5 ms·

How much “ugly” food we throw away

42 points by rottyguy 11y ago

jglauche 11y ago
I am in Germany and I am a member of https://foodsharing.de/ https://foodsharing.de/ . We collect food from shops that would throw it away otherwise. In my town, we have a cooperation with a small organic supermarket where we collect food twice a week. Sometimes the quantity of the food that gets thrown out is sheer incredible: http://i.imgur.com/5mb4WN1.jpg http://i.imgur.com/5mb4WN1.jpg Over 95% of the collected food is still edible. It's mostly unpackaged food such as fruit, vegetables and bread, but sometimes packaged food as well with expired "Best before"-date (which honestly doesn't say anything about the quality of the contents). We usually split these quantities up with 4-6 people and it has fed me well over the past months.
- icebraining 11y ago
  Here in Portugal there's also a project called Refood, founded by an American, which collects food from restaurants, coffeeshops, etc, and provides them to people in need. It's now distributing 24 thousand meals per month.
hinkley 11y ago
Given how much processed food we eat I find it hard to believe the situation is that bad. Nobody is making orange juice out of perfect oranges.
- unholythree 11y ago
  That's sort of what I was thinking. I would imagine a huge amount of ugly carrots for example end up chopped up and in cans or frozen bags or mass produced food products. Who knows what the vegetables in a Swanson pot pie looked like when they were in a field somewhere.
- aaron695 11y ago
  Salon is a pretty awful magazine. The bias/inaccuracy's is pretty full on. It would be interesting to see if processed foods companies using off cuts contributes to fast food often being cheaper than if you made it yourself.
  - icc97 11y ago
    This isn't orginally from Salon. It's from Alternet (http://www.alternet.org/food/its-time-eat-ugly-food-you-wont-believe-how-much-were-wasting http://www.alternet.org/food/its-time-eat-ugly-food-you-wont...). Not that I know if Alternet is any better...
- caio1982 11y ago
  "Given how much processed food" you (in your country might) eat. Don't generalize like that. It's not because you don't see the problem with your own eyes that it doesn't exist.
  - Dylan16807 11y ago
    The nice thing about processed food is that you can ship it across the world. Heck, you can do that with most fresh food.
Rifu 11y ago
Last Week Tonight did a pretty good special on this topic as well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8xwLWb0lLY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8xwLWb0lLY
hugh4 11y ago
I don't think it's worth getting more upset about an uneaten carrot or chicken than about an uneaten pine cone or bear.
- onion2k 11y ago
  Given that the former examples take human effort and resources to grow while the latter don't, the two aren't equivalent. If we had perfectly efficient farms we'd save a huge amount of both energy and money providing food. Arguably we already have perfectly efficient bear production, insofar as we don't spend resources on them because we don't eat them.
  - hugh4 11y ago
    The amount of human effort wasted producing food is probably pretty small compared to the amount wasted, say, filling out HR forms.
- bryanlarsen 11y ago
  It makes a huge difference where the uneaten carrot ends up. If it's left on the field it can rot and become fertilizer. If it ends up in landfill, it decomposes in an anaerobic environment and creates methane.
tdsamardzhiev 11y ago
Until a few years ago, EU had a regulation that stated "all bananas and cucumbers must be free of abnormal curvature and at least 14 cm in length. " Not sure if I want to know what legislators did with the fruits...
- IanCal 11y ago
  That's not true, they define the "class" of banana/similar. It's there so that when one supplier in a country says "we'll deliver X tons of Class 1 bananas" there's some definition around what they're actually delivering. This gets more important as you start dealing with different items that have the same name in different countries.
  - tdsamardzhiev 11y ago
    Ok, they didn't ban them, they just put them together in a class with crappy, chemistry-grown fruits/veggies, so that nobody would buy them. I don't remember the exact text, so I probably shouldn't have put quotes, but still, what I said is true in practice. Anyway, it was an absolutely terrible idea that has been left in the past.
    - pjc50 11y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_Regulation_%28EC%29_No._2257/94 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_Regulation_%28EC%29... It's just overly-pedantic input validation in the legal system; if you're going to have rules that mention bananas, you have to define what is and what is not a banana. Especially if different fruits have different tax treatments.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Recipe22 11y ago
Great post! I own www.diabetry.com
caio1982 11y ago
That reminds me of a quite old doc that kids were expected to watch in schools during my childhood, Island of Flowers (with english subs): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amg08t0TQOY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amg08t0TQOY It's about a small river island in Porto Alegre, Brazil (in 1989). Food thrown away would be given to pigs first, and the rest discarded by the animals was scavenged by the poor people living there. It's a pretty intense scene to watch... It's a well known fact (for brazilians, that is) that in Brazil we waste and throw away to much good food but people stopped bothering years ago when some bills passed stating anyone giving/reselling thrown away food to others -- no matter how perfect they were/looked -- could go to jail and pay some fines if anything happened to the consumers of such food. It's quite easy to find fantastic food in street markets or at the back of restaurantes at the end of the day, specially veggies and fruits. That makes projects like food sharing etc extremely difficult.
- prawn 11y ago
  You might like this story about the 'Solidarity Fridge' in Spain. The mayor in the town hosting it tweaked rules about food so that people could stock a public fridge for anyone in need. Some people fill it with leftovers, others prepare food especially for it. http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/08/13/431960054/to-cut-food-waste-spains-solidarity-fridge-supplies-endless-leftovers http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/08/13/431960054/to-...
- Dylan16807 11y ago
  >some bills passed stating anyone giving/reselling thrown away food to others -- no matter how perfect they were/looked -- could go to jail and pay some fines if anything happened to the consumers of such food. Is that something that actually happened? In the US we tend to think that's a rule, but the opposite is true, there's explicit legal protection.
  - plonh 11y ago
    The US constantly shuts down unlicensed charity programs that set up feed stations in public. Donated food is subject to the same strict controls as sold food. A cafe can't donate a PB&J sandwich that has sat on the shelf unrefridgerated for 4 hours
goatforce5 11y ago
I've told this story before, but about 20 years ago I met a guy from a farming family. The family farm supplied zucchini/courgettes (I think it was) to supermarkets. The supermarkets had rules about what range of curvature was acceptable. Previously the extra bendy produce would essentially be waste (turned in to animal food, composted, etc), but with the rise of farmers markets and natural/organic food they were able to sell the bendy produce at a premium directly to the consumer. And here's a French supermarket that is successfully selling 'ugly' produce at reduced prices: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/24/ugly-fruits-and-vegetables-get-a-makeover/ http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/24/ugly-fruits-and-veg...
- plonh 11y ago
  Yes most cities have a discount produce shop that sells the B grade stuff.

