Fresh from the UK comes this food waste horror story: European Union sizing requirements required a British wholesaler to throw away 5,000 kiwis. Here’s a slightly less sensationalistic view of the story.
An inspection of the fruit found that a number of the batch weighed 58 grams, with 62 grams the low-end limit. 
Tim Down, the kiwis’ owner, estimated that the diameter of the offending fruit were 1 millimeter too small.
Even worse, EU law prohibited Down from giving away the kiwis, and he faced a fine of several thousand pounds if he did. (He was allowed to ship them back to the importer or turn them to juice.) Down echoed my thoughts on the matter:
They are perfectly fit to eat. These regulations come at a time when rising food prices are highlighted and we’re being forced to throw away perfectly good food.
I understand the need for inspections and regulations, but this rule seems ridiculous. The BBC piece reports that the European Commission (the EU executive branch) is looking into relaxing its rules on shape and minimum size. How about changing the one that prohibits donating these fruits and vegetables?!
Taking a step back, heterogeneous waste happens all the time with produce. Harvesters won’t pick certain crops that are the wrong size or shape, while other crops are weeded out post harvest. These occurences don’t make the news because the loss occurs at the farm or packing plant, not after it reaches wholesalers (hence, no opportunity for a convenient photo shoot).
Both articles alluded to commonly culled produce: curved cucumbers and straight bananas. I occasionally see a straight banana, but I can’t remember seeing a curved cuke. I suspect that if I grew my own or went to the farmer’s market (more than once every blue moon), I would.
What’s fueling this waste by uniformity? Is it a trickle down from consumers’ buying habits? Is it the food industry’s perception of consumer behavior? Or is it due to supermarkets’ desire for uniformity and perfect produce displays?
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8 responses to “Picky, Picky”
I like shopping at the farmer’s market and produce stands because they sell perfectly good but cosmetically imperfect produce–and people happily buy it. The vendors can even sell “distressed” produce for reduced prices, e.g. bruised apples for people who just want to make applesauce anyway. Of course I don’t know what they throw out at the farm, but I presume it is less.
And yes, I buy cucumbers in all shapes and sizes.
On the other hand, I find that when I do buy produce at a regular grocery store, I am much less likely to buy something less than perfect, even though I would happily buy it at the farmer’s market. By culling out the natural variation in shapes and quality, sellers turn us artificially picky.
“By culling out the natural variation in shapes and quality, sellers turn us artificially picky.”
Well said, Kate. Couldn’t agree more.
It’s a bizarre world over here sometimes. The EU just seems to love making up standards for no other reason than for the hell of it. I’m happy to be European, but at times like this I’m most certainly British.
The EU has restrictions on the size of bananas too. *rolls eyes* If food is getting smaller, then consumers ought to think about their diets and how to adapt to these .. “reductions”.
I work at a grocery store, and it makes me sick how much they throw away every day, into a sealed hopper, so no one can even get in to get it. I asked my store manager if I could take garbage from produce home for my compost pile, and he said no, I could make my own compost. Idiot!
One day I saw the bakery lady throwing away 5 huge sacks of bread. She said they used to have someone who would come pick it up, but he stopped, so they had to throw it out.
The Deli used to give the leftover food to a soup kitchen, but the man came one day without a cooler, and they decided they couldn’t take the chance it would spoil before it got served. Liability, and all that.
So sad that our litigious society causes such waste, and with so many people hungry.
We have friends who have a small kiwi patch. They allow us to go in after the pickers because there is so much left over. We bring home buckets and buckets and barely make a dent. The size restrictions that are imposed mean that the pickers leave all the “fans” which are double/triple size. YUM! Our friends actually get penalized with a monetary deduction for all the kiwis that are the “wrong” size at the packing station. Crazy.
I’m a little late in commenting, just popped over from April’s CR blog.
I work in the industry and it goes beyond supermarkets’ perceptions of customer buying habits. It’s pretty well documented that consumers base their opinions of a store on their produce department. Regardless of other attributes the produce department always (study after study) comes in as the biggest shaper of consumer attitudes towards the store.
That said, I think some higher end stores have had some luck in using the farmers market angle to go beyond the icky, sanitized, perfectly uniform produce display model. They’re selling on attributes like “local”, “organic”, “fresh”, and even “unique”. And if the store has the authenticity to back up the claims then I think customers willingly/happily accept it just as they would at the Farmers Market.
Anne,
Thanks for the inside scoop. The idea that produce departments determine consumer opinions on a store is certainly an obstacle. I can see how the organic or local angle could be a solution to the homogeneous factor.
I wonder: why do stores think a straight cucumber is better than a curved and a vice versa with bananas? Do consumers really think that? And if so, how did that conception begin?