Surplus with a Purpose:

Tackling Food Waste with

The Loving Meal

By Maria Luz Nochez

Sitting around a table, a group of volunteers exchange about their daily lives while they take a bite of their toast topped with butter, hummus, and/or cheese. They’re having a much-needed break after packing food for 2 hours that soon will be delivered. I’m the only international in a room full of Danes and as they asked me to tell them more about the reasons that brought me here, I dare to ask a question that turns the chit-chat into silence.

–Have you dumpster-dive before?

One of the retired ladies on the opposite side of the table changes her gentle expression to one that shows discontent and surprise at the question that suddenly makes her blush as she replies “Never!” Amanda, a Pedagogy student next to her hurries to swallow what’s in her mouth and says: “I have, but just once”. Kasper, an IT student then adds: “I’ve thought about it, but have never actually done it”. The rest of them nod as they agree to have never done it before.

Denmark is the country that produces the most food waste within the European Union while at the same time is the one with one of the best practices to fight it. The presence of the eight people having this conversation (including me) has everything to do with it: from the bread we’re sharing to what happened in the kitchen not only today but the day before, when the food we packed was cooked. However, their beliefs on the different practices vary depending on the purpose.

– I only did it once because even when I found really good stuff, I felt like I was doing something wrong, explains Amanda, about the contradiction in her mind versus the legal status of diving for food in dumpsters in Denmark.

–Yes, I agree–, exclaims Kasper. I’ve seen pictures of all the food people find in dumpsters but what has prevented me from doing it is the feeling that I’ll be doing something illegal.

As someone who had done her first dumpster dive a few days ago while reporting for this same news package, I was a little appalled by their perception, as I felt that what should be illegal is the amount of food in good condition supermarkets throw away without even had to put it for sale first. They agreed. And then counterargued that while diving for food it’s a way to ensure that less food will be wasted, doesn’t really solve much of the problem, as it doesn’t change the amount of food being produced and wasted. Especially considering that the biggest food waste comes from households.

bread on the table: Bread donated by David Breadhead. Volunteers collect it every Tuesday once the bakery closes the doors to the public. The majority is packed to be sent as a complement to the meals. The rest is shared during coffee break between the volunteers. Photo by Maria Luz Nóchez

Thomas, a bachelor student in the Department of Food Science at Aarhus University, says that initiatives like changing the label on products from ‘best before’ to ‘best before, often good after’ are some of the good alternatives implemented in the last few years. In general, he stresses, “We need to be better at using our senses: smell and touch the food before deciding it’s trash.”

This is part of what the volunteers at Det Kærlige Måltid (The Loving Meal) have learned to do since the initiative was launched in Aarhus in 2019. This nonprofit turns food donations (part of it from surplus) into meals for families in need due to an illness or a temporary turn of events. For eight weeks, individuals and their families are delivered a four-dinner menu to help them face difficult times. Even when It didn’t start as a food waste prevention initiative, it evolved into one that promotes and executes environment-friendly practices.

Instructions given to volunteers to make sure every packed meal has the same content. Portions are calculated on the number of family members per household. By: María Luz Nóchez

“We are very fortunate that a lot of people understand and love our project. And in that way. they also would very much like to help us in what way they can”, explains Simone Tommerup, General Manager and Volunteer Coordinator. This helps often look like surplus goods and donations, as many of their partners also “focus very much on the climate change and to how they reproduce the food waste.”

This, she adds, matches perfectly with their objective to educate their volunteers, which are in a large portion students between the ages of 15 and 25. The aim, she claims, is to teach them how to prevent food waste and how to use the leftovers they have in the kitchen and the freezer. And it shows.

In the kitchen, nothing is used without a purpose. Vegetables are cut in such a way that most of them are used in meal prep and what’s not possible to use, instead of ending in the garbage is put in bags to feed farm animals. When packaging starts, every gram of food people receive is weighted not only to make sure the products are portioned on a nutritious scale but also to prevent waste. As Thomas and I followed instructions to serve 50 and 100 grams of plain yogurt and made sure to use the very last possible spoon of it, the rest of the volunteers made sure that every packaged meal complied with the weight assigned in the weekly instructions. This also ensures that everyone gets the same amount. The package is completed then with a bag of bread collected from David Breadhead bakery, which every Tuesday welcomes volunteers to collect what they didn’t sell that day.

Thomas makes sure the yogurt servings are properly sealed. As we embarked in this packing adventure together he tells me about how much of the awareness he has on food waste comes from his interest in food and health but not necessarily from learned behavior at home). By María Luz Nóchez

Volunteers taking home the remaining food in the kitchen, photo of the coordinator witht he broccoli stem (In order: Carolina, Amanda, Kasper and Thomas).By María Luz Nóchez

By the end of the day, after the meals are sent, and the kitchen and the breakroom are cleaned, any food hanging around is divided among the volunteers: from the food that didn’t fit in the packages to the stem of broccoli. “You can either boil it and make a soup from it or cut it in pieces and put it in a salad”, explains Caroline Thybo Nørager, coordinator of volunteers in Aarhus.No food ends up in the garbage bin and everyone takes only what they know will be able to consume. As their commitment to prevent food waste is strong they still haven’t calculated how much of what they use has meant in both food waste usage and waste sorting. The number of meals provided by year, however, keeps increasing. From 6,820 meals provided in 2019, their first year, in 2022 the total went up to 20,781. Starting this winter, the initiative will now take place in three different Danish cities: Aarhus, Aalborg, and Odense.

But as The Loving Meal has become more popular among donors, they also started recycling more than just food. Nowadays, families with kids also get stuffed animals with their dinners. Toys that once were discarded as suitable for retail, look brand new after the touch of talented retired women that sewed them back to life.

A change of mindset might not happen overnight, not in Danish society or its businesses (be they small or big). But if The Loving Meal has proved something is that a charity purpose can be as effective and as trendy as a dare to eat garbage. As the target audience might be different, they both share the same objective: separate food waste from a negative conception.

Stuffed animals have become part of the surplus chain alongside bread. Every week, recipients also receive letters from the volunteers following up on their health status and a guide on how to store and heat the meals. By Maria Luz Nochez