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Playing devil's advocate: an enormous amount of food waste is caused by people simply refusing to buy ugly food. It's literally less wasteful to shave off most

Playing devil's advocate: an enormous amount of food waste is caused by people simply refusing to buy ugly food. It's literally less wasteful to shave off most of a carrot so that it's a baby carrot, than to try to sell the same carrots as-is. There's nothing wrong with the ugly carrots--but they'll rot on the shelves. Bruised apples are perfectly edible. Maybe you just don't like them, and that's fine--there's no accounting for taste. But I don't think it's outlandish for someone to give you a bruised apple. Broken bones in chicken aren't harmful--the traditional way of preparing jerk chicken involves chopping the chicken with a knife that just cleaves through the bones. Again, your preference here is valid, but it's your preference, not something that's objectively better. And these are some of the less extreme examples--being involved in my local CSA, I've heard people complain about potatoes with dirt on them, and literally heard someone refuse to buy eggs because they farmer got them from her own chickens. A lot of people's preferences around food aren't just arbitrary, they're downright illogical. Substitutions and expired food are obviously problematic--there's lots of room for delivery services to do better. But I am not convinced that the average person does a much better job selecting their food based on "quality".

simonebrunozzi 6y ago
Check out Imperfect Foods (I am not affiliated; simply a happy customer) - they send you a box with "imperfect" food that otherwise would have gone to waste. There are also other similar companies doing this.
denimnerd42 6y ago
You don't get any discount in this case though. You're still paying $2-3/lb for bruised apples that are like you said literally waste at that point and $2-5/lb for chicken that if you picked out yourself would be of higher quality. Even if they did give you a price break for lower quality food. They'd still do things like give you a pineapple that will never ripen before it rots like we received last week.
- kerkeslager 6y ago
  What I'm saying is that your perception of quality is not actually objective quality.
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  - asiachick 6y ago
    This car has dents but those don't matter. Full price for you. Car still gets you from a to b just fine. This jacket has some holes and few stains but it will still keep you warm.
    - moosey 6y ago
      Effectively, there is no difference between an apple and one with a bruise. I still get the same nutrition and taste, most other differences being unimportant. A jacket with a hole has massive loss of effectiveness, and I don't receive a new jacket to wear each day. A car with a dent has significant loss of value, not that it's something I'm terribly concerned with, I run all cars until they die.
      - Enginerrrd 6y ago
        >Effectively, there is no difference between an apple and one with a bruise. I still get the same nutrition and taste, most other differences being unimportant. That's simply not true. The bruises become rot spots and before getting there they introduce oxidation which affects taste. The shelf life is then also diminished not only for the bruised apple, but for any that are nearby. Relatively speaking, I think the bruise on an apple is actually a measurably greater decrease in (relative) value than the dents in a car.
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ping_pong 6y ago
That's a great marketing gimmick that some companies have made, but it's largely false. https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/2/26/18240399/food-waste-ugly-produce-myths-farms https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/2/26/18240399/food-waste-...
- encoderer 6y ago
  Thank you, I remember reading this as a tweet but couldn’t find it (twitter search is.... lacking)
  - zem 6y ago
    when you mentioned a tweet i had a feeling it would be by dr sarah taber, and she was indeed quoted in the vox post. i highly recommend following her on twitter; i have learnt a startling amount about food production and the realities of farming in america.
- kerkeslager 6y ago
  I am highly skeptical. The author of that article makes a lot of claims, but doesn't really go into a lot of how the information was obtained. I'm not denying there's some marketing involved here--I'm sure there is. But there's also some element of truth here. I've worked at a food co-op and they definitely composted a lot of food. In the article's logic, that's not food waste, but I think that feeding people is still a lot better.
  - munificent 6y ago
    I think it makes sense to be a lot more skeptical of the claims of companies like Imperfect Foods who have a vested interest in getting people to buy unappealing produce (from them, of course) than an independent food scientist staking her personal reputation on these claims.
  - skywhopper 6y ago
    That article is an interview with an expert in the field. You can look up Sarah Taber and find more information and citations. Just because there's not a Works Cited list attached to a Vox interview doesn't mean it's just made up. You realize that crops have to have organic material to grow, right? Using leftovers, spoilage, and damaged produce from the previous crop is how agriculture is traditionally done. If farmers don't use composting, then they have to buy some other source of organic material and fertilizer to grow the next year's crops. You say "feeding people is better", but there's more than enough food for everyone. The answer to hunger is not to force farmers to give the leftover produce to poor folks. Rather, it's to give the poor folks the means with which to buy the food they need. There's plenty to be bought! So much that lots of it gets thrown out! It'd be much healthier for the entire system if we addressed the problem at the source and made use of the systems that are in place rather than trying to short-circuit things, resulting in a lot of unintended side-effects.
encoderer 6y ago
Notwithstanding the baby carrots example, most ugly produced is still used and sold. It’s made into soups, salsas, juices, etc. I’ve read that one reason we get so many e-coli infections from lettuce is that there is no secondary market (no lettuce juice) so the farmers drive it to the livestock farms and track back germs to the lettuce farm on their wheels.
- thaeli 6y ago
  The shavings from baby carrot production are still used, for juice and pulp.
  - OJFord 6y ago
    For the benefit of any other perplexed non-Americans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_carrot#%22Baby-cut%22_carrots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_carrot#%22Baby-cut%22_car...
    - mdoms 6y ago
      Thank you, I really was confused!
    - defnotashton2 6y ago
      Lol you don't have baby carrots, they are my fav, ready to just eat like chips. They just started selling carrot chips :O
    - tallanvor 6y ago
