the ingredients of the whole meal, what parts of the products are being used and what parts are being thrown away. They have to report about the whole meal and not just the vegetables because some families might consider certain products as vegetables where others do not. For example when potatoes are used as staple food, these are not considered to be vegetables and are not in the waste measurement. If the participants write down potatoes to the ingredients list and we see in their menu list that they consumed it as staple food, we will not work with those data. Besides the preparation of the products the families are also asked where they consume their meal, if they provide their children with the same proportions of vegetables as themselves and what was the available time to prepare and eat the food. These data will acquire insight in the different factors that influence food waste in preparation. The amount of instructions will be limited down to some basic information about how to fill out the diary and what they should photograph

We will not inform them about avoidable or unavoidable waste because this might influence their behaviour. By framing the questions in a way that they are not accused of wasting food we will not influence their perceptions.

The photos, the weighed values of vegetables provided by the families and their completed diaries will be used in order to answer the specific research questions.

Limitations and conclusions

An important limitation of this study is the short time frame in which results are to be gathered. Furthermore, reliability is questionable due to the small amount of households being assessed. However, this study is part of a qualitative research project and therefore contributes in a valuable way to obtain insights in consumer household wastage practices.External validity is questionable since our sample is not randomly chosen. Only one segment of the Dutch population is chosen for this study, which makes it impossible to generalize to the larger public. However, it does give insights in aspects that might influence food waste and general household behaviour.Seasonally factors such as time of the year and weather all influence consumption practices of households. Furthermore, financial situations such as the current economic crisis might impact consumption practices of households as well.In general, this study defines insights in certain household related topics and contributes to the general discussion of household food waste on which further research is highly needed.

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References

FAO (2013). ‘Toolkit: reducing the food wastage footprint.’ Natural Resources Management and Environment Department. ISBN 978-92-5-107741-2.

FoodBattle (2013). ‘Reductie milieudruk voedselverspilling op het snijvlak van supermarkt & consument.’ Food & Biobased research, Wageningen UR, The Netherlands.

Monbiot, G. (2013). Let’s stop hiding behind recycling and be honest about consumption. The Guardian; Environment; George Monbiots blog. Found on the internet on 11- 9 - 2013:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2013/apr/12/escalating-consumption

Milieu Centraal (2012). ‘Voedingscentrum: eerlijk over eten: Feiten en cijfers over verspillen van voedsel door consumenten in 2010.’ Milieu Centraal en het Voedingscentrum, in samenwerking met het PBL.

Ministerie van Landbouw, Natuur en Voedselkwaliteit (2009). ‘Nota Duurzaam Voedsel.’ Den Haag, juli 2009.

Westerhoven, M. van en F. Steenhuisen, 2010. Bepaling voedselverliezen bij huishoudens en bedrijfscatering in Nederland, CREM Amsterdam in opdracht van VROM, 32 pp.;

WRAP. (2009). ‘Household Food and Drink Waste in the UK.’ WRAP: material change for a better environment. Banbury. ISBN 1-84405-430-6.

Kantor, L.S., Lipton, K., Manchester, A., Oliveira, V. (1997). ‘Estimating and addressing America’s Food Losses’. FoodReview: Food loss.

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Annex

The following diagram visualizes the research project.

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