Where your food goes now: a one-week kitchen baseline
One ordinary week, recorded before anything changes: the meals your household ate at home and away, what you spent on food, and the preventable food waste you measured, with what it was and why.
The baseline is an observation to compare against later, not a requirement for planning. If you want better dinners this week, start with the quick start: plan your next three dinners, then record the baseline in a later week you leave as it is, or note on the log what you changed. Food-safety habits, such as a fridge thermometer and refrigerating food within 2 hours, do not wait for the baseline.
Start here Essentials
At minimum, let one ordinary week of dinners run as it is and record it: the food you meant to eat but threw out, every food purchase, and what each dinner was. Change nothing in the recorded week; planning starts in The weekly plan.
- Set out a bag or lidded container for preventable food waste and tell the household what goes in it: food bought to eat, not peels, bones or liquids (measuring waste).
- Keep every food receipt for seven days, or write each purchase down, coffee and takeout included (spending).
- Note each day's dinner as cooked, leftovers, out or ordered in, or skipped (the meals log).
- Measure the container at the end of the week and write the amount, what was in it and why on the waste log (reasons).
- Write the coming week's schedule: who is home for dinner each day and how much time there is (the coming week).
Minimum time: about 10 minutes to set up, a minute a day, and 30 minutes at the end of the week. Done when: the waste log has one week's row with an amount and the top two reasons, and the spending sheet has the week's total.
1. Why measure before you plan Understand
A meal plan rests on facts about a household: how many dinners are cooked at home, how many are bought, how much food is thrown out, and why. Most people answer those questions from memory, and memory is a poor instrument for them. In a nationally representative survey of 1,010 US adults published in PLoS ONE in 2015, 73 percent said their household throws away less food than the average American household, and only 3 percent said more (Neff, Spiker and Truant, 2015). Across a whole population, those answers do not add up. A plan built on guesses repeats the guesses: it buys for dinners that are not cooked and plans leftovers nobody eats.
So this manual starts with a baseline: one ordinary week, recorded before anything changes, that later weeks are compared with. The idea comes from the US Environmental Protection Agency's household challenge, Food: Too Good to Waste. EPA's instruction sheet has a household measure its wasted food for two normal weeks, then try one or more strategies for three weeks while still measuring, then measure a final week and compare (EPA, Get Smart: Take the Challenge). We use one baseline week instead of two, to keep the first pass short; a second week is under Go deeper below. Review and adjust measures a planned week the same way and sets the two side by side.
The baseline week records four things, and each one feeds a later part of this manual:
| Record | What you write | Where it lives | Used again in |
|---|---|---|---|
| Preventable food waste | Amount by volume (and weight, if you have a scale), days collected, what it was, the main reasons | Waste log | Leftovers and using it up (leftovers), Review and adjust (the comparison) |
| Food spending | The week's groceries and the week's food eaten out or ordered in, as two totals | Spending sheet | Shopping and budget (the food budget), Review and adjust |
| Meals log | Each day's dinner: cooked, leftovers, out or ordered in, or skipped | A note you keep, then the counts in the spending sheet's notes | Your meal list (the meal list), The weekly plan (how many meals to plan) |
| The coming week | Who is home for dinner each day, the time available, activities and late nights | Household week | The people at your table (the household sheet), The weekly plan (the plan) |
The rule for the week is EPA's: keep to your usual routine as much as possible. The sheet's own example is the freezer: unless you regularly clean it out, do not clean it during the challenge. A week in which you shop more carefully, cook more or throw out less because you are watching is a better week, but it is no longer a baseline, and the comparison in Review and adjust loses its starting point.
You will read Kitchen inventory, How long food keeps, The people at your table and Your meal list while the week runs. Most of what they ask changes nothing about what you eat: thermometers, lists, the household sheet. The eat-first shelf in Kitchen inventory and any clear-out of the fridge do change the week, so save them for the day after the baseline ends, or record the food a clear-out removes on a separate line in the waste log, so it does not merge with the ordinary week.
2. Measuring preventable food waste
EPA's method collects one kind of waste and leaves out the rest. Preventable food waste, in EPA's words, is food you bought to eat that has since spoiled, plus food that was prepared but not eaten and was then thrown away. Inedible parts (EPA's sheet calls them non-edible food waste) are the parts you would not normally eat: banana peels, egg shells, apple cores and chicken bones. These go out as usual and are not counted. EPA's sheet also leaves out liquids, such as soup, and food-soiled paper.
The line is about what was meant to be eaten. A crust a child left is preventable food waste; the carrot peel is not. Coffee grounds, tea bags and fruit pits are inedible parts. When something sits on the line, such as broccoli stems your household does not eat, decide once, write the decision in the waste log's notes, and keep to it in every measured week. The comparison in Review and adjust depends on the same rule being used both times more than on where the line falls.
| Goes in | Stays out |
|---|---|
| Spoiled food bought to eat: wilted greens, moldy bread, fruit gone soft, an opened jar that went bad | Peels, shells, cores, pits, bones, coffee grounds |
| Leftovers thrown away, from the fridge or from a plate | Liquids: soup, milk, juice, sauce poured down the drain |
| Food thrown out because of the date on its label | Food-soiled paper: napkins, paper towels, pizza boxes |
| Uneaten parts of takeout eaten at home | Food you composted before you measured it (measure first, then compost) |
The container and how to measure it
EPA's equipment list is a pen, paper or the worksheet, small garbage bags, and a small scale if you have one. Its sheet lines a paper bag with a compostable bag; a lidded tub or a bag in a small bin works the same way. EPA's tips for odor and leaks: add a plastic bag as a second liner, clip the top shut, or start a new bag midweek and add the two together. If a bag fills before the week ends, record its amount and the number of days it covered, then start another.
The record is the amount by volume, by weight, or both. Volume needs no equipment if the container is marked. Our method: before the week starts, pour water into the empty container 1 cup (about 240 mL) or 1 quart (about 0.95 L) at a time, and mark each level on the outside with a marker or tape. At the end of the week, read the level. If you use bags, press the bag into a marked container to read it. A US quart is 4 cups, and a gallon is 4 quarts.
Weight is the more exact measure, and a kitchen scale gives it directly; weigh the bag and subtract the weight of an empty one. Volume and weight do not convert into each other without knowing what is in the bag: a quart of salad greens weighs much less than a quart of cooked rice. That is why the waste log takes either and does not convert. Use the same measure in the planned week as in the baseline.
EPA says that once you start, measuring and recording should take no more than 15 minutes a week. The daily part is putting food in the container instead of the trash. The weekly part is reading the amount and writing what was in it.
Why it was wasted: the reasons list
An amount on its own tells you how much, not what to change. EPA's worksheet has a notes column headed "what goes to waste and why", and the waste log turns that note into a short list of reasons. The list follows the categories national studies use for household waste: ReFED's Food Waste Monitor, a US nonprofit's model of where food goes, and WRAP's figures for UK households (ReFED Food Waste Monitor, residential causes; WRAP, UK Food Waste and Food Surplus Key Facts, UK). Using categories like theirs keeps the reasons comparable from week to week, and each one points to a part of this manual that works on it.
| Reason on the waste log | What it covers | Example | Where this manual works on it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spoiled | Went bad before anyone ate it: mold, slime, an off smell, wilted past use | Most of a bag of salad greens | The eat-first shelf (Kitchen inventory), the storage card (How long food keeps), perishables early in the week (The weekly plan) |
| Cooked or served too much | More made or put on plates than was eaten, then thrown out | Half a pot of pasta | Quantities and scaling (How much to buy) |
| Did not want the leftovers | Saved, then nobody ate it | Half a container of cooked rice | Planned leftovers (The weekly plan), second meals and the freezer (Leftovers and using it up) |
| Left out too long | Sat out of the fridge longer than the 2-hour rule allows | A takeout box left on the counter overnight | The 2-hour rule (How long food keeps) |
| Worried about the date | Thrown out because of the date on the label | Two yogurts past their date | Date labels (How long food keeps) |
| Did not taste good | Tried and disliked | A new sauce nobody liked | The meal list (Your meal list) |
| Other | Anything else; write a word in the notes | A dropped plate | Review and adjust decides whether it matters |
Most weeks have more than one reason. Write what each item was, then pick the reason that covers the largest share of the amount as the main one, and the next largest as the second. You are estimating by eye, and that is enough: the reasons point to where to look, and a rough split does that. The waste log keeps one main reason per week in its select column and the rest in "What it was".
