Journal of Food and Nutrition Research, 2016, Vol. 4, No. 8, 483-489 Available online at http://pubs.sciepub.com/jfnr/4/8/1 ©Science and Education Publishing DOI:10.12691/jfnr-4-8-1 Food Wastage in Turkey: An Exploratory Survey on Household Food Waste Heval YILDIRIM 1,2,* , Roberto CAPONE 3 , Alkan KARANLIK 4 , Francesco BOTTALICO 3,5 , Philipp DEBS 3 , Hamid EL BILALI 3 1 Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Montpellier (CIHEAM-MAIM), Montpellier, France 2 Faculty of Economics, University of Montpellier, Montpellier, France 3 Sustainable Agriculture, Food and Rural Development Department; International Centre for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic Studies of Bari (CIHEAM-Bari), Valenzano (Bari), Italy 4 IzmirProvincial Directorate of Food, Agriculture and Livestock, Izmir, Turkey 5 Department of Science and Technology, Parthenope University of Naples, Naples, Italy *Corresponding author: hevalyildirim@gmail.com Abstract Increase in food demand, mainly due to population growth and diet changes, is putting an increasing pressure on food system and food security. In this framework, food losses and wastes (FLW) together create one of the main causes of food systems unsustainability. The two differ on the fact that food losses refer to the part of food that is lost along the supply chain before reaching final consumer while food waste represents the waste of food by final consumer. This paper focuses on the role of demographic, social and economic factors affecting household behavior related to food waste (FW) and explores some factors which can play an important role in tackling food waste issue in the case of Turkey. The paper is based on an online survey with150 Turkish respondents in January- March 2015. The sample was not gender balanced since71% of them were females. About two fifths of the respondents (38%) belong to the age group 35-44 years and 62% of the sample has a high level of education (master and PhD).The fact that the majority of the respondents are employees (70% of the sample) in the big cities of Turkey shows how the pace of the metropolitan life structure affects consumer food consumption habits and orient purchases towards supermarkets. The results of the survey show that still 95% of the respondents are responsible of FW and 90% think that food waste increases during the month of Ramadan. Nevertheless, about 50% of respondents declared the willingness to throw less away and ask for better information about the negative impacts of food waste on the environment and on the economy. Preventing bread waste campaign of the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock was launched in 2013 in order to increase consciousness of the society towards bread waste which is quite important in Turkey. Similarly, there are some other initiatives on both national and local level with the objective of informing people about the food waste, sustainable food consumption and reuse of the food through food recipes. Keywords: food waste, Turkish household, online survey, household behavior, sustainable food consumption Cite This Article: Heval YILDIRIM, Roberto CAPONE, Alkan KARANLIK, Francesco BOTTALICO, Philipp DEBS, and Hamid EL BILALI, “Food Wastage in Turkey: An Exploratory Survey on Household Food Waste.” Journal of Food and Nutrition Research, vol. 4, no. 8 (2016): 483-489. doi: 10.12691/jfnr-4-8-1. 1. Introduction The rapid population growth is seen as the main factor that results in increased demand for food. According to the FAO [1], the world’s population is expected to increase by 50 percent between 2000 and 2050. In Turkey, for instance, it is expected to be 84.247.088 citizens in 2023 with a population growth rate of 9,8 percent per year [2]. Increase in food demand, mainly due to population growth and diet changes, is putting an increasing pressure on the food system and food security. The increasing demand of food may cause intensive exploitation of natural resources with a consequent degradation of the environment. Agriculture, for instance, has direct impacts on soil, biodiversity and water, which are all affected by farmer’s practices. Food waste is an important part of this environmental and economic issue. Food losses and waste (FLW) are defined as “the edible parts of plants and animals produced for human consumption but are not ultimately consumed by people” [3]. The main distinction between food losses and food waste is that food losses refer to the part of food that is lost along the supply chain before reaching final consumer. On the other hand, food waste corresponds to the part of the food that reaches final consumer but that is not consumed for some reasons. Indeed, both of them have important environmental and economic costs. According to FAO, food that is produced but not eaten is responsible for a carbon footprint corresponding to 3.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalents that make up food wastage as the third top emitter after the United States and China [4]. For this reason, a good FLW management is required in order to reduce such negative environmental impacts. Grizzetti et al. [5] studied the impact of food waste on nitrogen loss to the environment. Using different methods