42 points by rottyguy 11y ago

I am in Germany and I am a member of https://foodsharing.de/ https://foodsharing.de/ . We collect food from shops that would throw it away otherwise. In my town, we have a cooperation with a small organic supermarket where we collect food twice a week. Sometimes the quantity of the food that gets thrown out is sheer incredible: http://i.imgur.com/5mb4WN1.jpg http://i.imgur.com/5mb4WN1.jpg Over 95% of the collected food is still edible. It's mostly unpackaged food such as fruit, vegetables and bread, but sometimes packaged food as well with expired "Best before"-date (which honestly doesn't say anything about the quality of the contents). We usually split these quantities up with 4-6 people and it has fed me well over the past months.

icebraining 11y ago
Here in Portugal there's also a project called Refood, founded by an American, which collects food from restaurants, coffeeshops, etc, and provides them to people in need. It's now distributing 24 thousand meals per month.

hinkley 11y ago

Given how much processed food we eat I find it hard to believe the situation is that bad. Nobody is making orange juice out of perfect oranges.

unholythree 11y ago
That's sort of what I was thinking. I would imagine a huge amount of ugly carrots for example end up chopped up and in cans or frozen bags or mass produced food products. Who knows what the vegetables in a Swanson pot pie looked like when they were in a field somewhere.
aaron695 11y ago
Salon is a pretty awful magazine. The bias/inaccuracy's is pretty full on. It would be interesting to see if processed foods companies using off cuts contributes to fast food often being cheaper than if you made it yourself.
- icc97 11y ago
  This isn't orginally from Salon. It's from Alternet (http://www.alternet.org/food/its-time-eat-ugly-food-you-wont-believe-how-much-were-wasting http://www.alternet.org/food/its-time-eat-ugly-food-you-wont...). Not that I know if Alternet is any better...
caio1982 11y ago
"Given how much processed food" you (in your country might) eat. Don't generalize like that. It's not because you don't see the problem with your own eyes that it doesn't exist.
- Dylan16807 11y ago
  The nice thing about processed food is that you can ship it across the world. Heck, you can do that with most fresh food.

