The world is faced with a myriad of complex, food-related challenges. Food loss and waste alone negatively impact food security, the environment and even the economy, accounting for an estimated US$1 trillion of losses for the food industry¹. Global initiatives to remedy the food waste crisis are being led internationally by the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization with 130 partnering countries, and nationally via academic, corporate, government and grassroots consortiums². The significant effects of food loss and waste are multifaceted, requiring that we work together to develop transformative solutions.

University of California, Davis professors Charlotte Biltekoff and Lauren Shimek are taking a multidisciplinary approach to solving food system challenges. They believe that in order to successfully develop solutions to critical challenges in nutrition, health and sustainability, innovators should be informed not only by science but also by understanding the social and cultural conditions that shape and result from the food system, and the real contexts within which innovations are — or are not — taken up by users. Their course, Design Thinking for Food: An Innovation Lab, trains students in evolved design thinking and rapid prototyping, with the ultimate goal of developing a new generation of innovators and achieving real-world impacts.

About the Course

The course centers around what the instructors call “Food Studies-informed Design Thinking.” Design Thinking is an approach to innovation that considers technical feasibility, and business viability, but is also resolutely “human centered”. Food Studies is a multidisciplinary field that works across the food system — from production to consumption — to understand the relationship of food and the social order, and the values and beliefs that shape eating habits. The course brings together graduate and undergraduate students from across campus to learn and to apply these tools as they work in radically multidisciplinary teams to address real world food system challenges. In the first two years, the course focused on reducing food waste in campus dinning.

Student Innovators

In project ‘CHEWS’, course veterans Kyla Broderick, Crystal Sandmire and Lauren Crawford built an intuitive sampling and customization platform designed to reduce unintentional food waste in the UC Davis Dining Commons⁴. The platform is intended to alleviate customer congestion during peak times (breakfast and lunch) and reduce food waste by reformatting the Dining Commons environment while meeting a fundamental need for students to find food that they like to eat. A food tasting station and made-to-order app enables customization according to food portion and dietary preferences while aligning inherent student needs with the goal of reducing food waste.

The current Dining Commons model has the potential to result in overeating and excess food waste. Students swipe a member card and self-serve in an all-you-care-to-eat system. CHEWS prototype team member and UC Davis Food Science and Technology doctoral candidate Lauren Crawford explains, “our challenge was to develop an innovative system to reduce food waste in the Dining Commons on campus and to focus on the suppliers, the chef, and customers (students).” The team posed the question, “How can we inspire them to reduce food waste?” ^3,4

By studying consumer dining patterns, and redesigning the structural and functional flow of the Dining Commons, the burden of meal choice and wait time could be largely reduced. Food sampling before purchase informs customer selection, eliminates undesirable items, and may even act to satiate an appetite and prevent overeating. Professor Shimek points out that tackling food waste is not actually the number one priority for students eating in the Dining Commons. “What the student team uncovered is that the primary need (of the consumer) is to find something they like. CHEWS is a parallel path that pairs the opportunity to solve food waste with the existing desires people already have, without trying to change their priorities.”