From Food Waste to Food Citizenship via Food Ethics—Cross-Country Analysis

Background: Food waste is often framed as a technical or awareness problem, yet it persists most in societies best equipped to prevent it, pointing to overconsumption rather than logistics alone. This study tests whether food-system abundance, environmental pressure and food waste co-vary across countries, and whether food ethics and food citizenship help explain it. Methods: Using cross-country indicators from FAO, WHO, Global Carbon Project, World Bank, and UNEP for 20 purposively selected countries, a composite Systemic Pressure Index (five standardised indicators: dietary energy supply, obesity, meat consumption, CO2 emissions, food waste) yielded a three-tier typology, cross-checked with principal component analysis. Results: Tier 1 (US, Australia, Mexico, Romania, Greece, Brazil, Poland) shows the highest abundance and pressure. Food waste, however, loads on a distinct PCA dimension (PC2, 20.8% variance, r = 0.93 vs. r = 0.33 with PC1); the lowest-pressure tier splits into an affluent-moderate subtype (Sweden, Japan; among the lowest food-waste levels in the sample (with only the Netherlands, Tier 2, recording a lower figure)) and a lower-income/constrained subtype with comparatively high waste (125.6 kg/capita/year) despite minimal consumption. Conclusions: Food waste is comparatively weakly associated with the abundance dimension rather than behaving as a direct by-product of it. Food ethics and food citizenship offer an interpretative framework pointing toward differentiated, behavioural and policy interventions for food security and sustainability across typology tiers, rather than a demonstrated causal outcome.