You’re at the grocery store standing in front of the red juicy tomatoes and if you’re like most people, you go through all the tomatoes avoiding the distorted or “imperfect” ones and leave with the perfect red, round, tomato. This is understandable because if it looks good, it must taste good…right? Most don’t just blindly grab the first tomato they see and move on. But if we all keep passing up this imperfect produce, the question that is left is “what happens to all this produce?” and “Do we just throw it away, and increase food waste even though the food is still edible and taste the same?” The answer to these questions is yes. That’s exactly what most grocery stores do, throw it away, and that’s if it even makes it to the grocery store. Most grocery stores don’t even accept produce to be sold that is too big, too small, a slightly off color, or an unusual shape.  

With food waste increasing at a rapid paste over the years, grocery stores are starting to change their way of thinking towards imperfect produce. Reported through NPR, it was stated that “Whole Foods has announced a deal with Imperfect Produce to test sales of funky fruits and vegetables in a handful of stores in Northern California beginning in April. This announcement comes after a Change.org petition called upon the retailer to take up the ugly banner.” – Allison Aubrey. Putting a stop to food waste isn’t easy, but with the help of major grocery stores such as Whole Foods providing imperfect produce to be sold, like it should, this will help lessen the amount of unnecessary food waste. If grocery stores start to participate in this movement, it will make a statement to those buying groceries because it will show the customer that they support imperfect produce and the customer should also.

To learn more about the petition that was started, just click on this link: Change.org. Here you’ll see what the petition exactly was about and learn about more petitions towards food waste that you can be apart of in putting a stop to food waste. I hope you’ve learned a bit more about the changes being made in the fight to end food waste and for more information, be sure to subscribe to our Twitter and Instagram @TFWproject.