Food for Thought

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  Home Page

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  Food Banks Near You

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  Form for Food Donation Annoucement

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  Sample Donation Announcement

Inspiration

In the United States alone, food waste amounts to $680 billion dollars lost every year, with 40% of food waste coming from consumer use. However, nearly 40 million Americans and more than 12 million children are food insecure. Moreover, up to 50% of college students experience food insecurity on a daily basis, many opting to eat cheap fast-food or ramen.

There is a large disparity between the food secure and insecure in the United States, and we are here to close that gap. Food For Thought is a mobile app that seeks to connect UTD students to local food banks and campus food centers, while generating healthy recipes from their food choices.

What it does

In an effort to reduce food waste in our local communities, Food for Thoughts connects users to needy individuals, food banks, directs users like college students to on-campus resources such as Comet Composting Initiative to reduce food waste and Comet Cupboard, a food-pantry campus. Moreover, this app links to a recipe helper that will allow users to generate recipes based on the food items they have received from the food bank as a way of encouraging healthy diets for college students.

How we built it

The mobile application was built using React Native and Firebase.

Challenges we ran into

Synchronous and Asynchronous requests made the app not function a few times during initial set up.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Food waste and food insecurity are not only big issues on our campus, but also around the world. We are excited to have a viable MVP that seeks to address these issues by encouraging students to engage in composting in an effort to reduce food waste or donate their leftovers/extra food supplies to local food banks or the campus Comet Cupboard.

What we learned

Our team learned more about how much food waste is generated around the world, and how many Americans and college students are food insecure. We learned that it is vital to resolve this issue as many needy individuals could benefit from a streamlined system to access food banks and provide leftover food to people who need it.

What's next for Food for Thought

Implementing authentication, allowing users to edit and delete posts, allowing users to send their current location if the location is not in the drop-down list, and allowing users to post photos of the food items.

Built With

• firebase
• react
• react-native