Charlotte grocery stores should embrace the ugly produce movement
I never thought much about the aesthetics of produce beyond proper ripeness until after college. Then the dinner parties and potlucks began. It became important to me to go to the grocery store and poke and prod produce until I found the prettiest, most presentable items. The brightest blueberries, the straightest carrots.
Now that I know about the ugly produce movement, I should change. I should buy so many ugly fruits and vegetables. And I should be so proud of them for what they stand for: Waste reduction.
As the home produce delivery service Imperfect Produce points out, “In America, 1 in 5 fruits and vegetables grown don’t fit grocery stores’ strict cosmetic standards — the crooked carrot, the curvy cucumber, the undersized apple — usually causing them to go to waste.”
Imperfect Produce in Los Angeles and the Bay area supplies funny-looking produce for 30-50 percent off.
Last year, Whole Foods made a deal with Imperfect Produce to sell these “funky fruits and vegetables” in select Northern California stores.
Similarly, last year Wal-Mart piloted sales of weather-dented apples at lower prices in various stores in Florida.
The key detail of the ugly produce movement is that these fruits and vegetables are still nutritious and they still taste good. They’re just ugly.
I haven’t noticed anything like that happening in Charlotte stores. Which means one thing: We should embrace the ugly produce movement.
It’s possible. There’s an initiative called the Ugly Fruit and Veg Campaign that petitions large grocers to sell imperfect produce in American stores.
A Whole Foods Charlotte representative said the store is not participating in an ugly-produce initiative, nor are Charlotte Publix or Harris Teeter stores.
I did get an interesting answer from Food Lion, though.
While Food Lion does not have plans to participate in an ugly produce initiative at this time, the retailer does support overall food rescue through the Food Lion Feeds Retail Rescue Program, which was created in 1999. That means ugly produce gets donated to their local feeding partners.
“Through the program, feeding agencies are assigned to a specific Food Lion store to pick up food that grocer chooses not to sell, but is still safe for human consumption,” said Courtney James, Specialist in External Communications for Food Lion. “In 2016 alone, we donated more than nine million meals through the Food Lion Feeds Food Rescue Program.”
I like that. I also like the idea of living in a community of food rescuers who shop at their usual stores — Publix, Whole Foods, Harris Teeter, Food Lion, you pick — and delighting in ugly fruits and vegetables they find in the produce aisles.
It would be easier on our budgets. It would still taste good. And it would be quite the quirky conversation starter at the next dinner party.
Photo: Rémy Thurston
This story was originally published April 10, 2017 at 11:00 PM with the headline "Charlotte grocery stores should embrace the ugly produce movement."