A team of UK researchers has found that over a third of fruit and vegetables grown in Britain never make it to the shelves because their appearance does not meet supermarket and consumer standards.
In new research published in the Journal of Cleaner Production, the researchers from the University of Edinburgh found that more than 50 million tonnes of fruit and vegetables grown across the European Economic Area (EEA) are discarded each year.
'One Of The Great Scourges Of Our Time'
This wasted produce, defined under the term Food Loss and Waste (FLW), is deemed 'unacceptable' in the report, especially given than 10% percent of the world (about 815 million people) still suffers from chronic hunger, according to the Global Hunger Index.
Speaking about the loss, the research paper describes it as 'one of the great scourges of our time' with one author, Professor David Reay of the School of GeoSciences at Edinburgh University saying, "The scale of food that is wasted when it is perfectly safe to eat is shocking at a time when one-tenth of the world’s population is perpetually underfed."
Education about the awareness of discarded food is a crucial issue for co-author Stephen Porter, also from University of Edinburgh’s School of GeoSciences, "Encouraging people to be less picky about how their fruit and vegetables look could go a long way to cutting waste, reducing the impact of food production on the climate, and easing the food supply chain."
Different Approach
Moreover, the new research argues that the loss of food for cosmetic reasons is forced upon farmers by many actors across the agri-food chain even before the customer gets to make a purchase decision. This approach might be changing, however.
There has been an increasing number of initiatives amongst retailers to get to the shelves those fruits and vegetables.
In the UK, Tesco has long been a champion of 'Wonky' veg and also sells juice from misshapen vegetables, while Delhaize is doing the same in Belgium, Aldi Süd launched its own range last year in Germany, and Intermarché has been selling 'Ugly' vegs in France for a few years now.
© 2018 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Matthieu Chassain. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: European Supermarket Magazine.
