UGLY FOOD GOES TO WASTE. DONT DISCRIMINATE!!!

HI Steemians,
As consumers all across the world, we are constantly being sold and advertised about the various quality produce in supermarkets. Yet, these fabulous fruits and veggies that are so perfect are just about 70% of the produce harvested. The rest of the 30% goes to waste. Why???

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This is devastating, and this isn't even all of it. This is just a tiny percentage of the 1.3 BILLION TONNES of food wasted.

Well, it is because of the physical appearance of the produce that don’t fit the company and consumer expectations. These physical imperfections may include, the size, shape, colour, damage and other mutations that may occur in the process of growing these plants. Some fruits like carrots need to be grown in a singular straight form, apples need to be a bright colour, if too pale, they’re thrown away. Bananas depending on the type of banana, needs to be a certain size, if too big, or too small it is thrown away. Also, if they are too straight or too curved, they’re thrown away as well. All these tiny or large imperfections in produce and the consumer expectations for them to be perfect are causing the massive waste in food.

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These fruits and vegetables are being thrown away and wasted in fields. It costs about 50c to grow a bunch of lettuce, and because of the weather damaging a few leaves on the exterior, it must be thrown away, even though it would be just like every other lettuce if those particular leaves are removed. This 20-50% of all produce is wasted and farms are not receiving profit for up to half of their hard work waiting months for them to grow.

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Only a small portion of these imperfect fruit and veggies in Australia are brought to charities and non-profit organisations like Oz Harvest which delivers the food to people in need. Another tiny portion is brought to supermarkets like Woolworths where they are sold as the “Odd Bunch” for half the price. This may seem like a good thing but to me and many others, by selling these imperfect fruit and veggies at lower prices, it tells consumers that they’re of less quality when realistically, they are of the same good quality, they just look different. If they are continued to be sold at lower prices, this doesn’t allow these foods to be accepted into the market as normal and of high quality. The only reason being is that companies are afraid of losing their reputation as having quality good produce. Hence they may lose their sales.

Overall, delivering ‘going to be wasted' food to needy people and introducing them slowly into the markets is a good first step into changing the tonnes of quality produce dumped every year all over the world. Not just in Australia, especially in the US where 50% of all food is wasted. I think what we need to do as consumers is start to accept these different fruit and vegetables and purchase them whether they be of the a cheaper or the same price as regular flirts and vegetables. After all they’re of the same quality. And are we all not different ourselves?

Thanks for checking in, please feel free to upvote, resteem and leave a comment if you have any opinions that you agree/disagree with or just any new views in general. And, next time you go shopping, remember to try some groceries from the ‘odd bunch’ section.

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