Over the last few years, as discussions around ugly food have become more prominent, people are thinking twice about the food standards they apply in their grocery stores, farm shops, and at home cooking.
Although there is more traction in this movement, there is still a lot of work to do. At Eat Local we really try to reduce food waste at all costs. If we have been given too much of a product that is perfectly fresh, have leftovers from an event we have run, or some of our items have a best by date that is only a few days away and needs to be used soon, we donate it to OSHARE or other local food spaces in the region to get food to those who need it. However, we still find ourselves sometimes questioning if food that tastes great and is completely fresh will result in some upset customer calls because of the way it looks.
As you may know – a lot of organic foods sometimes have some bug pals that come along for the ride in delivery, some spots that are purely blemishes due to the absence of pesticides, and some vegetables just have a mind of their own when it comes to the shapes they try to grow in organic or not. Eat Local is dedicated to shifting social norms around what food is “supposed” to look like, why we have been socialized to think that conventional shapes for strawberries, for example, taste worse than the beautiful ones you see on advertising campaigns, and how to shift that logic!
Pfenning Organics has done some amazing blog posts about this exact issue, go check them out! We would love to hear your thoughts.
Here is to all that ugly, perfectly fresh and delicious food in our futures!