“What we’re trying to do is just be a bit more accurate about what ‘food waste’ means,” says Marc Bellemare, one of the study’s co-authors.

The new definition of “food waste” is, at least, attractive in its simplicity: “As long as food does not end up in a landfill, it is not wasted,” Bellemare and his co-authors write. By this logic, food that escapes the landfill by being put to any use at all it would not count towards the overall tally of “wasted” food—anything used for animal feed, in consumer products, to power vehicles, to make compost, and so on.

That’s not a perfect solution. Certainly, considering the huge amounts of oil and water, pesticides and fertilizer we use to grow food, some uses are more desirable than others. It’s probably always better to see food end up in people’s bellies than in the pig trough, anaerobic digester, or compost pile. But the authors argue that food repurposed in this way is too valuable to be called “waste.”

“We came up with this idea that, look, if you take some of the food on your plate and give it to your dog, that is not food waste,” Bellemare says. “There was a productive use for it. Is it the most productive use? We’re not saying that it is. But it’s not waste, per se. Waste is what goes to the landfill. It’s a little heroic to call something that has a productive use waste, even if it’s not your preferred productive use.”

There’s another benefit as well: this terminology reduces food waste by definition, reducing the logical complexity of measuring the vast problem. Counting what’s headed to the landfill is much easier that measuring everything that goes uneaten.

The new definition also avoids another layer of complexity, namely determinations about which components of foods are “edible” or “safe.” Both FAO and ERS methods mention these factors as determinations, though they don’t lay out clear definitions for what qualifies. The Minnesota study makes such quibbling irrelevant. Beet tops and cabbage cores count as food waste, regardless of whether or not society thinks you can eat them. (Hint: you can.) Counting this way makes us more likely to factor in processing byproducts like carrot trimmings into our estimates—and celebrate the companies that are trying to make good use of them.

“We’re trying to remove value judgements, for the most part,” Bellemare says. “What’s ‘safe’? What’s ‘edible’? What’s ‘nutritious’? It’s highly context-dependent. In a context of famine, you will eat a lot of fish-head soup if you can find it. In China, you will eat chicken feet without even thinking about it. In the U.S., you might eat chicken feet on a dare—as I once did—but otherwise not. The same thing goes with ideas about ‘safety.’ In many parts of the world, people will make vinaigrette with raw eggs—but in North America, we really don’t see that very often.”

The authors also make a suggestion about how to calculate the dollar value of wasted food: to use only the cost of food at each link in the supply chain. If it costs an orchard 10 cents to grow a pound of organic apples, and a dollar a pound for a distributor to buy them, those are the figures we should use—it doesn’t matter if Whole Foods can get four bucks a pound for them later. Using a product’s price before a markup is added, according to the authors, is a more accurate way of assessing its real value.

There’s probably truth to that. As a product moves through the supply chain, it requires more resources—fuel for transportation, electricity for refrigeration. Food does get more costly as it travels from the farm, and we’d do well to reflect that increase in our research. But measuring all wasted food at the retail price artificially inflates our estimations of the problem.

Ultimately, the study concludes, the familiar stats about the amount and value of food squandered are probably too high. If true, that’s a tough pill to swallow. For anyone who cares about this issue (and we all should), it’s hard to hear. But the Minnesota study is a reminder that we need transparent methodologies, clearly defined terms, and a shared language with which to discuss the problem. Otherwise, we’re not just talking about wasted food—we’re wasting precious time.