Food Rescue: Economic, Social, Health, and Environmental Benefits

There are many policy tools designed to support vulnerable populations and address food insecurity. In Israel, the most common policy measures include donations, subsidies, allowances, and financial aid. The unique advantage of food rescue lies in its ability to alleviate food insecurity at a much lower fiscal and economic costs. Instead of funding the full cost of purchasing food, the state and supporting organizations only need to fund the rescue of surplus food.

In both Israeli and global socioeconomic discourse, a long-standing debate exists between advocates of economic growth as the primary policy goal (“growing the pie”) and those who prioritize reducing inequality.

Food rescue offers a unique policy tool that inherently integrates these two approaches. Rescuing surplus food for consumption by vulnerable populations simultaneously increases economic output and reduces inequality.

In addition, in light of crises and emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate crisis, there are plausible scenarios of instability in both local and global food supply. In this context, food rescue serves as a means to expand food reserves and help ensure food security during such times.

The importance of food rescue lies in four key benefits:

1. Economic benefit – The costs of lost and wasted food accumulate along the entire value chain—from cultivation and production to marketing, distribution, and consumption—and ultimately fall on the consumer. Food loss and waste also reduces national productivity, as valuable inputs of labor, land, and resources go to waste. Food rescue, by contrast, turns waste with little or no value into a valuable economic resource, redirecting it to populations in need without requiring additional production inputs. Since rescued food retains its full nutritional value and costs significantly less than producing and transporting food, food rescue contributes directly to economic growth and improved productivity.
2. Social benefit – Food loss is one of the factors driving the high cost of living in Israel. By recovering and redistributing edible food, food rescue reduces social inequality and eases the financial burden on households, while also addressing food insecurity among vulnerable populations, all at a significantly lower cost than conventional welfare programs or subsidies.
3. Health benefit – The right to food goes beyond calorie intake; it also includes nutritional quality and food safety. Economic access to a healthy, balanced diet is essential for physical, mental, and cognitive well-being and a key condition for true food security. Food insecurity increases the risk of chronic and mental illness, lowers academic achievement and earning potential, and, at a national level, leads to higher healthcare costs and reduced productivity. By rescuing nutritious foods, especially fruit and vegetables, and distributing them to food-insecure populations, food rescue can help reduce the prevalence of food insecurity and ease the burden of excess healthcare costs on Israel’s economy.

• , approximately 38% of domestically produced food is lost or wasted. Along with the food itself, all the resources invested in its production are also lost, including land, water, fertilizers, chemicals, and energy. Since a portion of food production is dedicated to growing animal feed, these losses also reflect substantial resource use in livestock agriculture. Many of the resources consumed by the food industry are non-renewable, and their extraction and use have significant impacts on water, soil, air, and biodiversity. In addition, agriculture contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution due to its intensive use of energy and fuel.

These environmental costs do not end once the food is produced but are compounded when the food is discarded. In Israel, most food waste ends up in landfills, where decomposing organic matter releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas that accelerates climate change and degrades soil quality. Additionally, roughly one-third of household waste consists of organic food waste. This not only increases the total volume of waste requiring treatment but also contaminates recyclable materials, undermining the efficiency of recycling systems and placing further strain on the environment.

Food rescue helps prevent these impacts by making full use of the resources already invested in food production and avoiding additional environmental and economic costs.

Together, these benefits make food rescue a uniquely powerful and cost-effective policy tool. The launch of Israel’s National Program for the Reduction of Food Loss and Waste in September 2025 marks an important step in the government’s recognition of the wide-ranging benefits and national significance of this approach.