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HealthcareLCA
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Hospital food waste has nutritional, economic and environmental impacts, and halving food waste is a sustainable development goal. This study aimed to quantify hospital food waste and its nutritional, environmental and financial values in medical and surgical wards. In a cross-sectional study in three educational hospitals, nutritional and demographic data of adult inpatients were collected. The food waste was measured at breakfast, lunch and snack times, and a 24-hour food recall was fulfilled for each patient. Also, the nutritional, environmental and financial values of discarded food were calculated. Food waste contributors were determined using linear regression. Totally, 398 meals were evaluated. The average served food was about 1 kg patient-1 day-1, while 539.5 g patient-1 day-1(50.1% of the served food) was discarded. Mean food wastes were 148.9 g (standard deviation (SD): 130.1), 364.3 g (SD: 257.2) and 80.2 g (SD: 101.5) in breakfast, lunch and snacks, equal to 45.7% (SD: 36.9), 51.4% (SD: 36.1) and 62.4% (SD: 53.2) of the served food, respectively. Rice, soup, milk and fruits were mostly discarded. Severely malnourished patients had higher daily food waste. Food preparation and waste were estimated to cost on average US$1.8 and US$0.8 patient-1 day-1, respectively. Each kilogram of food waste resulted in 8.1 m2 of land use, 1.4 kg of CO2-equivalent gas emission, and about 1003 L of water wastage. Half of the hospital food was discarded which means waste of nutrients, environmental resources and money. Current data can help authorities to plan for reducing hospital food waste.
"According to our estimations, food waste released on average 0.8 kg CO2-eq patient−1 or 1.4 kg CO2-eq kg−1 food waste in a day, which would be 21.1 tonnes CO2-eq day−1 in the national level."
"We found that about 1 kg food was served for each patient in a day (excluding dinner) and patients on solid diets in medical and surgical wards discarded half of their food which was higher than what was previously reported (30–40%) by national and international studies"
"A high proportion of food, especially in lunch, was wasted and rice waste’s quantity and environmental impacts were considerable. Moreover, malnourished patients produced higher food waste. "
For a complete summary of this data source and to see reported environmental impact values for studied products and activities, explore the HealthcareLCA Database.