      They are certainly not limited to America. You can buy them in many countries - they're common in the stores here in Norway, for example.
      - OJFord 6y ago
        The 'cut' type? I've never heard of them in the UK - chantenay or other small but whole carrots sure, but not 'regularly' sized carrots trimmed down to a smaller 'carrot shape'.
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zoomablemind 6y ago
> Playing devil's advocate: an enormous amount of food waste is caused by people simply refusing to buy ugly food. Price them down, ppl would consider the deal. It's a market, isn't it? Or, well, it's a supermarket being part of super-chains... Potatoes by pound priced like fruits.
- the_jeremy 6y ago
  There's at least one company trying to do this - Misfit Markets sells boxes of ugly produce delivered to your door, and they claim to be cheaper than supermarket prices as an ugliness discount. (Disclaimer: I've never used them, a relative works for them)
  - willcipriano 6y ago
    My wife bought into one of these services, the $25 box we received contained about 10 - 15 dollars worth of produce from my local store but at a lower quality. It was also random and often contained undesirable items in large quantities (who needs 12 lemons for the week?, What am I supposed to do with 3 fingerling potatoes?). I used to work in food service and it was pretty obvious to me that they were sourcing items from Sysco or US Foods by the way the items were tagged and packaged. I think the shipping costs eat away any value you could expect from something like this.
    - eatYourFood 6y ago
      The 25 vs 15 dollars issue means their business sucks unless they have a value add on top? If you were getting 15 lemons per week, maybe contract the vendor and try to address the issue?
      - willcipriano 6y ago
        > The 25 vs 15 dollars issue means their business sucks unless they have a value add on top? As I am buying "less desirable produce" (from what I can tell it all came from normal cases that a restaurant would order, I think this fools some people as they aren't used to seeing produce that still has dirt on it and is less presentable like that) I would expect more of it for my money, not less. I understand they have to pay for shipping but it's not as if I don't have to go to the grocery store anyway, maybe I just don't see the value proposition, for us it just wasn't there. >If you were getting 15 lemons per week, maybe contract the vendor and try to address the issue? Even if the product was more evenly distributed it wasn't enough for it to provide value for me. That point was just the final nail in the coffin.
stickfigure 6y ago
On the other-other hand, Instacart et al are all shopping in stores that already have this filter. So you're getting the expense, questionable selection, and all the waste. I love my local CSA box, dirty root veggies and all. I know that our CSA has seen a huge business increase (to the point that they had to refuse new customers for a while) so I hope this change persists.
microcolonel 6y ago
Even though automated grading of produce is not unheard of, it's not represented properly in the market. I think the first company to offer automated (or just standardized manual) grading and pricing on produce could be a big winner; I know I'd use it. It'd be especially good if the process distinguishes produce that's just ugly, from produce that is flavour/texture- or nutrition-compromised; eventually the latter could become well-defined enough that it goes straight to the compost heap rather than waiting with the produce that will actually sell at some price. The first one that comes to mind for me is brussels sprouts: there is a huge variety in flavour/texture, nutrition, and beauty, and sometimes I really care about what they look like, often I do not, but also often there is a big difference in other qualities.
gnicholas 6y ago
> Bruised apples are perfectly edible. Maybe you just don't like them, and that's fine--there's no accounting for taste. I find that once an apple gets a small bruise, it typically grows larger very quickly. If you eat it immediately, you can just cut out a small part. But if the grocery delivery comes with 50% of the apples bruised, that means you’re having to cut out (waste) a fair amount of your apples.
kaybe 6y ago
Bruised apples cannot be stored as long, so I try to avoid them.
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leetcrew 6y ago
> Playing devil's advocate: an enormous amount of food waste is caused by people simply refusing to buy ugly food. It's literally less wasteful to shave off most of a carrot so that it's a baby carrot, than to try to sell the same carrots as-is. There's nothing wrong with the ugly carrots--but they'll rot on the shelves. that's a fair point, but it's not hard to come up with a counterexample where the produce is meaningfully different. I usually buy limes for their juice, and if I get a lime that produces less than 1oz of juice, that means I have to cut another one open and juice it. not only is this annoying, since limes are priced by quantity at my grocery store, but it means that I'm probably going to waste most of the second lime (or use cellophane to wrap up the second half, creating plastic waste). I don't care too much about the aesthetic appeal of limes, but I'm definitely going to pick them all up to select the heaviest ones. these usually yield just a bit more than 1oz of juice, perfect for most of my use cases.
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darrenf 6y ago
> Playing devil's advocate: an enormous amount of food waste is caused by people simply refusing to buy ugly food. In London there's a startup which sells such rejected, ugly fruit and veg: https://www.oddbox.co.uk/ https://www.oddbox.co.uk/ (no affiliation beyond being a happy customer)
- pkaye 6y ago
  My understanding is the ugly food is often times used to make packaged foods like pre-chopped fruits and veggies, salads, apple sauce, baby carrots.
- bananapear 6y ago
  Considering their stated purpose, the fruit and veg in their marketing are remarkably photogenic
  - jeffwass 6y ago
    It's not just ugly fruits/veg, it's food that would otherwise be discarded for any reason. I've only been receiving their boxes for a few weeks now, and gotten some strange J-shaped cucumbers, but most of the produce looks normal.
gvjddbnvdrbv 6y ago
Bruised fruit goes bad much faster than none bruised fruit.
charwalker 6y ago
Specifically to bruised apples, the bruising may suggest crisp vs softness and factor into quality of the product. If I go looking for crisp apples, I avoid anything with a bruise as they often feel soft anyway and aren't worth checking. They are still edible, just not what I prefer or choose. I get that is a luxury of sorts, but I'd pick other fruit before a soft apple unless it is for baking.
awillen 6y ago
