Modeling the Food Wastes from Hospital Food Service Operations Using the System Dynamics Approach

Food waste in hospitals is a significant issue, producing substantial amounts of food waste daily, including plate waste, serving waste, and kitchen waste. Understanding the complexities of the hospital food service system, from procurement to consumption, is crucial for addressing and minimizing food waste in healthcare facilities. Given this, system dynamics is a tool that was able to uncover the relationship between various variables in the food service system, which are the Serving Losses Loop, Procurement Losses Loop, Preparation Losses Loop, Portioning Losses Loop, Plate Waste Loop, Attractiveness of Food, Patient Admission and Discharge, and Food Service System Process Loop. Policies were developed using the causal loop diagram and stock-flow diagrams made, which produced the policies (1) Improved Food Portioning Policy, (2) Encouraging Attractiveness of Food for Patient Discharge, and (3) Combination of Policies 1 and 2, with the third policy having found to be most effective. Hence, the study was able to provide a model that aids hospitals in identifying the variables that come into play with their food service processes and recommended policies for food waste minimization.