From Bumps to Bruises: Embracing the Imperfections in Produce

My experience volunteering at my local food pantry is what first exposed me to the extent to which our standards of perfection extend to the food we eat. At the food pantry, the other volunteers and I were asked to sort through recently-delivered produce and discard the items that looked different from the rest. I watched in horror as bell peppers with a few extra bumps, tomatoes with a single blemish, and even cucumbers with a slightly rounded edge made their way into a large red bin. I watched in horror as, well before our day at the food pantry had come to a close, the bin began to overflow with blackberries and broccoli and bottle gourds that weren’t the perfect shape or color or size. And I watched in horror as a forklift hauled the food from the bin into a dumpster – only for the bin to fill up again. 

It’s clear, however, that food pantries aren’t alone: the demise of the imperfects extends far beyond the well-meaning volunteers sifting through apples and arugula. Living in an era of consumerism, we’ve been bred to only purchase the cream of the crop, leading grocery stores to seldom salvage fruits and vegetables with minor deformities or discoloration. Even the produce that reaches our refrigerators isn’t immune to being discarded. Once it starts to soften or form spots, many of us find an excuse to throw it away to avoid learning how to cook with it. Or, if we feel uncomfortable tossing something that simply looks or feels “subpar,” we put off cooking it until it really does spoil. Either way, our imperfect produce eventually reaches the landfill or a compost bin, even though it could have been consumed much earlier in its life.

The numbers are jarring. In the Ted-Ed video “Are spotty fruits and vegetables safe to eat?,” Elizabeth Brauer states that cosmetic defects contributed to almost 30 percent of produce on the market being tossed in the United States in 2010 alone. That amounts to nearly 30 billion dollars of produce lost solely because it didn’t meet our aesthetic standards. In fact, the unsightly appearance of a piece of produce is often its only flaw: most recipes made with wrinkly or bumpy fruits and vegetables still taste the exact same as if they had been made with the best of the best. Yet whether scarred or spotted or softened, such produce often isn't purchased or eaten simply because we don’t know enough about it. Has it been infected by harmful bacteria? Are wilted leaves and mushy fruits still edible? Where did the spots and stains come from, and what might happen to us if we eat them?

Learning to harness the potential in our produce’s flaws is a great place to start. Take bananas, for instance. The brown, mushy bananas that we often overlook bring the perfect combination of texture and sweetness to breads and pancakes alike. In fact, whenever I want to bake banana bread at home, I skip past the bright yellow or green bananas at the store and head straight for the spotted ones that nobody seems to want – and my bread thanks me for it.

Apples show similar potential. Convinced that the brightest and crispest ones are superior to the rest, we often complain when we bite into an apple and discover that its inside is soft or slightly brown. While these apples may not be as fun to eat, they add wonderful sweetness to both homemade applesauce and apple cider. I can hardly count the number of times that I’ve made applesauce with apples that looked less-than-appetizing, and I couldn’t even tell the difference! With the addition of just a hint of cinnamon, the sauce tasted just as delicious as its store-bought counterparts, all while putting my softened fruit to good use.

The same line of reasoning can be applied to almost any other fruit or vegetable. Have an abundance of squishy grapes? Blend them into a delicious smoothie that turns mushy into mouthwatering. Want to make a salad with a misshapen bell pepper? Just chop it up into tiny pieces, and nobody will ever know that your star ingredient is a little less than perfect.

Another solution, detailed in Elizabeth Brauer’s aforementioned Ted-Ed video, lies in understanding what contributes to imperfections in our fruits and vegetables in the first place. By detailing the plant-microbe interactions that contribute to the formation of spots and mushy patches on fruits, Brauer explains that spotty apples and mushy tomatoes aren’t exactly the inedible horrors we portray them to be. Spots form when sugar-hungry microbes drain fruits of their color and leave behind dark splotches on the fruit’s skin, while mushy patches form once a fruit has been picked and attacked by necrotic nutrient-absorbing fungi. Though these discolorations often kill more than a few of the fruit’s cells, both can be consumed or sliced off and neither should destine an entire fruit to the dumpster. In fact, the bacteria that make us sick, such as salmonella, produce neither spots nor mushy patches and can be addressed simply by thoroughly washing produce prior to consumption, thereby minimizing our wastage of the discolored fruits and vegetables we knew little about to begin with.

Already grocers and retailers around the world are making strides in successfully selling imperfect produce, with Europe leading the way. In France, for example, the supermarket Intermarche specifically highlights “ugly” produce in its advertisements and sells it at 30 percent off, even going as far as to turn some of the produce into high-demand soups or smoothies. Fruta Feia in Portugal and Waitrose in the United Kingdom likewise have launched initiatives to educate consumers about funny-looking produce that would otherwise go untouched. 

Despite that, unlike many European grocery stores, American grocery stores are still a long ways away from salvaging their gnarliest products, several companies have begun to bring imperfect fruits and vegetables to consumers. Imperfect Foods, for instance, delivers not only oddly-shaped produce but also sustainably-sourced animal products and plant-based alternatives directly to consumers’ doors – and at affordable prices. The company also offers a unique array of snacks made with rescued or upcycled ingredients such as okara flour from soy milk production or extra almonds broken during the almond packaging process. Meanwhile, Real Food Remedy sells imperfect produce boxes and aims to ensure that the imperfect produce it sends to food pantries actually reaches people’s plates. Misfits Market is similarly ambitious: it sells odd-looking produce as well as recently-expired foods, all while featuring a rewards program that incentivizes the purchase of items that otherwise don’t sell. The result? More money for farmers, less food waste, and a home for the disfigured and the discolored produce that is increasingly catching people’s eyes.

In a world where every scratch or dent or nick or streak often dooms produce to the landfill while millions remain hungry, it’s the funky-looking food that shows the most promise. Rather than seeking out the crispest or plumpest fruits and vegetables set out before us, it’s time that we normalize the imperfections in what we purchase and what we eat. No matter how wonky your produce may look or feel, chances are that it is just as nutritious and tastes just as satisfying as its prim and proper counterparts – perfectly imperfect in its own right.