23-11-2016 | King-sized kiwis, curvy squash and smaller-than-usual apples and limes. That was the “ugly” produce count in boxes of fruits and vegetables Deborah Levine recently received at her home in the San Francisco Bay Area. While most of the produce she gets in her biweekly deliveries is “very normal”, she recalls one particular veggie. It was like a siamese carrot, but with part of it broken off, it looked like it “didn’t have its leg”.

“It was kind of funky looking. But you clean it, peel it and chop it up and it makes no difference,” says Levine, who works as an editor. “But you’d never see that in the market.”

Since August, Levine has been getting deliveries of imperfect or “ugly” fruits and vegetables, those that taste fine but are often banished from grocery stores because they don’t meet industry’s cosmetic standards. It arrives at her doorstep courtesy of Imperfect Produce, one of a handful of food delivery services that’s cropped up in recent years as part of an emerging movement to make acceptable and sell discarded produce at more affordable prices.

It’s one way to fight back against the massive amounts of food wasted in the United States.

“When you look at our food system farm to fork, a stunning 52% of all produce in the US goes uneaten,” says JoAnne Berkenkamp, a senior advocate with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Burgeoning awareness of this reality has led a growing number of eaters and businesses to take a second look at product that doesn’t meet prevailing industry standards for size, shape, color and other cosmetic attributes.”

What’s wrong with this tomato?

Besides Imperfect Produce, other such delivery services include Hungry Harvest, which delivers “recovered” produce in Baltimore, Washington DC, Philadelphia and surrounding areas, and Perfectly Imperfect, which serves the Cleveland area. Even Fresh Direct now has an ugly vegetable box.

Imperfect Produce, which delivers to the Bay Area, started in August 2015 and says its produce costs up to 50% less than retail store prices since they’re fruits and vegetables that usually go to waste on farms. Ron Clark, the company’s co-founder and chief supply officer, estimates about 20% of produce overall doesn’t make it to the market because of cosmetic reasons. But the demand is there. Imperfect Produce began with 150 deliveries, he says, and now has over 10,000 customers.

“It’s a new market niche that will continue to grow,” says Clark. “It’s in the public eye, it’s captured people’s imagination and, most of all, there’s a brand new giant generation out there, the millennials, that deeply care about these issues … climate change, food waste, properly using all of our resources, being stewards of the planet.”

Clever and lighthearted marketing also doesn’t hurt. Hungry Harvest recently released ugly produce emojis. And Levine once received googly eyes in her Imperfect Produce box with encouragement to share a photo of the eyes on ugly produce for a discount off her next order. After much searching, she picked a not-so-ugly onion for the Instagram shot.

Food activist Jordan Figueiredo, who’s been petitioning large grocers like Whole Foods, Walmart and Target to stock imperfect produce, plays up the produce’s “personalities” on social media. Part of his Ugly Fruit and Veg Campaign, these daily doses of “ugly fun” feature such produce as intertwined carrots with the caption “Ah, young carrot love” and a tomato with a seemingly long nose, coined “Cyrano de Tomato” by one commentator.

Pepper with nose: delicious.

“Ugly produce just resonates with people,” says Figueiredo, who also gets Imperfect Produce deliveries. “A lot of people in this movement have capitalized on making it fun and not some sort of drudgery of environmental tasks … It’s not just intuitive to want to do everything you can to prevent waste and help the planet and all that. Unfortunately it’s just not as easy as we’d like it to be.”

Beyond waste concerns, thanks to imperfect produce’s cheaper cost, some hope this trend will also help provide the more than 48 million Americans who struggle with hunger greater access to fresh food. This was part of the motivation behind the launch in May of Perfectly Imperfect by produce wholesaler Forest City Weingart. Perfectly Imperfect offers boxes of imperfect produce at discounted rates for pick up or delivery in and around Cleveland.

“We couldn’t help but notice that the neighborhood surrounding our warehouse was an area in need and considered a food desert, and really just wanted to try to connect the few dots and figure out a way to disperse some of this food to some of the people who can afford to buy food for themselves but just need things that are as affordable as possible,” says Ashley Weingart, director of communications and community outreach for the company.

Forest City Weingart is in Central, a neighborhood in Cleveland that Weingart says is one of the lowest income areas in Ohio. From 2010 to 2014 its median household income was $9,647, compared to $26,179 for Cleveland, and almost 70% of households received food stamps, according to the Center for Community Solutions.

But Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University, says while these types of services may be a reasonable short-term measure, solving hunger requires structural and sustainable solutions.

An orange with spots.

“Food insecurity is the result of lack of resources – money to buy food, access to food sources, ability and time to cook, adequate transportation, the cost of food and other such factors. It is not about the appearance of fruits and vegetables. If these are cheaper, poor people might be more willing to buy them, but they would need to want to, like them and know how to cook them, all of which are cultural issues,” she says.

Weingart admits “the biggest challenge we face is informing the people who need it the most”. That’s why they’re working with partners in the city to get this produce delivered to community and recreation centers. Weingart says they’re also developing a bag of produce that would cost less than $10, since it’s easier to transport and cheaper.

The financial savings haven’t been huge for Levine, in the Bay Area, she thinks possibly due to Imperfect Produce’s delivery charges. She spends about $25 every two weeks. But she plans to stick with it. She’s happy with the produce and says the variety has expanded her cooking repertoire. Mostly, though, it makes her feel a little more proactive.

“I can’t change the economy, I can’t get rid of poverty,” she says. “It’s shameful in a country that has … so many people who don’t have enough food to be wasting food. And truly gargantuan amounts of food. When you know that you want to do something about it and you get the opportunity to do that, I’d take it.”

Source: The guardian