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It's a crime against humanity how much food is thrown away because it's "not appealing" enough to the eye when we have so many in this world who go to bed hungr

• daveoc64 3y ago
  In the UK, most of the supermarkets now sell "wonky" fruit and veg - it may look less appealing, but it's safe to eat and cheaper.
• gambiting 3y ago
  >>It's a crime against humanity how much food is thrown away How much of it is actually thrown away though? It's my understanding that the "ugly" looking vegetables are just used to make sauces, canned produce, ready meals etc etc. No one is throwing out perfectly good tomatoes just because they are ugly - they just get turned into something else.
  • Kluggy 3y ago
    Or made into chips https://www.ugliessnacks.com https://www.ugliessnacks.com
  • soco 3y ago
    If they are redirected at the producer, for sure. But if they are labeled as ugly, or expired, only when they are on the shelves, I'm not that sure anymore. So I don't know how much is each share - recycled vs thrown away... and again, what does "thrown away" mean? Vegetables landing in compost are thrown away?
    • gambiting 3y ago
      Produce almost never gets sent to shops "as is" straight from the field - everything gets sorted into classes, 1st class, 2nd class, 3rd class etc......1st class should already be perfect and nice and even - that's usually what supermarkets buy. There might be an occassional "ugly" bunch of stuff that falls through, and I guess yes in that case it will probably be thrown out. And yes it's also a tragedy that a lot of food at supermarkets gets thrown out when unsold. But I'd bet that 99% of "ugly" produce never makes it to the shelves in the first place, it just gets turned into processed food.
• RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
  > because it's "not appealing" enough to the eye when we have so many in this world who go to bed hungry. Throwing or not throwing away the food would make no difference in the lives of the people going hungry. The people going hungry are going hungry not because of a dearth of food, but due to issues such as war or political or family instability.
  • mnw21cam 3y ago
    There's a pretty major problem with economics. If the food that is grown and is currently thrown away wasn't thrown away, then it would be effectively be available for a lower price than mainstream food. If this were taken to its logical conclusion, then allowing this food to be given to hungry people lowers the demand for the full-price food, leading to a reduction in price of that food, causing the people growing it to be unable to make ends meet. It is necessary for the production of food to continue to throw away the food that isn't bought, otherwise the people producing the food will go bankrupt and stop producing food. The above sounds very harsh. Obviously there are some schemes that allow excess food to be used by poorer people, like food banks, quality tiers, common agricultural policy type schemes, or just ensuring everyone has sufficient income through tax breaks or benefit schemes. Food banks give food away for free, and they are very limited in scope, and therefore have a limited affect on food price. Quality tiers are things like a supermarket selling "wonky veg" next to full-price veg, but you'll tend to notice that the wonky veg isn't actually much lower in price than the full-price veg. The EU's old common agricultural policy scheme effectively solved the problem by getting the government to guarantee that a food grower could sell their food for a viable price, but it led to huge complaints about "butter mountains" and waste - I think the point was missed that this waste was a reasonable trade-off for ensuring that food continued to be produced in sufficient quantities even in a bad year, and the fact that the government bought the excess meant that they owned it and could if they wanted to feed the hungry with it. Tax breaks and benefit schemes solve the problem without lowering the price of the food because the food seller still gets paid full price for the food. My point is that good intentions have generated schemes to get excess food to hungry people, but they necessarily have to be small in scale to avoid negatively affecting economics.
    • 3y ago
• vdaea 3y ago
  [flagged]
• pxx 3y ago
  This is a myth invented by some food delivery startups. As mentioned in sibling comments, this produce is often used in alternative streams. 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-...
  • ToucanLoucan 3y ago
    I'm open to being corrected but this article doesn't offer much for proof of what this person is claiming. It starts by reaffirming ~161 billion in waste (in 2008) (termed: not eaten) and citing some of the cause of that as cosmetic defects. Then the interviewed person goes on to say it's used in alternative production as mentioned in the other comments, but offers no proof or statistics of this. And the fact that enough ugly food existed to fill the purchase orders of a number of startups going out of their way to sell it kind of implies if they weren't, it would be going in the trash.
    • avgcorrection 3y ago
      > And the fact that enough ugly food existed to fill the purchase orders of a number of startups going out of their way to sell it kind of implies if they weren't, it would be going in the trash. In the same way that a sudden interest in therapy for dogs would prove that dogs were suffering from a mental health crisis. Yeah, you want to sell produce at a premium so that somewhat well-off people can feel like they are making a difference? Sounds good to me, yup yup. I mean the vagaries and arbitrariness of upper/upper-middle class social signaling is a trope in itself.
