Effectiveness of food literacy on household food waste in the KwaDukuza municipality, South Africa

Introduction Every year, over one-third of the consumable food for humans is lost throughout the global food supply chain. In South Africa, almost 10.3 million metric tonnes of food go to waste, representing an average household loss of ZAR21.7 billion. The Primary causes of food waste are consumer behavior and practices in the households during the consumption stage, alongside losses at earlier production stages. Although numerous studies have explored household food waste in South Africa, most of these studies have narrowly focused on how households dispose of food waste. No intervention has been implemented to encourage South African households to reduce food waste. This three-arm randomized control experiment examined the impact of food literacy interventions on environmental, nutritional losses, and household food waste outcome. Methods The research included 180 families in a district in South Africa with a middle-to-high living standards measure (LSM). There was a considerable decrease in food waste in households across both the control and intervention groups. Discarded food from households did not vary significantly, as well as nutritional loss or ecological consequences between the intervention groups after 6 weeks of the intervention. Results However, from the start of the study to the end, all of the outcomes that were measured went down significantly ( p < 0.001) for each intervention group indicating that the outcome is unlikely to have occurred by chance alone and that the intervention probably had a real effect. Discussion This statistically significant finding indicates that the behavior-targeted interventions and consumer education implemented in this study effectively reduced food waste in households.