May 21, 2008
Frozen Food Reduces Wastage
By Bernice Hurst, Managing Partner, Fine Food Network
In light of a recent report by Britain’s Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) on food wastage, frozen food manufacturer, Birds Eye, is focusing its promotional activities on the ways in which using frozen food can reduce that quantity.
Emphasizing the fact that it can be stored and used when needed, Birds Eye will highlight the amount of money that consumers waste each year throwing away fresh food. The campaign will reach 40 percent of UK mothers — the key food purchasers in UK households — to communicate the message, according to Talking Retail.
Anne Murphy, Birds Eye General Manager UK, told the magazine, “In the current economic climate, consumers are looking for ways to cut costs, reduce their outgoings and enjoy fresh food without the waste.
“The study by WRAP highlights the huge amount of food that is thrown away that has been bought and never used. The recent uplift in sales for frozen suggests the message is getting through that freezing food locks in taste and nutrients, meaning that frozen tastes just as good as fresh. Consumers are turning back to the category in a bid to enjoy fresh food without the waste.”
WRAP is a private company set up to “help individuals, businesses and local authorities reduce waste and recycle more, making better use of resources and helping to tackle climate change.” The report, titled “The Food We Waste,” reveals that consumers in the UK throw away 6.7 million tons of food every year, roughly a third of everything bought. It claims that most of this could be avoided through a combination of better planning, storage and management. The organization maintains that less than a fifth (bones, cores and peelings, for example) is truly unavoidable.
WRAP estimates that £10.2 billion is spent in the UK every year buying and then throwing away good food. Another £1 billion is spent collecting food waste and sending most of it to landfill. In addition, the report points out the ways in which food waste harms the environment.
Birds Eye is taking up WRAP’s challenge to see recognizing food waste as an opportunity to reduce waste, save money and minimize impact on the environment.
Discussion question: What do you think of reducing waste as a marketing message for frozen foods? Do you think consumers will respond to this message? Can this be seen as a threat to fresh foods?
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The WRAP survey referenced here is certainly eye-opening. While some food is discarded due to health concerns around past dating and spoilage, a fair quantity is probably due to inefficient practices in households and businesses. We pitch leftovers that grow grey beards in the backs of our refrigerators. We toss wilted salad greens that somehow don’t survive a full week in the vegetable bin. Supermarkets clear out unsold produce when it starts to look old. Bakeries pitch day old bread. Restaurants discard unfinished plates of over-portioned foods.
But it’s a slight leap from identifying these wasteful practices to championing frozen foods as a solution to sustainability. Certainly, frozen foods have some desirable qualities–at their best, some frozen veggies have superior taste and nutrition to their fresh counterparts. Frozen products have a longer selling window as compared with fresh ingredients or prepared foods, which makes them less likely to spoil or go past date in warehouses, store cases or home refrigerators.
What’s not yet clear to me is the total sustainability equation for frozen products. The cold chain has inherent energy requirements that may partly or entirely offset other benefits from reducing spoilage. These calculations are not self-evident. Consumers deserve complete, unbiased facts as they select among products and product forms. Our industry has a responsibility to clarify these facts to the extent possible.
Frozen Food has come miles over the last few years. The number of gourmet quality “meal kits” that are available in the USA in the frozen case are a bigger threat to the mid scale dining industry than the addition of deli takeout in supermarkets.
The consumer waste factor is enormous when preparing food at home. In many cases the ingredients cost for a meal can exceed the cost of a comparable frozen meal kit. I would like to take issue with many of the meal kits claim that they feed two, because I don’t feel they quite do that. My wife insists the portions are wonderful, especially when accompanied by a salad and bread.
This is one case where I can be ecologically active and fight waste with the best of them.
This strikes me as the type of program that only adds to consumers’ confusion as to what a green ‘best practice’ is. Almost all fresh foods can be cooked, eaten, and the unused portion saved for later in the freezer or refrigerator. What’s the difference whether the consumer saves fresh or frozen food? And there is also the issue of where the product came from in the first place and its carbon footprint.
One other concern here: the electrical loads needed to keep frozen foods frozen… in the factory, distribution center, truck, store and consumer’s home. It’s the kind of environmentally-related (and cost-related) thing that keeps some frozen food folk awake at night, fearing a consumer backlash.
The Birds Eye ads will cost 500,000 pounds sterling. The United Kingdom has 61 million people. Although the ads are about waste, the campaign is a waste. The essence of advertising is repetition. The 500,000 pounds should be spent on the most innovative publicity, not advertising. Publicity gets leverage from the press.
This new campaign makes sense to me. Consumers are interested in saving time, saving money and reducing waste.
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The WRAP survey referenced here is certainly eye-opening. While some food is discarded due to health concerns around past dating and spoilage, a fair quantity is probably due to inefficient practices in households and businesses. We pitch leftovers that grow grey beards in the backs of our refrigerators. We toss wilted salad greens that somehow don’t survive a full week in the vegetable bin. Supermarkets clear out unsold produce when it starts to look old. Bakeries pitch day old bread. Restaurants discard unfinished plates of over-portioned foods.
But it’s a slight leap from identifying these wasteful practices to championing frozen foods as a solution to sustainability. Certainly, frozen foods have some desirable qualities–at their best, some frozen veggies have superior taste and nutrition to their fresh counterparts. Frozen products have a longer selling window as compared with fresh ingredients or prepared foods, which makes them less likely to spoil or go past date in warehouses, store cases or home refrigerators.
What’s not yet clear to me is the total sustainability equation for frozen products. The cold chain has inherent energy requirements that may partly or entirely offset other benefits from reducing spoilage. These calculations are not self-evident. Consumers deserve complete, unbiased facts as they select among products and product forms. Our industry has a responsibility to clarify these facts to the extent possible.
Frozen Food has come miles over the last few years. The number of gourmet quality “meal kits” that are available in the USA in the frozen case are a bigger threat to the mid scale dining industry than the addition of deli takeout in supermarkets.
The consumer waste factor is enormous when preparing food at home. In many cases the ingredients cost for a meal can exceed the cost of a comparable frozen meal kit. I would like to take issue with many of the meal kits claim that they feed two, because I don’t feel they quite do that. My wife insists the portions are wonderful, especially when accompanied by a salad and bread.
This is one case where I can be ecologically active and fight waste with the best of them.
This strikes me as the type of program that only adds to consumers’ confusion as to what a green ‘best practice’ is. Almost all fresh foods can be cooked, eaten, and the unused portion saved for later in the freezer or refrigerator. What’s the difference whether the consumer saves fresh or frozen food? And there is also the issue of where the product came from in the first place and its carbon footprint.
One other concern here: the electrical loads needed to keep frozen foods frozen… in the factory, distribution center, truck, store and consumer’s home. It’s the kind of environmentally-related (and cost-related) thing that keeps some frozen food folk awake at night, fearing a consumer backlash.
The Birds Eye ads will cost 500,000 pounds sterling. The United Kingdom has 61 million people. Although the ads are about waste, the campaign is a waste. The essence of advertising is repetition. The 500,000 pounds should be spent on the most innovative publicity, not advertising. Publicity gets leverage from the press.
This new campaign makes sense to me. Consumers are interested in saving time, saving money and reducing waste.