Don’t Judge a Book by It’s Cover

The following is a video about one French Super Market’s radical and brilliant strategy to eliminate waste and make good produce affordable. Intermarche took this idea to the bank with their brainchild: Inglorious Fruits and Vegetables. They figured out how to sell millions of pounds of produce that would be otherwise trashed each year. If you haven’t already, watch the video below about the success of their project.

We live in a culture that values appearance over substance. We expect women to be thin, celebrities flawless, and athletes invincible. In an age when plastic surgery is considered good manners and death optional it’s not surprising that we expect perfection in the produce section.

Should fruits and vegetables look good or taste good? The conventional wisdom is changing as we understand how much flavor has been bred out of tomatoes that can survive a 3000 mile trek across country or huge strawberries that resist bruising. When half the world is starving it’s atrocious that a third of all produce is being thrown away just because of its appearance. We need to get rid of our biases – the time is now.

Saturday mornings find us at Chrystal Springs Farmers’ Market in Brunswick. It’s a hike, but one we’re happy to take especially for the bread, eggs, and vegetables that are not thriving in our backyard garden. One of our favorite items is a 5 lb. bag of deformed carrots we purchase from Six River Farm. I’m always surprised that they’re not more popular with more shoppers; while they might be unsightly next to their well shaped cousins, the taste is everything one values in a fresh, local, organic carrot with the added bonus of being discounted. I look forward to the day when American markets take a page out of Intermarche’s book.