Write the reason the household actually had, not the one it thinks it should have had. In the 2015 survey above, the most common reasons people gave for throwing food out were concern about foodborne illness and a wish to eat only the freshest food. "Worried about the date" is a real reason, and recording it is not an admission of a mistake: whether a date was about safety or quality is the subject of How long food keeps, and the baseline only records what happened. This manual does not judge any food you threw out, and a reason on the log is not a verdict on whether the food was still safe. Test it
How national models split household waste by reason. ReFED's Food Waste Monitor estimates 23.4 million tons of residential surplus food in the US in 2024. Its largest shares are inedible parts (29 percent), spoiled (25 percent), food considered inedible by the household (9.8 percent) and leftovers nobody wanted (9.7 percent); left out too long is 6.7 percent, date-label concerns 5.3 percent, too little to save 4.3 percent, did not taste good 4.2 percent and cooking issues 0.59 percent. WRAP's UK figures, for edible food only, give cooked, prepared or served too much as 25 percent by weight, personal preference 22 percent, not used in time and smelling or looking off 22 percent, and not used in time and past the label date 17 percent. The two use different categories and different methods (ReFED models tonnage; WRAP's figures are from UK household data for 2022), so the shares do not line up, and neither describes any one kitchen. They show which reasons are common, which is why the waste log lists them. Your own week is the only figure this manual uses.
One week is a snapshot, not an average. A holiday, guests, an illness or a payday shop can make it larger or smaller than usual, and a single number does not say which. This manual does not compare your amount or your spending with national figures: those figures count inedible parts or food eaten away from home, cover whole countries or whole supply chains, and use different years and methods (see Go deeper). The baseline describes your week; it does not grade it. Whether a later week is smaller, and whether that means anything, is the question Review and adjust asks.
National figures, and why their scopes differ
Figures about wasted food are quoted often and compared badly. Each answers a different question. Before setting any of them beside your bag, check what it counts.
| Figure | Source and data year | What it counts | Why it differs from your bag |
|---|---|---|---|
| 26.5 million tons; 337.9 lb per household per year | EPA, 2019 Wasted Food Report (2019 data) | All residential wasted food sent to landfill, combustion, sewer, compost and other destinations | EPA does not separate food from inedible parts, so peels and bones are in it; your bag leaves them out |
| $728 per person a year; $2,913 for a household of four ($56 a week) | EPA, Estimating the Cost of Food Waste to American Consumers (2025 report; 2019 to 2023 data, 2023 prices) | Edible food wasted by consumers, at home and away from home | It includes restaurant, cafeteria and fast-food waste; your bag is food at home only |
| "$1,500 a year for a family of four" | USDA Economic Research Service, EIB-121 (2010 data) | Consumer-level loss of $371 per person in 2010 prices, times four ($1,484) | EPA's 2025 report says food prices in many categories rose more than 50 percent since then; the figure is old, not wrong for its year |
| "A third of food is wasted" | FAO, 2011 (global) | Food lost or wasted worldwide, from the farm to the plate | It is global and covers every stage, not households |
| "Over one-third", about 35 percent | EPA, From Farm to Kitchen (2021 synthesis) | US food not eaten, at every stage from production to consumption | Roughly half of it is at the consumption stage, which includes food service |
| "30 to 40 percent of the food supply" | USDA Food Waste FAQs, based on ERS's 31 percent (2010 data) | Retail and consumer levels together; consumers alone were 21 percent | It includes stores and is a share of the supply, not of a household's purchases |
Sources: EPA, 2019 Wasted Food Report (PDF); EPA, Estimating the Cost of Food Waste to American Consumers; USDA ERS, EIB-121; FAO, Global food losses and food waste; EPA, From Farm to Kitchen; USDA, Food Waste FAQs.
