Although food waste has become an increasingly important issue in China, little attention has been given to its scale and determining factors in the related literature of food waste. This study uses the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) data surveyed in 1991, 2000 and 2009 to investigate the food waste behavior of Chinese households over the twenty years. In addition, the factors affecting food waste at home were identified and evaluated using the double hurdle model. The survey results show that the food waste amount at home per household has declined over the study span, likely due to the increase of outside-dining, while the percentage of households incurring food waste was on the rise. Also, among the factors associated with household food waste, the household size and regional differences in dietary habits were found positively correlated with food waste over time. In addition, the high-income families tended to generate more waste than low-income families after 2000. The age, education and employment characteristics of the main female member were also related with household food waste although the impact on food waste varied over time. Acknowledgement : This research uses data from China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS). And we thank the financial support from the Social Science Foundation of Liaoning Province (L16BGL038), Program for Liaoning Excellent Talents in University (WJQ2015026), the Youth Project of the Philosophy and Social Science Research, Ministry of Education of China (13YJC790057, 14YJC90094), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71303161, 71503173).