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Food waste has received attention during the last decade, especially due to its environmental and social impacts. An important contributor to food waste is consumers’ low preference for purchase fruits and vegetables with unusual appearance, products with damaged package and products close to the expiration date, technically called suboptimal food products. Researches show that consumers tend to reject these products when buying food, increasing avoidable food waste. However, consumer considerations when deciding to buy or not to buy suboptimal food are still unknown. The purpose of this paper is to use two different approaches to investigate consumers’ perceptions towards suboptimal food and how they impact their acceptance.

The first part of the study involved a qualitative analysis of participants’ open-ended responses (282 answers), where participants were asked to write down the impressions they had about three suboptimal food images. The second phase explored consumers acceptance of suboptimal food through a focus group discussion.

Results reveal that considerations about suboptimal food are divergent, with some participants rejecting them because they are impelled to search for perfection when buying food products. However, some individuals are disposed to accept suboptimal products, mainly because they have concern with the environment and cook abilities.

As a whole, this study contributes for food waste reduction strategies and has implications for marketing actions.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse main drivers and barriers to food waste reduction in the consumption phase and analyse pathways to anti-wastage behaviours.

A systematic literature review was performed in order to understand the main variables affecting the behaviour and to identify pathways to move to an anti-waste behaviour. In the end, 84 articles were selected for the final analysis.

Drivers and barriers to reduce food waste were categorised in societal factors, personal factors and behavioural factors. Variables can increase the amount of waste (+) or reduce it (−). From them, efforts to move to an anti-wastage behaviour are classified in macro-environmental change, retailers’ engagement, raise awareness of the issue and creating anti-wastage social norms.

The systematic review did not capture all variables that can influence consumer food waste and it is necessary different approaches to study the issue.

From the drivers for food waste reduction it is possible to design efforts to help consumers change their pattern of behaviour.

Reducing food waste has effects in changing economic inequality, relative poverty and environmental damages.

The great majority of studies that analyse consumer food waste focus on behaviours that increase food waste. This special paper identifies how to stimulate and proactively work with behaviours that help to food waste reduction.