Not really. Here's one article that says otherwise (there are a lot more): https://thecounter.org/weve-heard-staggering-statistics-food-waste-new-study-says-theyre-wrong/ https://thecounter.org/weve-heard-staggering-statistics-food..., but ultimately the crux of it is that there are things like applesauce and canned diced tomatoes out there. Companies can pay less for ugly produce to make those products where looks don't matter, so they do that. The market works well in this case.
wl 6y ago
> Bruised apples are perfectly edible. Maybe you just don't like them, and that's fine--there's no accounting for taste. But I don't think it's outlandish for someone to give you a bruised apple. If I'm making pie or apple sauce, I'll seek out bruised apples—and pay less for them. Paying normal prices for bruised apples? No thanks.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  > Paying normal prices for bruised apples? No thanks. And because arranging different pricing for all the foodstuffs that look less than perfect costs more than profit on these items, into the bin goes perfectly good food.
  - ggggtez 6y ago
    It seems like you are making an unstated assumption that food being thrown away is a bad thing. I'm not convinced. Let's say a farmer wanted to reduce foodwaste. So they only sold perfect fruit that they knew would get bought. That would drive up the prices of those perfect fruit AND there would be less fruit for sale in total. Therefore, some amount of food waste should be acceptable to ensure the best outcome for everyone.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      > Let's say a farmer wanted to reduce foodwaste. So they only sold perfect fruit that they knew would get bought. Selling only perfect fruit is literally foodwaste right there. Fruits don't grow all perfect. If most of the fruit you see in store looks flawless, that literally means that most of the fruit harvested was either sold to another company or thrown away.
      - ggggtez 6y ago
        >Selling only perfect fruit is literally foodwaste right there. Not to put too fine a point on it, but you haven't exactly explained why "food waste" is a bad thing. I've given a reason why it could be considered a good thing: it can reduce the cost and increase total food that is purchased. For an absurd example, see the "Eat your vegetables, because there are children starving in China" argument. Just because it would be nice if every hungry person had food, doesn't mean that letting any food go to waste is necessarily immoral by itself.
AmericanChopper 6y ago
> an enormous amount of food waste is caused by people simply refusing to buy ugly food. This isn’t true at all. It’s literally a myth made up by people who want to sell ugly food to consumers. Ugly produce is used as animal food, sold to food service companies where it’s ugliness wont matter after they prepare it, or occasionally tilled back into the soil as fertilizer. https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/2/26/18240399/food-waste-ugly-produce-myths-farms https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/2/26/18240399/food-waste-...
- alwillis 6y ago
  When I first started going to Whole Foods back in the day, the produce looked like a picture out of a catalog. I’d never seen such flawless produce in my life.
scruple 6y ago
Not even. If the produce made it to the store shelves then it is by it's definition not ugly. They should see the amount of produce that isn't sold at markets because it doesn't meet supermarket chain standards for appearance. We used to fill up the back of a pickup truck, in the late 80s and early 90s, with reject carrots for $10 from a local farmer. They were perfectly fine. We'd always keep a bunch for ourselves, of course, but the bulk of these carrots were used as bait traps. That still goes on today anywhere that carrots are grown.
trimbo 6y ago
> Playing devil's advocate: an enormous amount of food waste is caused by people simply refusing to buy ugly food It's said to be 31% of the retail and consumer food in the US[1]. While that is enormous, I don't think it necessarily should be considered unacceptable. The food supply chain is a system we want to have a lot of slack in. So what level of food utilization would we have to have for someone to deliberately buy a very bruised apple at full price? I don't know, but I'm guessing it's too high to prevent a food security issue in a crisis. [1] - https://www.fda.gov/food/consumers/food-loss-and-waste https://www.fda.gov/food/consumers/food-loss-and-waste
petre 6y ago
I'll buy them. At half the price. Otherwise they can turn them to juice or stewed apples or whatever.
dwighttk 6y ago
one bad apple spoils the bunch
dannypgh 6y ago
> heard someone refuse to buy eggs because they farmer got them from her own chickens OK, I'll bite- where else could a farmer get [chicken] eggs from besides their own chickens?
- hawski 6y ago
  From an egg factory or an egg tree. :) I think OP meant, that there are people that need a certain level of reality distortion to consider a thing to be proper. If it came out of a chicken just recently it's disgusting, but packaged and sorted with a stamp is how it should be for those people. Basically a silly brain fart, that goes with a civilization, where thanks to a proper label we can divorce ourselves from animalistic and disgusting bounds of reality.
MintelIE 6y ago
>I don't think it's outlandish for someone to give you a bruised apple And apparently grocery stores put people with opinions like yours in charge of packing produce boxes, which leads to lost sales. Nobody's arguing that they're inedible, but how much of a discount is the retailer prepared to offer me for accepting his low grade produce?
NicoJuicy 6y ago
France had aan ugly fruit campaign because of this: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-2693000/Forget-ugli-fruit-meet-ugly-fruit-bowl-French-supermarket-introduces-lumpy-misshapen-fruit-vegetables-sold-30-discount-combat-food-waste.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-2693000/Forg...
crazygringo 6y ago
> Playing devil's advocate: an enormous amount of food waste is caused by people simply refusing to buy ugly food. Playing double-devil's advocate: 1) Most people have no problem buying ugly food. Much of the standardization of produce comes from packaging and packing requirements. Non-standard produce is still consumed in other forms: juice, frozen, soup, etc. 2) The vast majority of food waste comes from unsold restaurant food and food that goes uneaten at home (goes bad before you can consume it). This has nothing to do with ugly food. 3) The bruised part on apples tastes like crap. It's mealy and sour and fermenting and off-flavored. It's not my responsibility to eat bruised apples because a store can't be careful in handling. Blame the supply chain and grocery staff, not consumers.
- joeyjojo 6y ago
  I've always had an issue with the "people should buy ugly food" argument. It strikes me as being somewhat elitist, and I have my doubts that the people making this argument actually follow through themselves and pick the ugly food at the supermarket, or really know if actually makes any difference. I feel like I am doing the right thing by buying fruit and vegetables instead of processed food. Do I now need to make further consideration and question the impact of my choices because I am ignoring the ugly apples? Humans developed a highly sophisticated discernment of fruit quality for a reason.
