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Most “ugly” produce gets turned into soups, sauces, salsa, jam

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Re: Most “ugly” produce gets turned into soups, sauces, salsa, jam

#31

Post by eridius »

smsm42 wrote: post #18
danaur wrote: post #8

Twitter posts like these have an interesting bullet point writing style you don't see in most places. I personally enjoy this style

It would be much better as a once-piece article. I am still at loss at why people use twitter to write long forms. I mean, you know it's going to be long. Put it on Medium (or whatever, I don't care where it is) and if you need Twitter audience, post a link. Yes, I know threaders exist. But that's solving a problem that shouldn't have existed at the first place. OTOH, in my eyes, posts like that is pretty much the on…

It's easy to retweet a thread, and to start reading a retweeted thread because it's right there in Twitter. Reading an article from a tweeted link is a bigger effort investment.

Also, Twitter threads lend itself to stream-of-consciousness style of writing. Putting together an actual article will involve drafting and editing and be more work.

Re: Most “ugly” produce gets turned into soups, sauces, salsa, jam

#32

Post by loosetypes »

It's good that the less shopper-favorable produce is put to use, but I'm always curious about the somewhat analogous-to-ugly-fruits case with milk: Looking at the dairy fridge and choosing solely by expiration date.

Naturally, I choose the latest to expire to maximize my options within the consumption time-frame. And I think everyone does?

But do you actually care about food waste if every time you make that decision the earlier-stocked milks that are still around, and set to expire sooner, are pretty much guaranteed to not be purchased?

I guess I have no idea of the scale here, or even how much is wasted. It just seems like there would naturally be some sort of price-tiering of dairy products based on expiry to incentivize what might be a better overall consumption.

Re: Most “ugly” produce gets turned into soups, sauces, salsa, jam

#33

Post by rococode »

maxk42 wrote: post #21
TulliusCicero wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are some services that do this, e.g. https://www.imperfectproduce.com

Subscribed to this for several months. 90%+ of what they shipped me was ordinary surplus produce. Even the "ugly" carrots they sent me were ... just ordinary carrots, as far as I could tell.

Sounds like you stopped using it, could you share why? I'm curious if their service was good.

Re: Most “ugly” produce gets turned into soups, sauces, salsa, jam

#34

Post by andrewchambers »

godelski wrote: post #6

I seriously wish I knew how to buy B grade food. Slightly misshapen tomatoes at a discounted price? Sign me up. I feel like I'm not the only one too.

Here in New Zealand the Chinese supermarkets seem to stock a lot of it. The prices are lower and the vegetables still taste fine, just look uglier.

Re: Most “ugly” produce gets turned into soups, sauces, salsa, jam

#35

Post by vincnetas »

godelski wrote: post #6

I seriously wish I knew how to buy B grade food. Slightly misshapen tomatoes at a discounted price? Sign me up. I feel like I'm not the only one too.

Just speculating here without any knowledge. But this question made me think. So let's say food industry has lots of "ugly" (whatever that means) fruits that are not sold directly but used in other products. And because of that they are sold much cheaper. Then along comes someone, and notices that:

"hey theres a huge amount of fruits that are being sold very cheap. Is there a way i could sell then for more?"

So you start a spreading idea that ugly fruit get's waisted and this this is not eco friendly etc. And next thing you know someone on HN is asking "where do i get these ugly fruits" :)

And yes it can be sold cheaper than normal fruits, but if it's more profitable than turning them in to jam, then it's a win.

By the way, not saying that it's wrong, just an interesting way to manipulate people to not being picky and eat all the fruits.

Re: Most “ugly” produce gets turned into soups, sauces, salsa, jam

#36

Post by alexashka »

feross wrote: post #3

> The "eat ugly fruit!" movement is classist as FUCK. You've got to have a debilitating level of ignorance to assume that if Whole Paycheck Market doesn't stock ugly fruit, it must be getting "wasted." It is possible to not know much about the agricultural industry without being "classist as fuck." There are an infinite number of things one can learn about and a finite amount of time. While the content is interesting…

Twitter has had enough people posting in anger, that it has become culturally acceptable for anyone to do it.

I can't help but wonder about the upbringing of the folks who act out in anger, in public (posting on the internet is public).

Would you talk this way around your parents, peers, kids? I hope not. The internet is not any different - they're someone's parents, peers and kids, reading your posts.

Re: Most “ugly” produce gets turned into soups, sauces, salsa, jam

#37

Post by travisjungroth »

loosetypes wrote: post #32

It's good that the less shopper-favorable produce is put to use, but I'm always curious about the somewhat analogous-to-ugly-fruits case with milk: Looking at the dairy fridge and choosing solely by expiration date. Naturally, I choose the latest to expire to maximize my options within the consumption time-frame. And I think everyone does? But do you actually care about food waste if every time you make that decision…

I have never done this, and I gently suggest you stop. Do you really need those extra few days of milk expiration? If the milk with the soonest expiration date was the only one available, would you buy it or just walk out without milk? A good rule to avoid tragedy of the commons situations is to think “what if everyone did as I do?”. This is a pretty classic example here.

Re: Most “ugly” produce gets turned into soups, sauces, salsa, jam

#38

Post by hobofan »

jacquesm wrote: post #28
ishi wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly the point she's trying to make - they don't get wasted, only re-purposed.

Cattle feed makes that point a lot stronger than jam does.

Which point? That it's being wasted, or that it's being repurposed? Because meat production sure sounds very wasteful to me.

Re: Most “ugly” produce gets turned into soups, sauces, salsa, jam

#40

Post by Kalium »

veridies wrote: post #22
nightfly wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Know what happens to most of the produce that's edible, has enough shape to survive in transit, but looks funny? IT GOES TO THE GROCERY STORES THAT POOR PEOPLE SHOP AT"

Her examples really don’t have very ugly produce in my experience. Like, all the stuff at Grocery Outlet or the Dollar Tree looks pretty damn good, although it’s often not very fresh. The only time I see really misshapen or bruised fruit is at the farmer’s market in discount bins. Is my experience abnormal?

My experience with Grocery Outlet leads me to think that their produce is usually stuff that's close to expiring, rather than things that are blemished.
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