Food Fights for Freedom: Procedure for the Development of the Clean Plate Club Campaign
A typed procedure from the Great Lakes Region of the Food Distribution Administration, telling state and area supervisors how to roll out a Clean Plate Club campaign against food waste.
What it is
A typed procedure from the Great Lakes Region of the Food Distribution Administration, telling state and area supervisors how to roll out a Clean Plate Club campaign against food waste. It builds on a month-long pilot in Lansing, Michigan, a city of 78,000, sponsored by the local Nutrition Committee and the State Journal, where results were measured by the fall in garbage collected. The document sets the order of introductions from state chairmen down to county committees, lists 18 kinds of local groups to enlist, and supplies waste figures: garbage equal to 15 to 20 percent of food consumed, and total loss from farm to bin of 30 to 40 percent. It then offers projects: daily pledge forms in the paper, table-tent pledge postcards for restaurants, menu stickers, radio spots, contests, poster ideas, and a push to drop table manners that waste food. The scan stops mid-sentence.
Why read it now
The core move holds up. It takes a vague national aim, less waste, and turns it into one act anyone can do at every meal, with a club to join, a pledge to sign and pictures of local leaders showing a clean plate. Social-norm research, such as Robert Cialdini's work on descriptive norms, supports its radio aim of making it seem that everyone is doing it. Its best idea is the measure: ask the city to count garbage truckloads daily, so the drive is judged by an outcome, not by pledges. Small details hold too, such as allowing no more than three signatures because cramped space discourages signing. What has dated: the housewife as the only food manager, guilt images of starving children, and waste figures from 1930s and early 1940s studies. Child-feeding research now warns that pressing children to clean their plates can weaken their sense of fullness. Use: for a Ramadan food-waste drive, pick one behaviour such as smaller first portions, give it a name and a table card, partner with one high-reach outlet, and agree a before-and-after waste count with caterers or the municipality.
Passages worth keeping
The objective of the Clean Plate Club campaign is to get all the people thinking about food waste.
هدف الحملة أن يفكر الناس جميعًا في هدر الطعام، فالانتباه العام هو الخطوة الأولى قبل أي تغيير في السلوك.
It has been accepted as a foregone conclusion that a Clean Plate Club Campaign cannot succeed unless one of the important newspapers of the city takes an active part in the campaign.
لا تنجح الحملة المحلية دون شريك إعلامي قوي في المدينة يتبناها وينشر أخبارها بانتظام.
These pictures showing the individual who had cleaned his plate tended to serve as a trade-mark and constantly kept the idea before the public eye.
صور الأشخاص الذين أنهوا صحونهم صارت علامة مميزة للحملة، تذكّر الناس بالفكرة كل يوم.
Radio is well situated to establish in the minds of the consumers the impression that "everyone is doing it"
دور الإذاعة أن تقنع الجمهور بأن الجميع يشاركون، لأن الناس يميلون إلى ما يظنونه سلوك الأغلبية.
Provision for more than three signatures probably should not be attempted, since cramped space for signatures is known to discourage signing.
كلما ضاقت مساحة التوقيع قلّ عدد الموقعين، لذلك يوصي الدليل بألا تزيد بطاقة التعهد على ثلاثة توقيعات.
The scanned text has OCR errors. The passages are quoted from it, with only obvious slips fixed.
What it teaches best
Read the original archive.org
If this library is useful, leave an email
We send new patterns, ads, and notes when we add them. Name and phone are optional.
You are on the list
We will write when we add more library material.