
How much “ugly” food we throw away - rottyguy
http://www.salon.com/2015/09/23/beauty_of_ugly_food_partner/
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jglauche
I am in Germany and I am a member of
[https://foodsharing.de/](https://foodsharing.de/) . We collect food from
shops that would throw it away otherwise.

In my town, we have a cooperation with a small organic supermarket where we
collect food twice a week. Sometimes the quantity of the food that gets thrown
out is sheer incredible:
[http://i.imgur.com/5mb4WN1.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/5mb4WN1.jpg)

Over 95% of the collected food is still edible. It's mostly unpackaged food
such as fruit, vegetables and bread, but sometimes packaged food as well with
expired "Best before"-date (which honestly doesn't say anything about the
quality of the contents).

We usually split these quantities up with 4-6 people and it has fed me well
over the past months.

~~~
icebraining
Here in Portugal there's also a project called Refood, founded by an American,
which collects food from restaurants, coffeeshops, etc, and provides them to
people in need. It's now distributing 24 thousand meals per month.

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caio1982
That reminds me of a quite old doc that kids were expected to watch in schools
during my childhood, Island of Flowers (with english subs):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amg08t0TQOY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amg08t0TQOY)

It's about a small river island in Porto Alegre, Brazil (in 1989). Food thrown
away would be given to pigs first, and the rest discarded by the animals was
scavenged by the poor people living there. It's a pretty intense scene to
watch...

It's a well known fact (for brazilians, that is) that in Brazil we waste and
throw away to much good food but people stopped bothering years ago when some
bills passed stating anyone giving/reselling thrown away food to others -- no
matter how perfect they were/looked -- could go to jail and pay some fines if
anything happened to the consumers of such food.

It's quite easy to find fantastic food in street markets or at the back of
restaurantes at the end of the day, specially veggies and fruits. That makes
projects like food sharing etc extremely difficult.

~~~
Dylan16807
>some bills passed stating anyone giving/reselling thrown away food to others
-- no matter how perfect they were/looked -- could go to jail and pay some
fines if anything happened to the consumers of such food.

Is that something that actually happened? In the US we tend to think that's a
rule, but the opposite is true, there's explicit legal protection.

~~~
plonh
The US constantly shuts down unlicensed charity programs that set up feed
stations in public. Donated food is subject to the same strict controls as
sold food. A cafe can't donate a PB&J sandwich that has sat on the shelf
unrefridgerated for 4 hours

~~~
Dylan16807
I was talking about giving food to charities, not trying to set up a half-
baked charity.

The big issue here is food that's still good but undesirable, not food that
has gone past regulated safety limits.

Especially when manufacturers are setting arbitrary 'best' dates.

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hinkley
Given how much processed food we eat I find it hard to believe the situation
is that bad.

Nobody is making orange juice out of perfect oranges.

~~~
aaron695
Salon is a pretty awful magazine. The bias/inaccuracy's is pretty full on.

It would be interesting to see if processed foods companies using off cuts
contributes to fast food often being cheaper than if you made it yourself.

~~~
icc97
This isn't orginally from Salon. It's from Alternet
([http://www.alternet.org/food/its-time-eat-ugly-food-you-
wont...](http://www.alternet.org/food/its-time-eat-ugly-food-you-wont-believe-
how-much-were-wasting)). Not that I know if Alternet is any better...

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Rifu
Last Week Tonight did a pretty good special on this topic as well

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8xwLWb0lLY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8xwLWb0lLY)

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goatforce5
I've told this story before, but about 20 years ago I met a guy from a farming
family. The family farm supplied zucchini/courgettes (I think it was) to
supermarkets. The supermarkets had rules about what range of curvature was
acceptable. Previously the extra bendy produce would essentially be waste
(turned in to animal food, composted, etc), but with the rise of farmers
markets and natural/organic food they were able to sell the bendy produce at a
premium directly to the consumer.

And here's a French supermarket that is successfully selling 'ugly' produce at
reduced prices:

[http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/24/ugly-fruits-and-
veg...](http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/24/ugly-fruits-and-vegetables-
get-a-makeover/)

~~~
plonh
Yes most cities have a discount produce shop that sells the B grade stuff.

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tdsamardzhiev
Until a few years ago, EU had a regulation that stated "all bananas and
cucumbers must be free of abnormal curvature and at least 14 cm in length. "

Not sure if I want to know what legislators did with the fruits...

~~~
IanCal
That's not true, they define the "class" of banana/similar. It's there so that
when one supplier in a country says "we'll deliver X tons of Class 1 bananas"
there's some definition around what they're actually delivering. This gets
more important as you start dealing with different items that have the same
name in different countries.

~~~
tdsamardzhiev
Ok, they didn't ban them, they just put them together in a class with crappy,
chemistry-grown fruits/veggies, so that nobody would buy them.

I don't remember the exact text, so I probably shouldn't have put quotes, but
still, what I said is true in practice.

Anyway, it was an absolutely terrible idea that has been left in the past.

~~~
pjc50
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_Regulation_%28EC%29...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_Regulation_%28EC%29_No._2257/94)

It's just overly-pedantic input validation in the legal system; if you're
going to have rules that mention bananas, you have to define what is and what
is not a banana. Especially if different fruits have different tax treatments.

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hugh4
I don't think it's worth getting more upset about an uneaten carrot or chicken
than about an uneaten pine cone or bear.

~~~
onion2k
Given that the former examples take human effort and resources to grow while
the latter don't, the two aren't equivalent. If we had perfectly efficient
farms we'd save a _huge_ amount of both energy and money providing food.

Arguably we already have perfectly efficient bear production, insofar as we
don't spend resources on them because we don't eat them.

~~~
hugh4
The amount of human effort wasted producing food is probably pretty small
compared to the amount wasted, say, filling out HR forms.