  - carlmr 6y ago
    My local store sells 3Kg of potentially bruised apples for the price of 1Kg non-bruised. I often buy the bruised ones and cut off the bruised parts before eating. But I make this choice because while I do see a lower value in bruised apples, I don't see the value lower by a factor of 3. I usually cut off just 10-20% of the apple. If I paid full price for a bruised product I'm right to feel taken advantage of.
    - thayne 6y ago
      but that is a very different situation than paying the same price and getting bruised apples where you have to cut off 10-20%.
cortesoft 6y ago
There are other things I consider when shopping, too, that pickers don't. I try to pick fruits and vegetables at various levels of ripeness, so that I can have ripe produce throughout the week at home. I don't want only green bananas or only super ripe ones; I need some ripe ones for today, and then some greener ones for later in the week.
StellarTabi 6y ago
My branded grocery store bundles up old veggies and sells them at a steep discount, they're really good for freezing, smoothies, or cooking same day.
parasight 6y ago
In general I agree here. In case of bruised apples I am a bit picky because of patulin. It is a toxic produced in rotting apples.
watwut 6y ago
> Bruised apples are perfectly edible. And you have to eat them fast, because they get bad more quickly compared to non-bruised apple. And that is big difference, between apple that I can eat next two weeks and one I can not.
lorthemar 6y ago
It's not just a case of buying 'ugly food' or bruised apples. When I order online, I get potatoes that are sprouting, onions that have gone soft, meat with excessive fat or skin, and goods that are close to their expiry date. I get that, these are sold in order to avoid waste, but it should be my choice to pick them up. When I'm ordering online, I don't want to pay for poisonous potatoes or milk that will go bad in 2 days.
- ClikeX 6y ago
  This is odd. In the Netherlands I get the oposite. Most of the stuff in the physical store is always closer to expiration than when I order it from the same store. This is because they stock the delivery cars directly from the warehouse. Which is always fresher than what they have in front.
  - pastrami_panda 6y ago
    Same in sweden.
  - mortehu 6y ago
    Several of the US delivery services are just people shopping in your behalf and driving the food to you in their own car. For example Instacart works this way. We had to experiment a bit to find out which store doesn't stock too much bad produce. After we found that out (the answer was Costco) this problem went away.
- tonyarkles 6y ago
  And I mean it's a bit of a meme about Millenials, but I pick out avocados based on when I plan on using them. Making guac tonight? I'm grabbing the softest-not-going-bad avocados I can. Making guac for friends (back when having friends over was a thing)? Firm is great, they'll be ripe just in time for Saturday.
twic 6y ago
> an enormous amount of food waste is caused by people simply refusing to buy ugly food. Citation needed. I don't believe this is actually true. The food industry is much smarter than you think.
- iso947 6y ago
  https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/ugly-vegetable-food-waste-fruit-vegetable-a8825311.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/ugly...
- eatYourFood 6y ago
  "Around 25 per cent of edible fresh produce is thrown away due to visual imperfection or cosmetic damage every year in Australia. According to a 2013 study from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)," https://www.ausfoodnews.com.au/2014/12/10/woolworths-launches-the-odd-bunch-not-quite-perfect-looking-fruit-and-vegetables.html https://www.ausfoodnews.com.au/2014/12/10/woolworths-launche... Original source is somewhere in there - sorry for the laziness. Even without the citation I believe this and take it at face value. I'm not sure what would make you not believe it? Have you never passed over something based purely on looks or noticed someone else do the same? My kids instinctively do this when they eat fruit; even my 2 year old does it and they've never been told to!
  - cmendel 6y ago
    Wow. I know that folks prefer better looking produce, but I hadn't realized it was quite that dramatic.
  - avar 6y ago
    What makes me not believe it is that I read the study you're indirectly quoting[1]. I can't see how the articles you & the sibling comment could be written by a journalist with any other agenda than to deliberately misinform. The 25% number is not 25% of food produced, but 25% of the waste in the supply chain being on the consumer side. Nowhere that I can see in the 2013 study cited does the FAO make the claim that "fresh produce is thrown away due to visual imperfection", that number also encompasses e.g. people overbuying produce that goes bad etc. By the criteria of the article you're citing if the production & distribution part of the supply chain got more efficient that scary 25% number would rise. Indeed if you read the study this is what's happened in industrialized countries, we have a higher food waste percentage on the consumer side because we have more relative savings in the rest of the supply chain. 1. http://www.fao.org/3/i3347e/i3347e.pdf http://www.fao.org/3/i3347e/i3347e.pdf
thayne 6y ago
> it's your preference, not something that's objectively better well, is that not a valid reason to want to pick out produce myself? How do I know the store working will have the same preference as me? What if I prefer my fruit to be under-ripe, and the store worker thinks I prefer over-ripe fruti?
- eatYourFood 6y ago
  One could argue that those preferences make the world a worst place. If we just accepted the first carrot we see rather than overlooking the crooked ones, there would be less waste. We are so picky and so fussy that extra waste and energy is expended just to make fussy people happy. I like to get what I want too but I can't help think that if we were all a little more relaxed in this area that the world might be a better place.
  - thayne 6y ago
    There is more to picking produce than just cosmetics. I don't care if my carrot is crooked. I care a lot if my banana is too ripe, or my apple is bruised. Also, is blemished food wasted because people refuse to eat it, or would food be wasted regardless, and the wasted food is blemished because people select the unblemished food first?
sacado2 6y ago
Just sell ugly food cheaper and people will start to buy it. In fact I wonder if there is not a huge market for someone who would say "No need to choose anymore: with 'ugly foods', you can save money and the planet"
fmajid 6y ago
That’s a myth. Most ugly produce is sold to food processors: https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/2/26/18240399/food-waste-ugly-produce-myths-farms https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/2/26/18240399/food-waste-...

