But often, it isn’t worth the labor to harvest or find a donor, so the food’s composted or dumped. A farm can sell the seconds at a discount. That unwanted food can be donated to a food pantry. “Instead of taking the time to educate consumers about that, ‘Let’s just reject these.’” There are places this rejected food has gone to, other than the garbage. “Consumers have the misconception that the oranger the, the sweeter they are and the more delicious they are,” Deutsch says. A crop might be misshapen, ugly or the wrong color, like oranges with green skin. Jonathan Deutsch, professor of culinary arts and food science at Drexel University. That inch means moving dividers or even changing the entire layout of the produce section, says Dr. Carrots might be an inch shorter than a grocer wants. This surplus food might be the wrong size. While some withers away in our homes, much never reaches a store, even if it’s perfectly edible. In the U.S., up to 40% of food is trashed, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. The need is great, yet so much food is wasted. In Philadelphia, it’s actually 1 in 5, according to Philabundance, the area’s largest hunger relief organization. One in eight people in the United States faces hunger. They say that fighting food waste and hunger are also part of the mission. Most of the new ugly produce entrepreneurs are motivated by more than money. But what do these deals mean for local food banks, which have long relied on donations of such food, and local farmers, whose pricier CSA boxes are undercut? Two of these start-ups ship throughout the Philadelphia region. Some new businesses see this as an opportunity to sell weekly boxes of this irregular produce, subscription style, at a steep discount. They fit right in, since the service the box came from specializes in funny looking fruit.Īs our food system grows pickier about what produce belongs on supermarket shelves, fruits and vegetables go to waste because they’re “ugly” or the “wrong size.” At the same time, millions don’t have access to affordable produce. In this box of produce, however, the booty-shaped fruits weren’t misfits.
The fruits were perfectly tasty but would have been rejected by many retailers because of their appearance. There they were in Knar Gavin’s box of produce: conjoined kiwis that looked like hearts. How do bargain boxes of imperfect produce fit in with Philly’s food scene?
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