Evaluación de consumo de alimentos en hogares del Cantón Rumiñahui : identificación de cantidades de alimentos que desperdician los hogares del Cantón Rumiñahui

Abstract

Food waste (FW) is an important global issue. For about 1.4 billion hectares that means the equivalent to 28% of the wold’s land area, used for agriculture, are filled with food what will be wasted. Because of this, environmental problems occur since the production of FW, emitting greenhouse gases and consumes water resources, favoring global warming. In order to propose preventive plans that reduce these effects, it is necessary to quantify the FW in homes. The objective of this research was to assess food consumption in households in the Rumiñahui canton. These data were obtained from a conducted survey through a quantitative, exploratory, and correlational study in a sample of 435 households. The total food waste amount from households in the Rumiñahui canton was 231.44 kg/week, and the average for each household was 0.92 kg/week. Through a Spearman correlation analysis, it was concluded that between food waste and monthly income, there is a weak positive correlation. Same way between food waste and food expenses, in both cases an R value of 0.1; While there is no association between food waste and the parish of residence since a p-value of 0.057 was obtained in a chi-square test. Finally, it was identified that rice waste is the one that could be avoided the most.