The EPA cost report makes the scope point itself: its $728 counts food bought for home and food eaten away from home, and it explains that the widely repeated $1,500 rests on 2010 prices. None of these figures is a target for a household, and none tells you whether your week was high or low.
What diary studies find in household waste. EPA's From Farm to Kitchen report reviews two US studies that had households keep 7-day kitchen diaries: Oregon's 2017 study of 182 households and an NRDC study of 613 households in three cities, which checked the diaries against trash sorts. In those diaries, fruits and vegetables were about 40 percent of household food waste, prepared foods and leftovers 23 to 28 percent, meat and fish about 6 percent, and dairy and eggs 3 to 7 percent. Inedible parts were about 30 percent of household food waste by weight, which is one reason your preventable-only bag will look smaller than a figure that counts everything. Those are averages across many homes; your own bag says what your kitchen wastes.
3. Food spending for one week
The second record is money. Penn State Extension's food spending plan starts with tracking every food purchase, every grocery trip and every cup of coffee, written down to the penny, because the small purchases are the ones people forget: the coffee at the gas station, the water from the vending machine (Penn State Extension, How to Make a Food Spending Plan). Iowa State's Spend Smart. Eat Smart. program has everyone in the family write their initials on the back of each food receipt and put it in a jar, then sort the receipts into stacks by place at the end (Iowa State, Track Your Food Expenses). Both programs track a month; we track the baseline week, so the record lines up with the waste bag and the meals log. A month is under Go deeper.
The spending sheet keeps two totals for the week:
- Groceries: food bought to eat at home, from any store, market, delivery or pickup service.
- Eaten out or ordered in: restaurant meals, takeout, food delivery, coffee, vending, a work cafeteria, snacks bought on the go.
Some lines on a receipt are not food. Cross out cleaning supplies, paper goods, toiletries and pet food, and leave them out of the grocery total. Decide once how you count drinks such as alcohol, delivery fees and tips, write the decision in the sheet's notes, and count the planned week the same way. This manual has no rule on these; the point is that both weeks use the same one.
Keep receipts in one place: an envelope on the fridge, a jar, a photo on your phone, or your bank or card records at the end of the week. Cash purchases and small card charges are the easiest to lose; a line in your phone's notes when you buy does the job. In a household where several people buy food, each person keeps their own, as Iowa State's jar does. In a shared house, record what you paid, including your share of shared staples, and note which part was shared.
The spending record does not set a budget and does not say whether the total is high or low. Shopping and budget sets a weekly food budget from the household's own spending first, then shows the USDA Food Plans beside it as a reference. Food bought with WIC or SNAP benefits counts as groceries like any other food; whether to note which part came from benefits is your choice.
A month of spending. Penn State and Iowa State both track food spending for a full month, which smooths out the week with a big stock-up shop or a birthday dinner. If you shop every two weeks, a one-week total depends on which week you pick: either record two weeks and halve the total, or note in the sheet that the baseline week held a shopping trip (or did not). Penn State's next step, setting a monthly amount from what you found, is covered in Shopping and budget.
4. The meals log
The meals log is one line a day saying what dinner was. Four kinds cover almost every evening:
- Cooked: made at home that day, from scratch or from a box.
- Leftovers: food cooked on an earlier day, reheated or eaten cold.
- Out or ordered in: a restaurant, takeout, delivery, a meal at work or at a friend's.
- Skipped: no real dinner; snacks, or nothing.
Add a few words: "pasta with jarred sauce", "pizza, delivered", "leftover rice and eggs". The words matter as much as the kind. Your meal list builds the household's meal list from the dinners it already eats, and the log is where those come from. The weekly plan uses the counts: a household that cooked two dinners in the baseline week starts its first plan with two or three cooked dinners, not seven. Test it
At the end of the week, count each kind and write the counts in the notes column of the spending sheet, for example "2 cooked, 1 leftovers, 4 ordered in". That puts the meals beside the money, so the week can be read in one row: four dinners ordered in and a high takeout total are the same fact seen twice.
