“Lemons sold by Ugly Fruit.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.
(p. 6) At a time of lingering economic hardship for many in the European Union, whose penchant for regulation has extended even to the shape, size and color of the foods its citizens eat, Ms. Soares has bet that there is a market for fruits and vegetables deemed too ugly by government bureaucrats, supermarkets and other retailers to sell to their customers.
Six months ago, she and a handful of volunteers started a cooperative called Fruta Feia, or Ugly Fruit, which in its short life is already verging on a kind of countercultural movement. It has taken off with hard-pressed consumers, won applause from advocates outraged by Europe’s skyrocketing food waste, and provided a backhanded slap to overweening European Union rule makers. In its own way, it has even quietly subverted fixed notions of what is beautiful, or at least edible.
“The E.U. norms are based on the mistaken idea that quality is about appearance,” said Ms. Soares, 31, who formerly worked in Barcelona as a renewable energy consultant. “It’s of course easier to measure the exterior aspect rather than interior features like sugar levels, but that is the wrong way to determine quality.”
She said her goal was “to break the dictatorship of aesthetics, because it has really helped increase food wastage.”
Europe wastes 89 million tons of food a year, according to a study presented in May by the Dutch and Swedish governments, which called on the European Union “to reduce the amount of food waste caused by the labeling system.”
For her part, Ms. Soares estimates that a third of Portugal’s farming produce goes to waste because of the quality standards set by supermarkets and their consumers. She says the waste is also a striking example of misplaced regulatory intervention by the European Union, which has tried to unify food standards across the 28-nation bloc.
For the full story, see:
RAPHAEL MINDER. “Tempting Europe With Ugly Fruit.” The New YorkTimes, First Section (Sun., MAY 25, 2014): 6 & 8.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date MAY 24, 2014.)