simonebrunozzi 6y ago

Check out Imperfect Foods (I am not affiliated; simply a happy customer) - they send you a box with "imperfect" food that otherwise would have gone to waste. There are also other similar companies doing this.

denimnerd42 6y ago

You don't get any discount in this case though. You're still paying $2-3/lb for bruised apples that are like you said literally waste at that point and $2-5/lb for chicken that if you picked out yourself would be of higher quality. Even if they did give you a price break for lower quality food. They'd still do things like give you a pineapple that will never ripen before it rots like we received last week.

kerkeslager 6y ago
What I'm saying is that your perception of quality is not actually objective quality.
- deleted 6y ago
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- asiachick 6y ago
  This car has dents but those don't matter. Full price for you. Car still gets you from a to b just fine. This jacket has some holes and few stains but it will still keep you warm.
  - moosey 6y ago
    Effectively, there is no difference between an apple and one with a bruise. I still get the same nutrition and taste, most other differences being unimportant. A jacket with a hole has massive loss of effectiveness, and I don't receive a new jacket to wear each day. A car with a dent has significant loss of value, not that it's something I'm terribly concerned with, I run all cars until they die.
    - Enginerrrd 6y ago
      >Effectively, there is no difference between an apple and one with a bruise. I still get the same nutrition and taste, most other differences being unimportant. That's simply not true. The bruises become rot spots and before getting there they introduce oxidation which affects taste. The shelf life is then also diminished not only for the bruised apple, but for any that are nearby. Relatively speaking, I think the bruise on an apple is actually a measurably greater decrease in (relative) value than the dents in a car.
      - deleted 6y ago
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      - 6y ago

ping_pong 6y ago

That's a great marketing gimmick that some companies have made, but it's largely false. https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/2/26/18240399/food-waste-ugly-produce-myths-farms https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/2/26/18240399/food-waste-...

encoderer 6y ago
Thank you, I remember reading this as a tweet but couldn’t find it (twitter search is.... lacking)
- zem 6y ago
  when you mentioned a tweet i had a feeling it would be by dr sarah taber, and she was indeed quoted in the vox post. i highly recommend following her on twitter; i have learnt a startling amount about food production and the realities of farming in america.
kerkeslager 6y ago
I am highly skeptical. The author of that article makes a lot of claims, but doesn't really go into a lot of how the information was obtained. I'm not denying there's some marketing involved here--I'm sure there is. But there's also some element of truth here. I've worked at a food co-op and they definitely composted a lot of food. In the article's logic, that's not food waste, but I think that feeding people is still a lot better.
- munificent 6y ago
  I think it makes sense to be a lot more skeptical of the claims of companies like Imperfect Foods who have a vested interest in getting people to buy unappealing produce (from them, of course) than an independent food scientist staking her personal reputation on these claims.
- skywhopper 6y ago
  That article is an interview with an expert in the field. You can look up Sarah Taber and find more information and citations. Just because there's not a Works Cited list attached to a Vox interview doesn't mean it's just made up. You realize that crops have to have organic material to grow, right? Using leftovers, spoilage, and damaged produce from the previous crop is how agriculture is traditionally done. If farmers don't use composting, then they have to buy some other source of organic material and fertilizer to grow the next year's crops. You say "feeding people is better", but there's more than enough food for everyone. The answer to hunger is not to force farmers to give the leftover produce to poor folks. Rather, it's to give the poor folks the means with which to buy the food they need. There's plenty to be bought! So much that lots of it gets thrown out! It'd be much healthier for the entire system if we addressed the problem at the source and made use of the systems that are in place rather than trying to short-circuit things, resulting in a lot of unintended side-effects.

encoderer 6y ago

Notwithstanding the baby carrots example, most ugly produced is still used and sold. It’s made into soups, salsas, juices, etc. I’ve read that one reason we get so many e-coli infections from lettuce is that there is no secondary market (no lettuce juice) so the farmers drive it to the livestock farms and track back germs to the lettuce farm on their wheels.

thaeli 6y ago
The shavings from baby carrot production are still used, for juice and pulp.
- OJFord 6y ago
  For the benefit of any other perplexed non-Americans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_carrot#%22Baby-cut%22_carrots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_carrot#%22Baby-cut%22_car...
  - mdoms 6y ago
    Thank you, I really was confused!
  - defnotashton2 6y ago
    Lol you don't have baby carrots, they are my fav, ready to just eat like chips. They just started selling carrot chips :O
  - tallanvor 6y ago
    They are certainly not limited to America. You can buy them in many countries - they're common in the stores here in Norway, for example.
    - OJFord 6y ago
      The 'cut' type? I've never heard of them in the UK - chantenay or other small but whole carrots sure, but not 'regularly' sized carrots trimmed down to a smaller 'carrot shape'.

