
The Invention of the Baby Carrot - ryan_j_naughton
http://priceonomics.com/the-invention-of-the-baby-carrot/
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WaxProlix
If you go to farmers' markets, sometimes there's the option to buy 'rejects'
\- ugly produce - at a significantly reduced cost.

It would be cool to see something similar in supermarkets, since the waste of
tons of food is atrocious on its own merits, and reducing that waste while
introducing a cheaper alternative might make produce more affordable all
around.

~~~
KeytarHero
Canada's largest supermarket chain recently started doing this:
[http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/loblaws-
sel...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/loblaws-sells-
discounted-ugly-produce-in-ontario-quebec-stores-1.2995926)

~~~
hencq
So did French supermarket Intermarché and Dutch supermarket Albert Heijn. It's
encouraging to see that bigger chains are starting to do this. Throwing away
perfectly good food just because it doesn't look 'perfect' is pretty
ridiculous.

~~~
smorrow
Do they really throw that stuff away? You can make juice and the like with it;
no-one would ever know what it looked like.

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thinkingkong
Carrots might be "the lucky ugly vegetable" because they can be shaped this
way. Other vegetables aren't so lucky.

For those, there are actually campaigns that encourage people to buy ugly
produce[1].

1\. [http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/12/09/369613561/in-
eur...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/12/09/369613561/in-europe-ugly-
sells-in-the-produce-aisle)

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Swizec
As a European it's always amazed me how same-looking all produce is in
American supermarkets. That was a _huge_ culture shock.

I mean I'm sure we do plenty of selection here, but the lengths to which you
go in the US truly astounded me.

But now I miss baby carrots whenever I'm back home. They really are a
magnificent snack to nibble on. Just the perfect amount of fresh and crunchy.

~~~
hcon
Your comment has that weird Euro-omniscient voice I usually see on Reddit.

I'm Norwegian, have lived all over the world, and currently live in Prague.
Produce has looked the exact same to me everywhere from Whole Foods to Walmart
to Lidl to Tesco to the small corner market down the street.

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im2w1l
I think one problem is that we have become disconnected from the food
production. If a fruit looks different from what we are used to, we don't know
if that means it will taste bad, or even dangerous to eat.

I think stronger brands could be a solution, because then we can outsource our
decision making to someone knowledgeable, and have someone to blame if the
product was bad.

~~~
eru
Or people could develop the necessary skills to judge non-uniform produce?
(They used to have them, after all. It's not magic.)

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technotony
There's a company aiming to do the same thing with apples:
[http://www.arcticapples.com/](http://www.arcticapples.com/)

They genetically engineered the apple so it doesn't go brown, and just
received permission to start selling them. Once the apple trees grow they'll
be able to sell sliced apples as snacks.

~~~
minzinger
This is crazier than this article!

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teawithcarl
The baby carrot is a bacteria nightmare, as are sliced apples. Removing the
skin that early is inimical to your stomach's pro-bacterial flora and bad to
the entire digestive tract - even if you can disguise the decay with a spray
which causes apples not to brown, or with water to make carrots seem not
spoiled. However, they both become slimy much more quickly, a telltale sign.
That decay/bacteria is present from nearly the moment you shave/slice it. The
stomach is the body's largest organ - many consider it the "second brain".
Inimical for health to seed the stomach's flora with the bad bacteria of
shaved/sliced produce.

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WalterBright
My parents would never buy chocolate milk, they said that the inferior tasting
milk was diverted to the chocolate line, as the chocolate would mask it.

~~~
davvid
This is probably true. An ex-coworker that worked in a chip factory in high
school used to say, "Don't eat the BBQ flavor chips!"

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trequartista
As they say, you eat with your eyes and nose first before eating with your
mouth.

This is an example of an amazingly good hack, which led to the creation of a
whole new market and also reduce a lot of criminal waste. Smart.

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zaroth
What an awesome quote and customer validation;

    
    
      "I said, 'I'm sending you some carrots to see what you
      think.' Next day they called and said, 'We only want
      those.'"
    

Also this tail quote from the inventor of the baby carrot;

    
    
      'When you've done something you're proud of and it's
      been acknowledged, it's a dream come true.'"
    

Kudos to the carrot hacker of our times. Now I'm feeling hungry for some
orange crunchy.

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JoshGlazebrook
Honestly I've known about the story of the baby carrot and the whole "ugly"
produce being unacceptable. But it also seems to apply to food packaging as
well. I have seen countless shoppers (myself included at times) avoid a box of
say something like cereal that may have been dropped and the outer cardboard
box dented or damaged in some way. Now I know it's highly unlikely that the
actual product has been damaged (for something like cereal at least), but why
do we do this? I feel 99% certain the product isn't damaged in any way but I
always want to avoid the damaged box and go for the non-damaged box. Where did
this "pretty" produce, "pretty" boxes, etc mentality originate?

~~~
eric_h
You have two identical products, with the same price, next to each other on
the same shelf. The box is damaged for one of them - it's the natural choice
to choose the one that's not damaged in any way.

Now, if the damaged one is a little bit cheaper, you'll probably have a
greater chance of accepting the product with cosmetic damage over the more
expensive, "perfect" product.

~~~
jordan0day
I was just thinking -- if there was a way to somehow be able to offer
instantaneous discounts on "damaged" products, supermarkets could probably
avoid throwing away a lot of "damaged" goods.

But then I realized people would just start damaging them themselves, in order
to get the discount.

~~~
kbart
I've seen a lot of supermarkets doing just that. They simply place a sticker
with new price to avoid the problem you described.

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kleer001
Actual news to me. But I should have just thought about it a bit more.

Kinda makes me sad that we're so driven by emotion, even to the point where
it's against our own best interests.

Then again:

'When you've done something you're proud of and it's been acknowledged, it's a
dream come true.'

Ooof, right the feels.

