Name: Mabel Fox

Social Justice Group: Food insecurity in NYC (C)

Date of Fieldwork: January 14, 2025

Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):Chef Eric (LREI head chef)

What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork:

On January 14th we had the opportunity to interview Eric Baer, the head chef at LREI. We learned a lot about food waste at school. A lot of the food waste was food from people that had been opened, put on plates, but just not finished. Eric said “It is good to try new things but it’s also good to take food in small portions. You can always get more.” Eric also mentioned that there were many attempts in the past to reduce food waste, but there were many problems that he faced in doing so. There are many great organizations that will drive to you school or restaurant and take leftover food. This is usually free but to get somebody to come you would have to have a certain about of leftover food which LREI does not have.

Something that I was really surprised about was that most of the food waste at our school comes from the salad bar. If things in the salad bar stayed separate, like the yogurt did not touch the fruit, then it would be reused for the next day. The reason there is little to no food waste after each day is because the kitchen staff do a great job preparing and knowing how much food to make each day. They make more popular food and less of the food that is eaten less. Even though we learned that it is really hard to manage the waste in a good way, we hope to find efficient ways of reducing LREI’s food waste in the future.