![]() ![]() ![]() “Most people really don’t view the oddities as better, and quite the opposite,” Mr. From 1974 to 2006, the amount of food Americans wasted increased by 50 percent, he said, adding that ugly produce was the “gateway drug” into the larger and more complicated problems around food waste generally. “There is a real chicken and an egg problem, because retailers say they won’t sell this because people don’t buy it, and people say they want to buy it but retailers won’t sell it,” said Jonathan Bloom, who wrote “American Wasteland,” exploring why so much food is wasted in the United States. He began a petition asking Walmart and Whole Foods to commit to carrying ugly produce, but neither chain has signed on yet. Each day, he sends out pictures - carrots joined at the hip, apples with ample middles, whatever strange-looking thing that catches his fancy. Jordan Figueiredo, a solid waste specialist in nearby Castro Valley, began a social media campaign promoting ugly produce this year. “We’ve expected uniform produce for decades, so it’s not going to change overnight.” ”There’s a leap here that not many buyers are willing to make yet,” Mr. Clark and his colleagues have not had an easy time of convincing mainstream supermarkets that their produce should fill the aisles. In some parts of the Bay Area, where farmers’ market shopping is the norm and a $10 heirloom tomato hardly raises eyebrows, the notion that produce can be slightly discolored or oddly formed hardly seems like a tough sell. In food-obsessed San Francisco and its neighboring cities, the company has marketed itself in large part by relying on cheeky social media campaigns: A picture of a particularly odd-shaped pepper is accompanied with the message “bite me.” A particularly bulbous tomato is labeled “my curves are good for you,” and a strangely large lemon is “more to love.” Clark primarily relies on buying produce directly from California farmers and supplements it with what he can find at wholesale produce markets in Oakland. A large box of mixed produce - 17 to 20 pounds of fruits and vegetables, with five to eight types of items, depending on what is in season - costs $18, for example a small box of fruit (10 to 15 pounds) costs $12 a week. Imperfect Produce delivers boxes of ugly fruit and vegetables to people’s doorsteps in the Bay Area. ![]()
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