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zoomablemind 6y ago

> Playing devil's advocate: an enormous amount of food waste is caused by people simply refusing to buy ugly food. Price them down, ppl would consider the deal. It's a market, isn't it? Or, well, it's a supermarket being part of super-chains... Potatoes by pound priced like fruits.

the_jeremy 6y ago
There's at least one company trying to do this - Misfit Markets sells boxes of ugly produce delivered to your door, and they claim to be cheaper than supermarket prices as an ugliness discount. (Disclaimer: I've never used them, a relative works for them)
- willcipriano 6y ago
  My wife bought into one of these services, the $25 box we received contained about 10 - 15 dollars worth of produce from my local store but at a lower quality. It was also random and often contained undesirable items in large quantities (who needs 12 lemons for the week?, What am I supposed to do with 3 fingerling potatoes?). I used to work in food service and it was pretty obvious to me that they were sourcing items from Sysco or US Foods by the way the items were tagged and packaged. I think the shipping costs eat away any value you could expect from something like this.
  - eatYourFood 6y ago
    The 25 vs 15 dollars issue means their business sucks unless they have a value add on top? If you were getting 15 lemons per week, maybe contract the vendor and try to address the issue?
    - willcipriano 6y ago
      > The 25 vs 15 dollars issue means their business sucks unless they have a value add on top? As I am buying "less desirable produce" (from what I can tell it all came from normal cases that a restaurant would order, I think this fools some people as they aren't used to seeing produce that still has dirt on it and is less presentable like that) I would expect more of it for my money, not less. I understand they have to pay for shipping but it's not as if I don't have to go to the grocery store anyway, maybe I just don't see the value proposition, for us it just wasn't there. >If you were getting 15 lemons per week, maybe contract the vendor and try to address the issue? Even if the product was more evenly distributed it wasn't enough for it to provide value for me. That point was just the final nail in the coffin.

stickfigure 6y ago

On the other-other hand, Instacart et al are all shopping in stores that already have this filter. So you're getting the expense, questionable selection, and all the waste. I love my local CSA box, dirty root veggies and all. I know that our CSA has seen a huge business increase (to the point that they had to refuse new customers for a while) so I hope this change persists.

microcolonel 6y ago

Even though automated grading of produce is not unheard of, it's not represented properly in the market. I think the first company to offer automated (or just standardized manual) grading and pricing on produce could be a big winner; I know I'd use it. It'd be especially good if the process distinguishes produce that's just ugly, from produce that is flavour/texture- or nutrition-compromised; eventually the latter could become well-defined enough that it goes straight to the compost heap rather than waiting with the produce that will actually sell at some price. The first one that comes to mind for me is brussels sprouts: there is a huge variety in flavour/texture, nutrition, and beauty, and sometimes I really care about what they look like, often I do not, but also often there is a big difference in other qualities.

gnicholas 6y ago

> Bruised apples are perfectly edible. Maybe you just don't like them, and that's fine--there's no accounting for taste. I find that once an apple gets a small bruise, it typically grows larger very quickly. If you eat it immediately, you can just cut out a small part. But if the grocery delivery comes with 50% of the apples bruised, that means you’re having to cut out (waste) a fair amount of your apples.

kaybe 6y ago

Bruised apples cannot be stored as long, so I try to avoid them.

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leetcrew 6y ago

> Playing devil's advocate: an enormous amount of food waste is caused by people simply refusing to buy ugly food. It's literally less wasteful to shave off most of a carrot so that it's a baby carrot, than to try to sell the same carrots as-is. There's nothing wrong with the ugly carrots--but they'll rot on the shelves. that's a fair point, but it's not hard to come up with a counterexample where the produce is meaningfully different. I usually buy limes for their juice, and if I get a lime that produces less than 1oz of juice, that means I have to cut another one open and juice it. not only is this annoying, since limes are priced by quantity at my grocery store, but it means that I'm probably going to waste most of the second lime (or use cellophane to wrap up the second half, creating plastic waste). I don't care too much about the aesthetic appeal of limes, but I'm definitely going to pick them all up to select the heaviest ones. these usually yield just a bit more than 1oz of juice, perfect for most of my use cases.

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darrenf 6y ago

> Playing devil's advocate: an enormous amount of food waste is caused by people simply refusing to buy ugly food. In London there's a startup which sells such rejected, ugly fruit and veg: https://www.oddbox.co.uk/ https://www.oddbox.co.uk/ (no affiliation beyond being a happy customer)

pkaye 6y ago
My understanding is the ugly food is often times used to make packaged foods like pre-chopped fruits and veggies, salads, apple sauce, baby carrots.
bananapear 6y ago
Considering their stated purpose, the fruit and veg in their marketing are remarkably photogenic
- jeffwass 6y ago
  It's not just ugly fruits/veg, it's food that would otherwise be discarded for any reason. I've only been receiving their boxes for a few weeks now, and gotten some strange J-shaped cucumbers, but most of the produce looks normal.

gvjddbnvdrbv 6y ago

Bruised fruit goes bad much faster than none bruised fruit.

charwalker 6y ago

Specifically to bruised apples, the bruising may suggest crisp vs softness and factor into quality of the product. If I go looking for crisp apples, I avoid anything with a bruise as they often feel soft anyway and aren't worth checking. They are still edible, just not what I prefer or choose. I get that is a luxury of sorts, but I'd pick other fruit before a soft apple unless it is for baking.

awillen 6y ago

Not really. Here's one article that says otherwise (there are a lot more): https://thecounter.org/weve-heard-staggering-statistics-food-waste-new-study-says-theyre-wrong/ https://thecounter.org/weve-heard-staggering-statistics-food..., but ultimately the crux of it is that there are things like applesauce and canned diced tomatoes out there. Companies can pay less for ugly produce to make those products where looks don't matter, so they do that. The market works well in this case.

