Mindful Choice Meals
How to reduce food waste in your cafeteria!
Mindful Choice Meals
Helping students waste less and eat more!
Through Mindful Choice Meals (MCM), students learn how small daily choices lead to big climate action. In five pilot schools, they cut food waste by 30–50%, then composted what was left locally — right in school or at nearby composting sites — turning waste into a community resource. Sign up to our Mindful Choice Meals Toolkit to bring this into your school!
When our waste audits revealed that 45–80% of food waste was untouched, we developed Mindful Choice Meals to turn those findings into action — helping students explore why this happens and discover practical ways to reduce food waste before it even comes on their trays.
Our students take the lead in educating their school community about the USDA’s Offer vs. Serve guidelines — helping everyone understand what’s actually required at the lunch line. Students learn that they only need to choose three items minimum, and one must be a fruit or vegetable. They also discover that milk and protein are not required, reducing unnecessary waste and encouraging mindful choices.
As part of Mindful Choice Meals (MCM), we worked with kitchen staff to pre-plate only one item and encourage students to choose what they actually want to eat. MCM empowers students to make informed choices at the lunch line, guided by a clear understanding of nutrition and USDA meal guidelines. This simple shift has led to remarkable results — up to 40% less food waste, 30% more food consumption, and 51% less plastic waste in participating schools.
MCM now integrates local composting, allowing students to not only reduce the amount of waste generated but also process food scraps on-site or at nearby community composting sites. This hands-on approach helps close the food waste loop, turning leftovers into valuable soil and creating replicable, community-rooted models that can inspire citywide change.