The log covers dinners on the first pass because this manual plans dinners first: several extension programs, including Iowa State and Utah State, start with dinners and add other meals later. If your household packs lunches or eats most meals at home, logging those too gives The weekly plan more to work with; it is under Go deeper.
Lunches, breakfasts and a second week. Add a lunch line if anyone packs lunch, and a note when a lunch was leftovers from a dinner: those planned leftovers are worth knowing about before The weekly plan. For a fuller baseline, follow EPA's own design and record a second ordinary week, then average the two for the amount of waste and the spending. Two weeks catch more of a household's normal swing; the cost is another week before planning starts. EPA's sheet compares the average of weeks 1 and 2 with the later weeks.
Weighing. If you have a kitchen scale, record both volume and weight each week. Weight makes small changes visible that a level on a container hides, and it is the measure EPA's diary studies report.
5. The coming week
The last record looks forward. Extension planning methods start with the week ahead. University of Illinois Extension's method opens with the week's schedule: meetings, practices and events; which nights the household is home and which need something quick; whether children eat school breakfast or lunch; who is home to help (University of Illinois Extension, Mastering Mealtime). Iowa State's planner asks what is coming up in the next five days: quick meals, company, a potluck, a slow-cooker day (Iowa State, Menu Planning).
At the end of the baseline week, write the next seven days on the household week sheet, one row a day:
- Who is home for dinner. Names or a count.
- Time available: no cooking, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, or an hour or more. This is the time someone has to cook that evening, not the time a recipe says.
- Activities and late nights: practice, a late shift, a work dinner, guests.
- Notes: anything that changes food, such as a birthday or a trip.
The coming week is a forecast, and it will be wrong in places. The people at your table checks it against each person in the household and The weekly plan builds the first plan on it. Writing it now, while the baseline week is fresh, makes the first plan start from the household's real evenings rather than from an ideal week.
6. See it: Jordan's baseline week See it
Jordan Pike is one of this manual's fictional cases; the amounts, prices and results in this example are invented. Jordan is 29, lives alone in a one-bedroom apartment and works days. They have a refrigerator with a top freezer, one cupboard shelf for food, an oven and a microwave. They shop on Saturday at one supermarket and take leftovers for lunch about twice a week.
Set-up. On Saturday, Jordan marks a lidded 1-gallon tub at each quart with tape, using a measuring cup and water, and keeps it by the trash. They put an envelope on the fridge for receipts and start a note on their phone for the meals log.
Known: the week as recorded.
- Meals log: two dinners cooked, one of leftovers, four ordered in. The counts go in the spending sheet's notes as "2 cooked, 1 leftovers, 4 ordered in".
- Spending: groceries $94, ordered in $71. Jordan crossed out a pack of paper towels on the grocery receipt before adding it up.
- Waste after seven days: about 2 quarts (about 1.9 L) in the tub. What it was: most of a bag of salad greens, half a container of cooked rice, and two yogurts past their date.
- Reasons: spoiled (the greens), did not want the leftovers (the rice), worried about the date (the yogurts). By eye, the greens are the largest share, so the waste log's main reason is "spoiled" and the second is "did not want the leftovers".
- The coming week: home every evening except Thursday, a work dinner. Jordan writes seven rows on the household week, with Thursday marked "no cooking".
Assumed. That this was an ordinary week. Jordan's own judgment, not a measurement: no guests, no illness, no holiday.
Open, and who settles it. Whether the week was typical: a second week would show it, if Jordan chooses to record one. Whether the yogurts were still safe: this manual does not judge that; How long food keeps explains what their date phrase meant, and the reason on the log stays as it is. Whether ordering in changes in a planned week: Review and adjust measures it, and this manual does not say what it should be.
Free sources behind this chapter:
- EPA, Get Smart: Take the Challenge (PDF): the household waste-measuring method this chapter uses, with EPA's recording worksheet.
