Ugly

Is there anyone in this world who doesn’t hate when called “ugly”? All of us spend millions of dollars prettying ourselves no matter how old we become. In fact, beauty products market is so big, there is no mall in the world which does not automatically provide a lot of shelf space for the beauty products. Besides they also allocate resources to sell those products to unsuspecting consumers who may be just visiting a mall to do window shopping. Human mind for some strange reason fail to see the person inside the skin. Even in job interviews, those who present themselves with good outfits and proper makeup succeed in securing a job. A pageant contest gets more sponsorship from big corporations than academic or sport contest.

If this is the situation with human beings, what would be the condition of the vegetables that are ugly? Every year 40% of the food grown in the US ends up in the garbage and majority of them are happening at the consumer level. But some of that waste is happening also between the farm and the grocery store. A perfectly nutritious vegetable could end up as waste simply because it grew a little imperfectly. In the beginning of 2015, a social media campaign was started by one individual by launching @UglyFruitandVeg to make the Americans to fall in love with ugly fruits and vegetables.

This campaign is primarily to add whimsical pictures of misshapen produce accompanied by humorous captions and hashtags and it took off so well in six months. The next step is to convince major grocery retail chains such as Walmart and Whole Foods to sell ugly fruits and vegetables. The Campaigner of this program has worked as a solid waste specialist for the Castro Valley Sanitary District in California, working on reducing waste throughout the small community. Prior to that he was working for 3 years as an environmental technician for the city of Dublin, a suburban town in California’s East Bay. During this period he learned a lot about zero waste, a philosophy that encourages the reuse of all discarded products so that none of them end up going to landfills as dumps. While studying about zero waste, he kept tripping over something he found especially difficult to stomach such as food waste.

The Americans have wasted 35 million tons of food in the year 2012. At the same time, the number of food insecure Americans also increased to one in six for the year 2014. But it is not just food insecure Americans who are suffering but also the environment. After taking into account recycling and composting, food was the most wasted material in the US, surpassing paper, plastics and yard trimmings. Approximately 20% of all U.S. trash is from food waste. According to U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, global emissions from food waste were estimated at 3.3 gigatons of CO2 equivalent. To provide a comparison, it is more than twice the emissions from all U.S. transportation.

In October 2014, in partnership with Natural Resources Defense Council, a Zero Food Waste Forum, a gathering of food waste activists that culminated in feeding 5,000 people from food that would have otherwise ended up in landfills in the middle of Oakland. In 2014, the third largest supermarket chain in France launched a campaign sought to glorify ugly fruits and vegetables, those that would otherwise be thrown away for not meeting industry aesthetic standards by selling them at a reduced cost to customers.

America’s supermarkets are brimming with fresh produce that all looks exactly the same – perfect round, red tomatoes, stick-straight carrots and cucumbers, and plump little diamond strawberries. But that is not necessarily the way the produce always turns out. For a number of natural reasons – from weather changes to gene mutations (this is a separate subject to be covered by another snippet) - produce can grow to look a little wonky. Slight cosmetic differences – irregular shape, abnormal color or healed scars – don’t affect the safety of a product. Unfortunately, these cosmetic irregularities are often the focus on U.S. grading standards. As educated consumers let us not waste the ugly fruits and vegetables and adopt them into our households going forward. More and more consumers practice this, these vegetables which are no less in nutrition to their neighbors who have a perfect shape, will not end up in landfills. Please see the image below to understand how loving the ugly fruits and vegetables are.

 

Dear Vijiakka,

I am so happy to receive your first response to this post. Everything you said in your response are golden words. The filtering process for establishing friendship/relationship is extraordinary without one realizing it. As you rightly said, a person with extraordinary quality would always remain one. The last sentence is wonderful and isn't what Mother Teressa said through her life?

Viswa

 

Dear Kamalji,

The vegetables have to be impressive to be purchased from the retail outlet and very rarely people go to farmer's market. Those who are focused on organic food still goes to organic chains instead of buying from the farmers. Organic food industry is big by itself. I am not sure whether you are aware of this or not. Every Restaurant in the US have to either sell all that is made everyday or discard them. Even if a fast food chain sells bagels, they need to discard the bagels and many times, people buy those plastic bag of bagels discarded for free to distribute to the homeless.

It is human mind that only sees the external appearance than the nutrition in it. Thank you for your response.

Viswa

 

Dear Vani,

We can never find out what chemicals they use to keep the vegetables fresh and polished. This is besides unlimited poisoning the fertilizer industries do to the earth. There is some awareness in the US now that industrially farmed vegetables are harmful to health. Many are growing plants at home and using the yield directly for cooking. In fact, a few days back, I read a story about a man seeking people to lend their unused land behind their house for organic farming and distribute the profits 50% each to the owner and the farmer. Two to three tier farming are becoming common to put the land space to better use.

Viswa