Consumption of ugly fruits and vegetables

Hello dear friends!

Perhaps we have had at some point, the opportunity to observe how in the establishments of fruit and vegetable sales, or what here are commonly known as vegetable fairs, a lot of food is wasted, this is possibly because they are not stored properly, because they have almost no outlet for the high cost of the product and other multiple reasons. On the other hand, it is also observed the large amount of plastic bags used and plastic or anime packaging for products sometimes unnecessary.

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However, an important aspect that is not seen very often is that in these fairs they lower the prices of those products that are about to be damaged, that they collect fruits and vegetables in advanced ripening stage and that they set special price points.

Very few are those who choose to sell some products frozen at lower prices, others choose to give away or sell such merchandise for animal feed. Other destinations that could give them is to make donations to different centers or people with scarce resources.

Now, what do we do when buying vegetables and fruits? something very common is that when selecting fruits or vegetables we focus our attention on their physical appearance, and we can spend time looking for the best, and the rest we put aside. That is, the prettier it is, the more likely it is to be selected.

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If we analyze the selection process, we will see that it is long, since it starts from the time the product is harvested, and the one that does not meet the beauty requirements that have been established is discarded, then buyers also make their selection and thus a large amount of food is wasted along the way, taking into account that not only the food is wasted but also the resources involved in obtaining it such as water, labor, energy, among others.

It should be noted that the fact that aesthetically they are not very attractive does not mean that they do not have the same properties as other products or that they are damaged and cannot be consumed.

And what happens to those products that are considered ugly?
Statistics show that globally more than one third of food, mostly fruits and vegetables, is wasted and eventually ends up in the garbage.

Conversely, more than 820 million people in the world lack food and go hungry. In this regard, I remember with great sadness, to see a short time ago in my country with the difficult economic situation we are going through, people looking for food in the garbage of shops and houses.

The important thing is that in the face of this situation there are several initiatives to encourage the consumption of these foods considered as ugly or imperfect, and that have been grouped in the movement called Ugly Food and food waste, which began in 2015 in the UK, based on the criterion that not all people act in the same way and that we must be responsible in consumption.

Among the initiatives we can mention, for example, the so-called Unique, which was born in Switzerland from the hand of the supermarket chain Coop, who for example once managed to sell apricot crops, which were defective up to 50% less along with recipes that allowed them to give a better use of the product.

Imperfect, which was founded in the United States, offers the service of delivering products that do not meet traditional standards to your door at lower prices.

Finally, we can mention Espigoladors, which promotes the use of these foods in Spain, guaranteeing healthy food.

There are other initiatives that are receiving more and more support and that seek to raise awareness of food waste that is currently produced and that we must seek a solution to not expect greater environmental and economic consequences.

Well friends, as we see, outer beauty is not always the most important thing but how you are inside, for the moment I say goodbye, I hope you find the information presented useful!

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