- EPA, Food: Too Good to Waste toolkit: the full challenge, with the shopping, storage, prep and "Eat First" tools other chapters draw on.
- Penn State Extension, How to Make a Food Spending Plan: tracking every food purchase before setting a budget.
- Iowa State, Track Your Food Expenses: the receipt jar and a printable chart for a household.
7. Practice: run the baseline week Practice
Minimum: seven days of dinners logged, the waste container measured once at the end, and the week's receipts totaled into groceries and eaten out. Time: about 10 minutes to set up, a minute a day, and 30 minutes at the end of the week, including the coming week. Materials: a bag or lidded container for waste, a measuring cup and a marker or tape (or a kitchen scale), an envelope or jar for receipts, and a pen or your phone.
- Pick a start day. Your usual shopping day is a natural one, because the week's groceries then fall inside it. Write the date; it goes in the "week starting" column of both sheets.
- Set up the container. Mark its levels with water and a measuring cup, or note the empty bag's weight if you have a scale. Put it where food usually goes in the trash.
- Tell the household what goes in it. Preventable food, from the fridge or the plate; not peels, bones, liquids or food-soiled paper. Agree on any food that sits on the line (measuring waste).
- Each day, put food in the container instead of the trash, put receipts in the envelope, and add one line to the meals log.
- If the container fills early, write its amount and the number of days, empty it and start again; add the parts together at the end.
- At the end of day seven, measure. Read the level or weigh the bag. Write what was in it, item by item, and the reason for each. Pick the main and second reasons by share of the amount (reasons).
- Fill the waste log. On the waste log: week starting, days collected, amount, what it was, main reason, and the second reason in the notes.
- Total the receipts. Cross out non-food lines, add up groceries and eaten out or ordered in, and enter both on the spending sheet with the meal counts in the notes.
- Write the coming week on the household week: who is home, time available, activities.
- Record a second baseline week the same way and average the two amounts and the two spending totals.
- Log lunches and breakfasts for one week, marking which lunches were leftovers.
- Weigh as well as measure each week, if you have a scale, and write both.
8. Your kitchen Your kitchen
9. Check your work Check your work
Criteria
- Did the week run as an ordinary week, with no clear-outs or new habits added because you were measuring? If something unusual happened, is it in the notes?
- Does the waste log have one row with the start date, the days collected and an amount, with the unit (cups, quarts, liters, pounds or grams)?
- Did the container hold only preventable food, with inedible parts and liquids left out, and is any borderline decision written down?
- Does the row name what was wasted and give a main reason and a second one?
- Does the spending sheet have the week's groceries and eaten out or ordered in as two totals, with non-food items left out?
- Is there a count of dinners by kind, and does the household week have seven rows?
Worked example
Jordan's week (fictional) meets each criterion. The waste log row has the Saturday start date, 7 days, "about 2 quarts", the three items, "spoiled" as the main reason and "did not want the leftovers" in the notes. The spending sheet has $94 and $71, with the paper towels left out and "2 cooked, 1 leftovers, 4 ordered in" in the notes. The household week has seven rows with Thursday's work dinner. What the record cannot show is whether the week was typical; the waste log's note "no guests, no illness" is Jordan's judgment.
Common mistakes
- Cleaning out the fridge or freezer midweek and putting it all in the container. That measures the clear-out, not the week. Record a clear-out on its own line, or wait until the week ends.
- Counting peels, bones and coffee grounds. They make the amount larger and hide changes in the food that matters.
- Leaving out the coffee, vending and lunch purchases, which are the ones Penn State says people forget.
- Writing the reason the household should have had instead of the real one.
- Changing the unit or the line between weeks: cups one week and a guess the next, or broccoli stems in one week and out the next.
What is still unresolved
One week cannot tell you whether it was a typical week, what the food you threw out was worth in money, or what to change. The reasons point to where to look: the storage card and the eat-first shelf for spoiled food, quantities for food cooked in excess, leftovers and the freezer for unwanted leftovers. Review and adjust measures a planned week the same way and compares it with this one, and the household decides what the difference means. This manual does not grade either week.