Unnatural selection: Why "ugly" vegetables and fruits do not fall on the shelves
Carrots with a split tip, flattened apple, bent leeks, potatoes resembling a nested doll — these guys were not lucky to grow up with canonical beauties, and although they are no less tasty and useful than their counterparts of the “right” shape, for some reason are more often found on funny pictures than on the market or in supermarkets.
The so-called cosmetic imperfections are a common phenomenon in agriculture: a huge amount of products are sent straight from the garden, simply because they do not meet the standard ideas of consumers about vegetable beauty. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, about 40% of the harvest of fruits and vegetables around the world go to waste, and, as a rule, this is due not to the suitability or taste of products, but to its aesthetic defects.
Until recently, farmers gave "ugly" vegetables to charity, but there was no talk of selling them profitably: it did not meet with a response among implementers, because they used to think that the final buyer (that is, you and I) do not want see imperfect fruit on your table. People in general are very sensitive to everything non-standard and different from themselves - first of all in appearance. On the streets, we look away from people with physical injuries - which is to say about the ubiquitous domestic racism or body-ramming.
And if the appearance of other people cannot be controlled, and “you can” unless you ignore them, treat them with disdain, pity or anger, then strict selection of nice-looking fruits and vegetables is exactly in our power, and therefore, let everything that falls on our table will be without a hitch without a hitch. Of course, we have every right to transfer our neuroses and prejudices about appearance, aggravated by aggressive marketing, to innocent vegetables. But there are good reasons to stop doing this.
One of the first to notice them was the British activist Tristram Stewart. In 2009, he wrote the book "Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal" about the machinations of the consumption machine with respect to food, in which he also mentioned blatant discrimination of "ugly" fruits. Radical Frigan Stuart prefers to purchase in supermarkets the collection of waste products in the same stores, on the market and even in garbage cans. The ideologue of the “Feeding the 5000” campaign, a free feast for homeless people from “objectionable” consumers, is a carrier of rather radical convictions: let's say, his opinion that the shelf life of food is just a convention, we are not ready to divide. Nevertheless, Stewart quite clearly conveyed to retailers and consumers the fact that non-standard vegetables and fruits can and should be eaten.
Recently, people began to buy edible "freaks", realizing that while doing a good deed - minimize waste implementation
Partly due to Stewart's public initiatives, vegetables and fruits of atypical shape appeared on the shelves of many British supermarkets: hail-stuffed apples, crooked plums and fancy eggplants. Shazia Ejaz of the British Retail Consortium sees extreme importance in this shift. “The priority is to get the most out of the crop,” Ejaz reports. “It can be not only selling the best part in packages or by weight, but also finding alternative ways to use vegetables and fruits that have not reached the standards, for example selling finished food - side dishes and soups - and this is becoming increasingly popular. " As the representative of the British supermarket Waitrose Jess Hughes notes, more recently, people readily buy edible "freaks", realizing that they are doing a good deed, minimizing sales waste.
A healthy approach to consumption is also developing in Russia. For example, the farmers' cooperative LavkaLavka buys from farmers all suitable fruits and vegetables, including conditional non-format. According to the founder of the cooperative, Boris Akimov, for them there is no fundamental difference between the "right" vegetables and their bizarre relatives, and the buyers in their stores are not at all eager to buy the most perfect-looking fruits. So, as long as the supermarket chain employees lay out the tray with seemingly flawless and polished apples to shine, eco-customers are indifferent to such a gold standard, and some of them are strange assorted vegetables, though not always convenient to clean, and at all seem " more organic "and quite beautiful.
In 2013, Intermarché, a large French supermarket chain, launched the campaign “Inglorious Fruits and Vegetables” just so that customers could clearly see not only their absolute suitability, but also the special attractiveness of conditionally non-format products. Intermarché not only decided to sell it at a 30% discount, but also undertook to educate customers with the help of colorful posters. According to Patris de Villiers, a campaign photographer, in her photography of curved eggplants, fancy lemons and pears far from the canon, the main goal was to choose the right angle of shooting, under which you can see how these strange vegetables and fruits are cute, unique and "worthy of love." At first, the conditionally ugly fruits did not sell very well, but then soups and juices made from them appeared on the shelves of the chain, and sales quickly went up the hill. Soon "Auchan" and other large networks also launched similar initiatives. It is noteworthy that after such a boom, the European Union declared 2014 the Year of the fight against food waste.
Not only activists and startups, but also cooks oppose aesthetic dictatorship on the shelves. Chef Massimo Bottura from the famous restaurant "Osteria Francescana", the owner of three Michelin stars, last year organized the project "Food for Soul" as part of the World Expo in Milan. The project, apparently inspired by Tristram Stewart's initiatives, was that the most eminent chefs of the planet prepared for the low-income gastronomic cuisine from imperfect, but quite usable foods that would otherwise have been a waste.
We recognize between 30 and 40% of products worldwide as defective simply because they are “not perfect,” while 800 million people are hungry.
Activists are changing the public perception of non-standard vegetables not only in Europe, but also in the United States, with quite political means. The Ugly Fruit and Veg campaign, founded by solid domestic waste expert Jordan Figueiredo from California, not only gained popularity on Instagram and Twitter, but also collected more than 111,000 signatures in an online petition calling for American retail giants like Whole Foods and Walmart be wiser in determining what food waste is. "We recognize from defective 30 to 40% of products around the world simply because they are not perfect, while 800 million people are starving," says Figueiredo. Whole Foods decided to listen to the activists: their campaign for selling “ugly” fruits and vegetables starts in April in partnership with the start-up Imperfect Produce, which delivers “imperfect” products and helps shops to sell them with a markdown.
In Portugal, there is a similar initiative called “Fruta Feia” (“Ugly Fruits”). Its founder, Isabel Soares, is buying up fruits that have not reached the canon of beauty, and selling them to people who are attracted by both the lower price and the noble cause of minimizing food waste. “European Union norms are based on the erroneous view that appearance reflects quality,” says Soares in an interview with The New York Times. “Of course, it’s easier to evaluate appearance than internal characteristics, such as sugar content, but this approach to determining quality is wrong.” According to the activist, it is imperative to combat this "aesthetic dictatorship", which has become one of the main reasons for the rapid increase in the share of food waste.
Admittedly, such political appeals sound a bit ridiculous, especially if you consider as an object the offended feelings of the bizarrely bent carrots. Nevertheless, the essence of the question is different. What is the difference that eggplant looks like a bowling pin, a tomato has two tails, and a bow is flattened on one side? Just imagine what a delicious stew can come from this set, and finally leave the convention. After all, the problem, apparently, goes beyond food waste and extends into the field of unimaginable standards of appearance at the level of the collective unconscious. Perhaps, starting with the adoption of such household trifles as the unusual shape of vegetables, even the most stubborn of us will gradually learn that “outside the box” does not mean “unacceptable” and that the shell often does not play an important role.
Photo: 1, 2 via Shutterstock, Intermarche