You know when you go to the grocery store and spend a couple of seconds deciding which Bell pepper is the plumpest, most deliciously green pepper in the bunch? Well, quit it! You’re perpetuating a culture of food waste that’s getting out of control. It’s not all your fault, but you’re definitely not helping. New research reported by The Guardian suggests that when we consider the produce regularly abandoned in fields and produce left to rot in warehouses, along with retail waste, the amount of food lost is nearly HALF of all produce grown.
The problem is beauty standards. Stay with us here. Today, not only are women held to a shamefully unrealistic standard of beauty, but so too is the produce that appears in our grocery stores. As a handful of farmers shared with The Guardian, imperfect produce doesn’t stand a chance, stating that “sunburnt or darker-hued cauliflower was ploughed over in the field. Table grapes that did not conform to a wedge shape were dumped. Entire crates of pre-cut orange wedges were directed to landfill.”
While one San Francisco subscription delivery service for “ugly fruit” called Imperfect Produce estimates that a fifth of produce is consigned to the dump because of imperfections, farmers themselves project much greater estimates. In the world, about one third of food is wasted. This equates to enough food to reach the moon plus encircle it once. It’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar’s dream.
All joking aside, food waste has a very real impact on household incomes, climate change, and obviously hunger. The irony that we live in a world where perfectly nutritious food is discarded while people remain hungry and malnourished does not go unnoticed. When Florida farmer Jay Johnson found himself with 24,000 pounds of summer squash slightly blemished because of a spring storm, he attempted to sell it at 6-cents per pound and still couldn’t find a home for it.
Meanwhile, discarded food waste is the single largest contributor to landfills and incinerators in the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. And rising levels of methane have experts worried.
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At this point, concern is growing beyond experts. Petitions and campaigns urging grocery chains like Walmart and Whole Foods to sell ugly produce are gaining momentum. Likewise, a new crop of restaurants like Daily Table in Massachusetts are going beyond the call of duty, using imperfect produce to provide affordable meals.
But questions regarding food production motives are growing. Roger Gordon, the founder of produce re-distribution company Food Cowboy, points out that, “Fresh produce accounts for 15% of supermarket profits. If you and I reduced fresh produce waste by 50% like [the U.S. agriculture secretary] Vilsack wants us to do, then supermarkets would go from [a] 1.5% profit margin to 0.7%,” he said. “And if we were to lose 50% of consumer waste, then we would lose about $250bn in economic activity that would go away.”
But suppliers and growers are in a pickle because if they do reach out to companies like Imperfect Produce, they could tarnish a profitable relationship with major retailers.
It’s a catch 22 that we ought to be more concerned about.
(Via The Guardian)
