Eat the Damn Bruised Apple

The other day I was in the dining hall and decided to grab an apple. Naturally, I rummaged through the stack of apples for a minute or two until I found the perfect, unscathed apple, because God forbid there is a dent in my apple. As I searched for the perfect apple, I realized something was wrong with my discrimination of other apples that were probably perfectly fine, even with scratches and bruises. Why was I being so picky over these apples? What’s wrong with a tiny scratch or dent on my fruit? The answer: nothing.

[pullquote]The United States is the leading country in food waste worldwide.[/pullquote]

There is nothing wrong with a dent on your apple or a bruise on your banana, so why has it been so ingrained in us that our food needs to look absolutely perfect before we eat it? This is a troubling issue the United States and other wealthy countries are currently facing, and this prejudice against “ugly fruit and vegetables” has helped make the U.S. the world leader in food waste.

[pullquote]There is nothing wrong with a dent on your apple or a bruise on your banana.[/pullquote]

Americans are used to the homogeneous, clean-cut appearance of fruits and vegetables, leaving no room for those that do not fit these strict standards that are solely based on looks. People have been throwing out perfectly good food for a while now because of the association we make between things that look “ugly” as inedible. Around 1.5 billion tons of food, almost one-third of the global supply, is wasted annually worldwide because of its unattractive appearance. The United States itself is the greatest contributor to this massive amount of food waste, throwing out several million tons of food yearly. Although most of this food waste comes from the consumer side of food culture, almost 15 percent occurs before the food even reaches grocery stores and supermarkets. Interviews conducted with farmers and producers have revealed that as much as 25 percent of a crop will be thrown out, left to rot, or fed to farm animals because of its appearance. The connection people make between beauty and quality has led to a horrifying amount of waste of perfectly good food.

[pullquote]The connection people make between beauty and quality has led to a horrifying amount of waste of perfectly good food.[/pullquote]

Food waste also has a direct effect on hunger rates and the United States economy. Because food in America is much cheaper than in other countries, Americans feel less guilty about throwing away food. This leads to greater amounts of wasted food—nearly three trillion dollars’ worth. Money is thus thrown down the drain every year because of this waste. Not only does food waste take a toll on the economy, but it has also been directly linked to hunger. About one in six people in America are considered “food insecure,” meaning they cannot always attain enough food to feed themselves or their households. Millions of Americans struggle to nourish their families, and yet some Americans find the time to throw out quality foods because they are not attractive enough to meet our consumerist society’s beauty standards. If the amount of food wasted annually was halved we could feed a majority, if not all, of those suffering from hunger in America. Whether you look at it from an economic viewpoint or a social welfare perspective, nobody benefits from food waste.

Unsurprisingly, wasting food is also bad for the environment. Food waste is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the world, and the production of food uses precious resources. An immense amount of water, land, and labor is used in today’s wasteful agriculture system, not to mention the immense amount of landfills and incinerators that are needed to discard wasted food. These landfills can be extremely harmful to the environment, releasing massive amounts of greenhouse gases—including methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2—into the atmosphere. It’s safe to say that food waste is therefore terrible for the environment, so why does it still happen? Oh, right, attractiveness trumps all.

“Ugly foods” have been garnering some attention in recent “ugly food movements,” but not nearly enough as they should be. Many nonprofit companies have arisen in attempts to bring attention to these unwanted foods, such as the Portuguese company Fruta Horrible (Horrible Fruit) and the Zero Food Waste Forum, which started a campaign for ugly foods dubbed “Inglorious Fruits and Vegetables.” Even some big companies have come out in solidarity with these smaller groups. Wal-Mart, America’s largest grocer, has started selling bags of dented apples. Despite these movements, a lot more time and money will have to be put into these campaigns to save ugly foods, and ultimately all foods, from being wasted. For now, what you and I can do is change our attitudes and take the first apple from the pile without judging each one for its imperfections; I promise you they all taste the same.

Sophie Attie ‘20 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at sattie@wustl.edu.

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