On the Measurement of Food Waste

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, one‐quarter to one‐third of all the food produced worldwide is wasted. We develop a simple framework to systematically think about food waste based on the life cycle of a typical food item. Based on our framework, we identify problems with extant measures of food waste and propose a more consistent and practical approach. In so doing, we first show that the widely cited,...