Trudeau Scholarships. Cities / en Food Systems Lab at U of T tackles Canada’s food waste problem /news/u-t-backed-food-systems-lab-tackles-food-waste-problem <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Food Systems Lab at U of T tackles Canada’s food waste problem</span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/Tammara.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=bKSaUnoM 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/Tammara.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=FExoQneM 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/Tammara.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=jBjQ2yGL 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/Tammara.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=bKSaUnoM" alt="Tammara Soma "> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>Romi Levine</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2016-11-03T07:20:48-04:00" title="Thursday, November 3, 2016 - 07:20" class="datetime">Thu, 11/03/2016 - 07:20</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item">U of T PhD candidate Tammara Soma stands by one of the university's vegetable gardens (photo by Romi Levine) </div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/romi-levine" hreflang="en">Romi Levine</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-legacy field--type-string field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Author legacy</div> <div class="field__item">Romi Levine</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/city-culture" hreflang="en">City &amp; Culture</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/faculty-arts-science" hreflang="en">Faculty of Arts &amp; Science</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/geography" hreflang="en">Geography</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/planning" hreflang="en">planning</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/food" hreflang="en">Food</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/sustainability" hreflang="en">Sustainability</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/trudeau-scholarships-cities" hreflang="en">Trudeau Scholarships. Cities</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-subheadline field--type-string-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Subheadline</div> <div class="field__item">PhD student Tammara Soma wants to break the wasted food cycle</div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>We’re all guilty of wasting food.&nbsp;</p> <p>Sometimes we dump the leftovers in the trash after a big meal, or we find forgotten food in the fridge that has long since expired.&nbsp;</p> <p>Restaurants, grocery stores and food distributors are also wasteful – throwing out ugly-looking but perfectly good produce and getting rid of products as soon as they hit the&nbsp;"best before" date.</p> <p>In fact, according to Value Chain Management International, a sustainability-focused consultancy firm, it’s estimated that $31-billion worth of food is wasted every year in Canada.&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>Tammara Soma</strong> hopes to break the cycle of wasted food and wasted money. The ؿζSM PhD student in the Faculty of Arts &amp; Science and Trudeau Foundation Scholar founded the <a href="https://foodsystemslab.ca/">Food Systems Lab</a>, which aims to work with private, public and community organizations to find solutions to Canada’s waste problem.&nbsp;</p> <h2><a href="/news/table-dump-analyzing-household-food-consumption-and-waste">Read more about Soma's research</a></h2> <p>“The role of the Food Systems Lab is to bring all these diverse, multidisciplinary stakeholders and collaborate together,” she says.</p> <p>The lab, funded by the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, will be conducting a <a href="https://foodsystemslab.ca/workshops/">series of workshops</a>&nbsp;beginning Nov.&nbsp;24&nbsp;to find the root of the waste problem&nbsp;</p> <p>“The idea is that at the end of the Food Systems Lab, we would come up with interventions – a prototype that can be tested in a microfood system to see how it works,” says Soma.&nbsp;</p> <p>According to <a href="http://proof.utoronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Household-Food-Insecurity-in-Canada-2014.pdf">U of T research</a>, almost 12 per cent of Ontarians are food insecure – meaning they have trouble accessing the food they need to have a healthy, balanced diet.&nbsp;</p> <p>“We can’t keep going on this path where we waste food and waste resources,” says Soma.</p> <p>Planning graduate student<strong> Kelsey Carriere</strong>&nbsp;is doing research with the Food Systems Lab. She has been conducting interviews with different organizations along the food supply chain from restaurants to community groups.&nbsp;</p> <p>“One of my most enlightening interviews so far has been with an elder from a traditional knowledge centre who was giving an Indigenous perspective on how food is valued, on gratitude and how nothing should go to waste,” she says.</p> <p>Carriere says there is some reluctance on the part of food producers and suppliers to adopt a waste-reduction strategy.</p> <p>“Nobody’s against it in principle. It’s really just a question of logistics. At&nbsp;a large-scale corporate-level, when you’ve got a system that works, and you’re being asked to redesign that, it’s a daunting task,” she says.</p> <p>Changes also need to be made by consumers and retailers, says <strong>Virginia Maclaren</strong>, associate professor and chair of the department of geography and planning and an expert in waste management.&nbsp;</p> <p>“Households are constrained in many ways in terms of how they reduce food and produce food waste&nbsp;by time constrains, by family constrains, by marketing constraints – they’re sold certain types of foods that they maybe don’t need,” says Maclaren, who is the special advisor to the Food Systems Lab.&nbsp;</p> <p>Those who are willing adopt the "waste not" philosophy of a new generation of city planners.</p> <p>“With growing urbanization and a growing population, we need to feed all the people. I think that’s part of the reason why I call myself a food systems planner,” says Soma.&nbsp;</p> <p>This new type of planning is growing in popularity, says Maclaren.&nbsp;</p> <p>“Demand for it is starting to explode because municipalities are developing food plans,&nbsp;food policy councils or trying to integrate food considerations into their official plan,” she says.</p> <h2><a href="/news/waste-not-want-not-cost-throwing-out-perfectly-good-food">Read about the food waste symposium Soma helped organize</a></h2> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Thu, 03 Nov 2016 11:20:48 +0000 Romi Levine 102024 at