The economic cost of inefficient food management in the household

Each year billions of pounds of food available for human consumption goes unconsumed and ultimately discarded, with households responsible for the largest share of those food losses. Using nationally representative data from the 1977 National Food Consumption Survey on household food input usage and food consumption, a stochastic cost frontier is applied to estimate the cost incurred by households due to inefficiencies in food management and meal production. Using this method, it is found that the average U.S. household wastes about $2,009.67 annually, which sums to about $146.4 billion lost each year due to technical inefficiencies in the kitchen. Based on the results, inefficiencies are associated with race, income, education level, employment of female head, food shopping frequency, fresh food consumption, meals bought away from home, food storage, and joint food shopping and preparation habits.