Kitchen Garden Forum

So as a country we throw away lots of food because it doesn't come up to supermarket standards. We knew that didn't we?

They say consumers won't buy substandard vegetables. That's substandard by their criteria. I think my twisted carrots can beat their perfectly shaped ones any day!

Maybe the said supermarkets should try an experiment at offering ugly food at a lower price to the pretty stuff and see whether people buy it. Maybe they would rather make a bigger profit than cut down on waste.

We gardeners certainly consume our fair share of the uglies!

My grandson loves my twisted and odd shaped veg...

He finds them funny and eats them with a smile on his face, put a "normal" straight shaped one on his plate...he won't touch them and get nothing but tantrums.

I'm all for selling funny shaped fruit and veg, at the end of the day... It all tastes the same

I don't think it's that people won't buy ugly looking food. I think it's that the supermarkets have "conditioned" people to think that ugly food is sub standard because they have imposed perfect looking food standards on their suppliers as being the norm and now many people think that anything else is inedible. .

i really hope this campaign to discourage food wastes takes off because I find it morally unacceptable that perfectly edible crops are ploughed back into farmers' fields or fed to pigs and cattle simply because they don't look perfect. I also think that with food prices due to rise substantially in the future, the first supermarket to totally abandon this practice and sell "ugly" food at a cheaper price across their whole fruit and veg range would probably be on to a winner. That's why I like to buy from farm shops whenever possible. People who buy from them are normally realists and take it how it comes.

Oh how I'd like to just 'like' your comments! My motto (just to please the hubby) if you can recognise it - we eat it! Totally agree supermarkets must put less than perfect crops on the shelves - until they do that how can they know??

Westi

In the past, I know, Waitrose have sold 'sub-standard' fruit at lower prices for jam making. This morning we were in our local branch, and were very pleased to see, and buy, 'weather-marked' Gala apples at a lower price. So far as we could see, nothing wrong with them.

We went to Kefalonia for around 8 years on holiday, self catering, we used to shop in the market by the sea front. We bought the most ugly oranges, cucumber and tomatoes you have ever seen, but the taste was the best thing we have ever eaten. We have not been for about five years but if we ever talk about our holidays there we always remember shopping at the market. I think people are too set in their ways to only buy perfect shaped fruit and veggies.

My nephew, who is racing in the Dakar Rally at the moment, worked for a fruit and veg company in Zambia many years ago.

The staff there had the shaped boxes to measure the size of the fruit, if it did not fit into the boxes it was thrown away. (This was a very well known company) Even roses were measured and cut to fit. My sister used to go and buy many roses from this company.

We toured the place courtesy of David and were really suprised to see the quantity of waste.

Next time you go to your favourite supermarket look where it came from and if it was Zambia then it comes from the very same place that David worked. Loads of waste.

I once watched a programme on TV where they were putting cucumbers through the acceptability test. They popped one on a flat surface and if it was curved and they could pass their hand under the curve the cucumber was rejected. I guess if your hand was small you rejected most.

Compare to some we have grown on the plot which were almost growing in a circle but were fresh and crunchy!

I also remember a TV documentary a few years ago where the cameras accompanied a young Tesco buyer to Kenya. He was tightening even further the specification for French beans, which meant a very high percentage of the crop was rejected. This was a terrible waste, as the beans had no place in the local diet. It seemed to be as much about screwing down the price of the beans and the wages of the local labour as it was about buying perfect beans.