wl 6y ago

> Bruised apples are perfectly edible. Maybe you just don't like them, and that's fine--there's no accounting for taste. But I don't think it's outlandish for someone to give you a bruised apple. If I'm making pie or apple sauce, I'll seek out bruised apples—and pay less for them. Paying normal prices for bruised apples? No thanks.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
> Paying normal prices for bruised apples? No thanks. And because arranging different pricing for all the foodstuffs that look less than perfect costs more than profit on these items, into the bin goes perfectly good food.
- ggggtez 6y ago
  It seems like you are making an unstated assumption that food being thrown away is a bad thing. I'm not convinced. Let's say a farmer wanted to reduce foodwaste. So they only sold perfect fruit that they knew would get bought. That would drive up the prices of those perfect fruit AND there would be less fruit for sale in total. Therefore, some amount of food waste should be acceptable to ensure the best outcome for everyone.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    > Let's say a farmer wanted to reduce foodwaste. So they only sold perfect fruit that they knew would get bought. Selling only perfect fruit is literally foodwaste right there. Fruits don't grow all perfect. If most of the fruit you see in store looks flawless, that literally means that most of the fruit harvested was either sold to another company or thrown away.
    - ggggtez 6y ago
      >Selling only perfect fruit is literally foodwaste right there. Not to put too fine a point on it, but you haven't exactly explained why "food waste" is a bad thing. I've given a reason why it could be considered a good thing: it can reduce the cost and increase total food that is purchased. For an absurd example, see the "Eat your vegetables, because there are children starving in China" argument. Just because it would be nice if every hungry person had food, doesn't mean that letting any food go to waste is necessarily immoral by itself.

AmericanChopper 6y ago

> an enormous amount of food waste is caused by people simply refusing to buy ugly food. This isn’t true at all. It’s literally a myth made up by people who want to sell ugly food to consumers. Ugly produce is used as animal food, sold to food service companies where it’s ugliness wont matter after they prepare it, or occasionally tilled back into the soil as fertilizer. https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/2/26/18240399/food-waste-ugly-produce-myths-farms https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/2/26/18240399/food-waste-...

alwillis 6y ago
When I first started going to Whole Foods back in the day, the produce looked like a picture out of a catalog. I’d never seen such flawless produce in my life.

scruple 6y ago

Not even. If the produce made it to the store shelves then it is by it's definition not ugly. They should see the amount of produce that isn't sold at markets because it doesn't meet supermarket chain standards for appearance. We used to fill up the back of a pickup truck, in the late 80s and early 90s, with reject carrots for $10 from a local farmer. They were perfectly fine. We'd always keep a bunch for ourselves, of course, but the bulk of these carrots were used as bait traps. That still goes on today anywhere that carrots are grown.

trimbo 6y ago

> Playing devil's advocate: an enormous amount of food waste is caused by people simply refusing to buy ugly food It's said to be 31% of the retail and consumer food in the US[1]. While that is enormous, I don't think it necessarily should be considered unacceptable. The food supply chain is a system we want to have a lot of slack in. So what level of food utilization would we have to have for someone to deliberately buy a very bruised apple at full price? I don't know, but I'm guessing it's too high to prevent a food security issue in a crisis. [1] - https://www.fda.gov/food/consumers/food-loss-and-waste https://www.fda.gov/food/consumers/food-loss-and-waste

petre 6y ago

I'll buy them. At half the price. Otherwise they can turn them to juice or stewed apples or whatever.

dwighttk 6y ago

one bad apple spoils the bunch

dannypgh 6y ago

> heard someone refuse to buy eggs because they farmer got them from her own chickens OK, I'll bite- where else could a farmer get [chicken] eggs from besides their own chickens?

hawski 6y ago
From an egg factory or an egg tree. :) I think OP meant, that there are people that need a certain level of reality distortion to consider a thing to be proper. If it came out of a chicken just recently it's disgusting, but packaged and sorted with a stamp is how it should be for those people. Basically a silly brain fart, that goes with a civilization, where thanks to a proper label we can divorce ourselves from animalistic and disgusting bounds of reality.

MintelIE 6y ago

>I don't think it's outlandish for someone to give you a bruised apple And apparently grocery stores put people with opinions like yours in charge of packing produce boxes, which leads to lost sales. Nobody's arguing that they're inedible, but how much of a discount is the retailer prepared to offer me for accepting his low grade produce?

NicoJuicy 6y ago

France had aan ugly fruit campaign because of this: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-2693000/Forget-ugli-fruit-meet-ugly-fruit-bowl-French-supermarket-introduces-lumpy-misshapen-fruit-vegetables-sold-30-discount-combat-food-waste.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-2693000/Forg...

crazygringo 6y ago

> Playing devil's advocate: an enormous amount of food waste is caused by people simply refusing to buy ugly food. Playing double-devil's advocate: 1) Most people have no problem buying ugly food. Much of the standardization of produce comes from packaging and packing requirements. Non-standard produce is still consumed in other forms: juice, frozen, soup, etc. 2) The vast majority of food waste comes from unsold restaurant food and food that goes uneaten at home (goes bad before you can consume it). This has nothing to do with ugly food. 3) The bruised part on apples tastes like crap. It's mealy and sour and fermenting and off-flavored. It's not my responsibility to eat bruised apples because a store can't be careful in handling. Blame the supply chain and grocery staff, not consumers.

joeyjojo 6y ago
I've always had an issue with the "people should buy ugly food" argument. It strikes me as being somewhat elitist, and I have my doubts that the people making this argument actually follow through themselves and pick the ugly food at the supermarket, or really know if actually makes any difference. I feel like I am doing the right thing by buying fruit and vegetables instead of processed food. Do I now need to make further consideration and question the impact of my choices because I am ignoring the ugly apples? Humans developed a highly sophisticated discernment of fruit quality for a reason.
- carlmr 6y ago
  My local store sells 3Kg of potentially bruised apples for the price of 1Kg non-bruised. I often buy the bruised ones and cut off the bruised parts before eating. But I make this choice because while I do see a lower value in bruised apples, I don't see the value lower by a factor of 3. I usually cut off just 10-20% of the apple. If I paid full price for a bruised product I'm right to feel taken advantage of.
  - thayne 6y ago
    but that is a very different situation than paying the same price and getting bruised apples where you have to cut off 10-20%.

cortesoft 6y ago

There are other things I consider when shopping, too, that pickers don't. I try to pick fruits and vegetables at various levels of ripeness, so that I can have ripe produce throughout the week at home. I don't want only green bananas or only super ripe ones; I need some ripe ones for today, and then some greener ones for later in the week.