    • WrongAssumption 3y ago
      No, it implies they were willing to pay more than the alternative user. Makes sense, a retail customer will always pay more for a tomato than a canning factory.
• avgcorrection 3y ago
  > It's a crime against humanity how much food is thrown away because it's "not appealing" enough to the eye when we have so many in this world who go to bed hungry. Evidence for this? Any at all? Because I can’t imagine someone getting caught in the act of frowning in disgust which then immediately causes a shop owner to toss out that and similar-looking produce in the hopes that no one else will be disgusted. And how you would cook up such a causal connection is beyond me. What actually happens—and which just trivially follows from good old “economics”—is that perfectly good food is thrown out because you make more money by eliminating supply that can’t be sold. (Maybe also food regulations, I don’t know.)
  • ToucanLoucan 3y ago
    > Evidence for this? Any at all? Because I can’t imagine someone getting caught in the act of frowning in disgust which then immediately causes a shop owner to toss out that and similar-looking produce in the hopes that no one else will be disgusted. And how you would cook up such a causal connection is beyond me. Yeah that'd be pretty crazy, probably why that's not what happens. It's far likelier that the produce is filtered on the farm before it even gets to a supplier. https://econreview.berkeley.edu/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-produce-movement/ https://econreview.berkeley.edu/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugl... > What actually happens—and which just trivially follows from good old “economics”—is that perfectly good food is thrown out because you make more money by eliminating supply that can’t be sold. (Maybe also food regulations, I don’t know.) I think that's more why they lock the dumpsters behind grocery stores and/or dump bleach on the food, but that's also disgusting, so, lateral move I think.
    • avgcorrection 3y ago
      I got worried when I saw the UC Berkeley link. But turns out it is not about research—it’s an opinion piece on the “Ugly Food MOVEMENT” (God...). Which is fronted by, yeah, you guessed it, some scrappy startups who are asserting that there is a market failure[1] and that they can amend it. Then there is a link to some concrete numbers which links to a Hill article. Which is a puff piece for one of these startups—the cause of the food waste is just asserted in the first paragraph.[2] Then there’s the crucial farmer link. Which is just some loose “farmers we’ve talked to, like X” (one step above “people are saying”) and a link to a human interest or whatever you call those uninteresting subject-driven The New Yorker articles. I don’t know how people are in the USA (spoiler alert), but where I am from food is the everyday grocery product that people are most stingy about.[3] Lower prices are always good. So it seems bewildering that the consumer would send such signals to the Market—surely this would cause higher prices for the consumer? Not only that but here (like in America) there are farmer subsidies. Payed for by tax payers which are also consumers. (And Americans care about food æstehetics that much? Well let’s look to the article again: “Psychologists argued that the lack of public interest in ugly food was connected to self-esteem.” What the fuck? Seriously?) Not to mention inflation which makes such everyday products more expensive. Which everyone who cares about Economics on this site seems to be tearing their hair out over on a weekly basis. The article talks about how these noble startups are enabling ugly produce to be sold to smoothie retailers or whatever. Or juice factories... like the Market is so catastrophically mismanaged that you need a hipster startup for that? To connect that an orange shaped like Steve Buscemi doesn’t taste bad as juice? I am not being negative about the article by the way. Just the Movement. The article raises the question several times about whether this is really A Thing or if it is an astroturf, someone trying to make a buck on real climate change and environmental issues. Just look at penultimate paragraph. > The ugly produce movement exemplifies the twenty-first century consumer’s reliance on social media to navigate lifestyle changes. Food waste isn’t a simple problem; it’s an example of the broken agricultural system’s inability to distribute resources in a way that benefits all consumers. If individuals really want to be part of the solution, they have to look beyond the glitzy marketing of ‘socially responsible’ firms and become more vigilant of companies that claim to have an answer for everything. Would you look at that. A somewhat funny part is where they describe how the customers of these things are higher-income because it is more expensive. So the Market is so screwed up that “ugly food” isn’t something that the poor buy out of practical necessity? It’s been relegated to social indulgences-buying upper-middle class uh, people? All in all this damning evidence that you have presented here demonstrates to me that The Ugly Food Movement is a silly, boutique food practice that some I Want To Make a New Consumer Need marketing firm cooked up, some startups made A Thing, and that upper-middle class water cooler NPCs are probably now doing the good work of spreading the word about. [1] Because if this was about consumer choice, according to these startups, what difference would a new kind of company make? [2] “One innovative company called [Redacted], based in [Hipsterville, USA]” [3] Just imagine if people were given the chance to buy almost-expired or some other such ugly food... and of course they are and people love it. Why the heck do you need a startup for that?