There are many factors controlling plate waste, including inadequate planning of the number of meals to be produced per day, unpredictability of the daily frequency of consumers, food preferences, staff training for adequate food production, staff training for adequate plating, preparation and rationing, and particularly consumers’ behaviour in terms of portion size (Ferreira et al., 2013). In this canteen there was no planning of the number of meals to be prepared. So, every day an average of 150–200 meat, 100–60 fish and 50–40 ovolactovegetarian meals were prepared, leading to high unserved food waste (Table 3). High unserved food waste was registered, and communicated to the canteen management that reduced the number of meals prepared per day (Table 3).