{"id":12692,"date":"2017-04-25T15:03:29","date_gmt":"2017-04-25T19:03:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/?p=12692"},"modified":"2017-04-25T15:03:29","modified_gmt":"2017-04-25T19:03:29","slug":"focused-food-waste","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/2017\/04\/25\/focused-food-waste\/","title":{"rendered":"Focused on Food Waste"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fourth-year 91르적 Food Science and Human Nutrition major Olivia Conrad took the first place award in the 2017 Sustainability & Water Conference Undergraduate Poster Competition. Her poster, titled “Objective analysis of the physical and microbial quality changes that occur in packaged baby spinach when stored past the best-by date,” was the result of a research project she did with her advisor Balu Nayak, assistant professor of Food Processing, Food Science and Human Nutrition, School of Food and Agriculture.<\/p>\n

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Balu Nayak and Olivia Conrad<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Nayak is also a member of the Materials Managemen<\/a>t in Maine team within the George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions. Materials management is a way of thinking beyond waste disposal to a more holistic system of managing materials throughout their lifecycle. Food waste reduction is one component of the team’s research to promote sustainable materials management in Maine.<\/p>\n

Conrad’s poster noted that, globally, approximately one third of the food produced for human consumption is wasted on an annual basis. Food waste is a term that describes the result of behavioral tendencies among consumers once food products have made it to the home. In nations with industrialized food supply chains, food waste is a major issue. Specifically, a large portion of food waste in the United States typically occurs at the “retail and end-consumer stages of the supply chain.”<\/p>\n

Household food waste is typically a result of: the availability of cheap foods; confusion over the meaning of date labels; lack of awareness regarding the impacts of food waste; improper or insufficient product storage; superfluous purchasing of already-owned products.<\/p>\n

Among food products wasted by consumers at the household level, fresh fruits and vegetables comprise the largest category of food losses. <\/em>Such products are typically associated with having high water activities and close to neutral or low acidic pH values, factors that enhance a food product’s likelihood of supporting microbial growth.<\/em> Consequently, fresh fruits and vegetables are subject to spoilage caused by the overgrowth of the inherent microbial populations in\/on the products. Spoilage in turn leads to “organoleptic” changes in the product, which include changes in appearance, texture, color, and flavor. <\/em><\/p>\n

A story about Conrad published by 91르적 News can be viewed here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fourth-year 91르적 Food Science and Human Nutrition major Olivia Conrad took the first place award in the 2017 Sustainability & Water Conference Undergraduate Poster Competition. Her poster, titled “Objective analysis of the physical and microbial quality changes that occur in packaged baby spinach when stored past the best-by date,” was the result of a research […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":963,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","spc_primary_category":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":3,"label":"News"}]},"featured_image_src_large":false,"author_info":{"display_name":"","author_link":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/author\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":3,"name":"News","slug":"news","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":3,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":613,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":3,"category_count":613,"category_description":"","cat_name":"News","category_nicename":"news","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/963"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12692"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12788,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12692\/revisions\/12788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/mitchellcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}