Evaluation of environmental impacts in the catering sector: The case of pasta

Despite its enormous size and economic value, there is currently scant information on environmental impacts from the catering sector. At the same time, the awareness of and preferences for environmentally sustainable food preparation and consumption are growing. In general, two catering approaches are practised: cook-serve and deferred. In the former, food is cooked and immediately served to consumers while the latter allows for the food to be prepared at times and places completely different from consumption. This study, based in Italy, focuses on environmental impacts of deferred catering with the aim of evaluating different options for food preparation and distribution, to help identify environmentally sustainable solutions. For these purposes, the case of pasta, one of the most popular foods worldwide, is considered. Two main types of deferred system (cook-warm and cook-chill) and cooking technologies (pasta cookers and range tops) used in the catering sector are evaluated. The results suggest that cooking in pasta cookers saves up to 60% of energy and 38% of water compared to range tops and therefore reduces by 34-66% the impacts associated with pasta preparation. The environmental impacts of pasta cooking could also be reduced by using gas rather than electric appliances as the impacts of the latter are higher by 13-98%. In the current study, pasta cooking is the major hotspot in both the cook-chill and cook-warm chains. Overall, the impacts from the cook-chill chain are 17-96% higher than from the cook-warm system, mainly because of the use of refrigerants and higher consumption of energy.