StellarTabi 6y ago

My branded grocery store bundles up old veggies and sells them at a steep discount, they're really good for freezing, smoothies, or cooking same day.

parasight 6y ago

In general I agree here. In case of bruised apples I am a bit picky because of patulin. It is a toxic produced in rotting apples.

watwut 6y ago

> Bruised apples are perfectly edible. And you have to eat them fast, because they get bad more quickly compared to non-bruised apple. And that is big difference, between apple that I can eat next two weeks and one I can not.

lorthemar 6y ago

It's not just a case of buying 'ugly food' or bruised apples. When I order online, I get potatoes that are sprouting, onions that have gone soft, meat with excessive fat or skin, and goods that are close to their expiry date. I get that, these are sold in order to avoid waste, but it should be my choice to pick them up. When I'm ordering online, I don't want to pay for poisonous potatoes or milk that will go bad in 2 days.

ClikeX 6y ago
This is odd. In the Netherlands I get the oposite. Most of the stuff in the physical store is always closer to expiration than when I order it from the same store. This is because they stock the delivery cars directly from the warehouse. Which is always fresher than what they have in front.
- pastrami_panda 6y ago
  Same in sweden.
- mortehu 6y ago
  Several of the US delivery services are just people shopping in your behalf and driving the food to you in their own car. For example Instacart works this way. We had to experiment a bit to find out which store doesn't stock too much bad produce. After we found that out (the answer was Costco) this problem went away.
tonyarkles 6y ago
And I mean it's a bit of a meme about Millenials, but I pick out avocados based on when I plan on using them. Making guac tonight? I'm grabbing the softest-not-going-bad avocados I can. Making guac for friends (back when having friends over was a thing)? Firm is great, they'll be ripe just in time for Saturday.

twic 6y ago

> an enormous amount of food waste is caused by people simply refusing to buy ugly food. Citation needed. I don't believe this is actually true. The food industry is much smarter than you think.

iso947 6y ago
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/ugly-vegetable-food-waste-fruit-vegetable-a8825311.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/ugly...
eatYourFood 6y ago
"Around 25 per cent of edible fresh produce is thrown away due to visual imperfection or cosmetic damage every year in Australia. According to a 2013 study from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)," https://www.ausfoodnews.com.au/2014/12/10/woolworths-launches-the-odd-bunch-not-quite-perfect-looking-fruit-and-vegetables.html https://www.ausfoodnews.com.au/2014/12/10/woolworths-launche... Original source is somewhere in there - sorry for the laziness. Even without the citation I believe this and take it at face value. I'm not sure what would make you not believe it? Have you never passed over something based purely on looks or noticed someone else do the same? My kids instinctively do this when they eat fruit; even my 2 year old does it and they've never been told to!
- cmendel 6y ago
  Wow. I know that folks prefer better looking produce, but I hadn't realized it was quite that dramatic.
- avar 6y ago
  What makes me not believe it is that I read the study you're indirectly quoting[1]. I can't see how the articles you & the sibling comment could be written by a journalist with any other agenda than to deliberately misinform. The 25% number is not 25% of food produced, but 25% of the waste in the supply chain being on the consumer side. Nowhere that I can see in the 2013 study cited does the FAO make the claim that "fresh produce is thrown away due to visual imperfection", that number also encompasses e.g. people overbuying produce that goes bad etc. By the criteria of the article you're citing if the production & distribution part of the supply chain got more efficient that scary 25% number would rise. Indeed if you read the study this is what's happened in industrialized countries, we have a higher food waste percentage on the consumer side because we have more relative savings in the rest of the supply chain. 1. http://www.fao.org/3/i3347e/i3347e.pdf http://www.fao.org/3/i3347e/i3347e.pdf

thayne 6y ago

> it's your preference, not something that's objectively better well, is that not a valid reason to want to pick out produce myself? How do I know the store working will have the same preference as me? What if I prefer my fruit to be under-ripe, and the store worker thinks I prefer over-ripe fruti?

eatYourFood 6y ago
One could argue that those preferences make the world a worst place. If we just accepted the first carrot we see rather than overlooking the crooked ones, there would be less waste. We are so picky and so fussy that extra waste and energy is expended just to make fussy people happy. I like to get what I want too but I can't help think that if we were all a little more relaxed in this area that the world might be a better place.
- thayne 6y ago
  There is more to picking produce than just cosmetics. I don't care if my carrot is crooked. I care a lot if my banana is too ripe, or my apple is bruised. Also, is blemished food wasted because people refuse to eat it, or would food be wasted regardless, and the wasted food is blemished because people select the unblemished food first?

sacado2 6y ago

Just sell ugly food cheaper and people will start to buy it. In fact I wonder if there is not a huge market for someone who would say "No need to choose anymore: with 'ugly foods', you can save money and the planet"

fmajid 6y ago

That’s a myth. Most ugly produce is sold to food processors: https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/2/26/18240399/food-waste-ugly-produce-myths-farms https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/2/26/18240399/food-waste-...