Pretty they may look, but our cosmeticized Little Miss World fruits are cheating a lot of suppliers. The British orchards we are so vocal about protecting suffer as imperfect fruit is processed in less lucrative ways, or left to rot. It also means a lot more produce is chemically treated to gain the right size and colour. Even worse, growers speak out, they can face delisting from major chains. In one report about severe grocery restrictions, one supplier said they would love to give contact details but “if leaked to supermarkets I would be delisted and so forced out of business”. It’s a horrible little cycle that will go on, and on, unless people start to take more notice.
Needless to say, major food chains should lower the standards of groceries they accept. But we also need to address our own bigotry towards ‘ugly’ foodstuffs, or risk wasting even more than we already do. Ours is the microwave meals-buying, supermarket-shopping, Tescopoly generation for whom food is cheap, varied and plentiful. As a result, we have lost a valuable sense of perspective about portion sizes and food waste. Prettified vegetables are just part of this forgetfulness. They may look like a chef’s dream, but fresh, exotic food feeds our superficial, unreal attitudes to the food industry, that wastes billions of tonnes of food per year.
Next time I grow vegetables, I will eat my mangled produce with pride. It will be ugly, and difficult to grow, and small, but every scrap will taste of a well-deserved meal. And if it means I have to take out the food bin less, that’s fine by me.