Rifu 11y ago

Last Week Tonight did a pretty good special on this topic as well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8xwLWb0lLY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8xwLWb0lLY

hugh4 11y ago

I don't think it's worth getting more upset about an uneaten carrot or chicken than about an uneaten pine cone or bear.

onion2k 11y ago
Given that the former examples take human effort and resources to grow while the latter don't, the two aren't equivalent. If we had perfectly efficient farms we'd save a huge amount of both energy and money providing food. Arguably we already have perfectly efficient bear production, insofar as we don't spend resources on them because we don't eat them.
- hugh4 11y ago
  The amount of human effort wasted producing food is probably pretty small compared to the amount wasted, say, filling out HR forms.
bryanlarsen 11y ago
It makes a huge difference where the uneaten carrot ends up. If it's left on the field it can rot and become fertilizer. If it ends up in landfill, it decomposes in an anaerobic environment and creates methane.

tdsamardzhiev 11y ago

Until a few years ago, EU had a regulation that stated "all bananas and cucumbers must be free of abnormal curvature and at least 14 cm in length. " Not sure if I want to know what legislators did with the fruits...

IanCal 11y ago
That's not true, they define the "class" of banana/similar. It's there so that when one supplier in a country says "we'll deliver X tons of Class 1 bananas" there's some definition around what they're actually delivering. This gets more important as you start dealing with different items that have the same name in different countries.
- tdsamardzhiev 11y ago
  Ok, they didn't ban them, they just put them together in a class with crappy, chemistry-grown fruits/veggies, so that nobody would buy them. I don't remember the exact text, so I probably shouldn't have put quotes, but still, what I said is true in practice. Anyway, it was an absolutely terrible idea that has been left in the past.
  - pjc50 11y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_Regulation_%28EC%29_No._2257/94 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_Regulation_%28EC%29... It's just overly-pedantic input validation in the legal system; if you're going to have rules that mention bananas, you have to define what is and what is not a banana. Especially if different fruits have different tax treatments.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

Recipe22 11y ago

Great post! I own www.diabetry.com

caio1982 11y ago

That reminds me of a quite old doc that kids were expected to watch in schools during my childhood, Island of Flowers (with english subs): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amg08t0TQOY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amg08t0TQOY It's about a small river island in Porto Alegre, Brazil (in 1989). Food thrown away would be given to pigs first, and the rest discarded by the animals was scavenged by the poor people living there. It's a pretty intense scene to watch... It's a well known fact (for brazilians, that is) that in Brazil we waste and throw away to much good food but people stopped bothering years ago when some bills passed stating anyone giving/reselling thrown away food to others -- no matter how perfect they were/looked -- could go to jail and pay some fines if anything happened to the consumers of such food. It's quite easy to find fantastic food in street markets or at the back of restaurantes at the end of the day, specially veggies and fruits. That makes projects like food sharing etc extremely difficult.

prawn 11y ago
You might like this story about the 'Solidarity Fridge' in Spain. The mayor in the town hosting it tweaked rules about food so that people could stock a public fridge for anyone in need. Some people fill it with leftovers, others prepare food especially for it. http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/08/13/431960054/to-cut-food-waste-spains-solidarity-fridge-supplies-endless-leftovers http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/08/13/431960054/to-...
Dylan16807 11y ago
>some bills passed stating anyone giving/reselling thrown away food to others -- no matter how perfect they were/looked -- could go to jail and pay some fines if anything happened to the consumers of such food. Is that something that actually happened? In the US we tend to think that's a rule, but the opposite is true, there's explicit legal protection.
- plonh 11y ago
  The US constantly shuts down unlicensed charity programs that set up feed stations in public. Donated food is subject to the same strict controls as sold food. A cafe can't donate a PB&J sandwich that has sat on the shelf unrefridgerated for 4 hours

goatforce5 11y ago

I've told this story before, but about 20 years ago I met a guy from a farming family. The family farm supplied zucchini/courgettes (I think it was) to supermarkets. The supermarkets had rules about what range of curvature was acceptable. Previously the extra bendy produce would essentially be waste (turned in to animal food, composted, etc), but with the rise of farmers markets and natural/organic food they were able to sell the bendy produce at a premium directly to the consumer. And here's a French supermarket that is successfully selling 'ugly' produce at reduced prices: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/24/ugly-fruits-and-vegetables-get-a-makeover/ http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/24/ugly-fruits-and-veg...

plonh 11y ago
Yes most cities have a discount produce shop that sells the B grade stuff.