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Data

Share of calories in each food group that are lost or wasted

About this data

Source
Lipinski et al. (2013) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
February 22, 2020
Date range
2009–2009
Unit
%

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Lipinski et al. – Reducing Food Loss and Waste

Data on food losses and waste includes all supply chain stages, from (and including) on-farm harvesting through to final food waste.

Figures are based only on food intended for direct human consumption: this means crops diverted for animal feed or industrial uses are not included as losses.

The original authors of this study – Lipinski et al. (2013) of the World Resources Institute – calculate these figures based on the regional percentage losses expressed in the landmark UN FAO report on food losses: FAO (2011). Global food losses and food waste – Extent, causes and prevention. Rome.

This data is expressed for the year 2009 due to poor data availability and updated estimates since then. It is likely that, especially when expressed in relative terms (each region or food group's contribution to food losses) remains similar today.

Retrieved on
February 22, 2020
Retrieved from
http://pdf.wri.org/reducing_food_loss_and_waste.pdf
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Lipinski, B. et al. (2013). "Reducing Food Loss and Waste." Working Paper, Installment 2 of Creating a Sustainable Food Future. Washington, DC: World Resources Institute.

Data on food losses and waste includes all supply chain stages, from (and including) on-farm harvesting through to final food waste.

Figures are based only on food intended for direct human consumption: this means crops diverted for animal feed or industrial uses are not included as losses.

The original authors of this study – Lipinski et al. (2013) of the World Resources Institute – calculate these figures based on the regional percentage losses expressed in the landmark UN FAO report on food losses: FAO (2011). Global food losses and food waste – Extent, causes and prevention. Rome.

This data is expressed for the year 2009 due to poor data availability and updated estimates since then. It is likely that, especially when expressed in relative terms (each region or food group's contribution to food losses) remains similar today.

Retrieved on
February 22, 2020
Retrieved from
http://pdf.wri.org/reducing_food_loss_and_waste.pdf
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Lipinski, B. et al. (2013). "Reducing Food Loss and Waste." Working Paper, Installment 2 of Creating a Sustainable Food Future. Washington, DC: World Resources Institute.

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Share of calories in each food group that are lost or wasted”. Our World in Data (2026). Data adapted from Lipinski et al.. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260511-092124/grapher/calories-wasted-food-group.html [online resource] (archived on May 11, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Lipinski et al. (2013) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

Lipinski et al. (2013) – processed by Our World in Data. “Share of calories in each food group that are lost or wasted” [dataset]. Lipinski et al., “Reducing Food Loss and Waste” [original data]. Retrieved May 15, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260511-092124/grapher/calories-wasted-food-group.html (archived on May 11, 2026).

Download

Quick download

Download the data shown in this chart as a ZIP file containing a CSV file, metadata in JSON format, and a README. The CSV file can be opened in Excel, Google Sheets, and other data analysis tools.

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Data API

Use these URLs to programmatically access this chart's data and configure your requests with the options below. Our documentation provides more information on how to use the API, and you can find a few code examples below.

Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/calories-wasted-food-group.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false
Metadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/calories-wasted-food-group.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false

Code examples

Examples of how to load this data into different data analysis tools.

Excel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/calories-wasted-food-group.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests

# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/calories-wasted-food-group.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})

# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/calories-wasted-food-group.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()
R
library(jsonlite)

# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/calories-wasted-food-group.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")

# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/calories-wasted-food-group.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/calories-wasted-food-group.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear