{"id":5848,"date":"2019-10-09T14:56:37","date_gmt":"2019-10-09T11:56:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=5848"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:35","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:35","slug":"a-zerohunger-world-by-eating-ugly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/10\/09\/a-zerohunger-world-by-eating-ugly\/","title":{"rendered":"A #Zerohunger World by Eating Ugly"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It is often said that beauty lies is in the eye of the beholder.\nWhen it comes to fruits and vegetables, one-third of them never even make it to\nour grocery store shelves because they are rejected on their way from the farm\nto the store.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While supermarkets have a part to play in this, we must also\nexamine our consciences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Would you choose the oval-shaped, matte-coloured apple or the\nperfectly rounded shiny one? One of these would make a nicer Instagram photo\nthan the other, but in the end, both would taste equally as good and would\nsatisfy your hunger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than 820 million people go hungry every day, while the\nworld as a whole wastes or loses 1\/3 of what is produced. In the case of fruits\nand vegetables, almost half (45%) is wasted. In our world of increasing extreme\nweather events and changes in climates, saving ugly fruits is not only an issue\nof ethics, but it is also a question of resources. Valuable natural resources\ngo into producing the food we throw away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It takes 13 litres of water to grow one tomato and 50 litres of\nwater to produce one orange. It also takes seeds, soil, the labour of farmers\nand even the fuel that goes into transporting the food. All of these resources\nare lost when the fruit (pun intended) of these labours is lost. Saving ugly\nfruits and vegetables is not a question of ethics, it is a question of\nresources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Waste occurs in many ways and at many different parts of the\nvalue chains of fruits. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A carrot for instance often faces many obstacles before even getting to a supermarket. It must pass the rigid requirements that supermarkets have for their fruits and vegetables. Sometimes, carrots must go through photographic sensor machines that analyze them for aesthetic defects. If they are slightly bent, not bright orange, have to blemish or are broken, they are moved into the pile intended for livestock feed even though they are still fit for human consumption. In total, about 25-30% of carrots, do not make it to the grocery store because of physical or aesthetic defects. A farmer’s markets or farm shops, sales of carrots can bypass some of the strict aesthetic standards that supermarkets have, but would you buy an untraditional-looking carrot?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Which fruit would you choose? By choosing\nfruits and vegetables that are imperfect or riper, we as consumers can help\nsave all the resources that went into making the food. We should learn to love\nugly fruits and vegetables; we could save some of the food that is wasted\nsimply because of the way it looks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bananas are a particularly fragile\nfruit. Even if they make it to the grocery stores or markets, the way they are\nstocked and packaged can damage these softies. Handling bananas roughly can\nnegatively impact their appearance and can cause the fruit to spoil more quickly.\nConsumers are then not normally keen to buy produce that is over-ripe, soft,\ndiscoloured or damaged.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is a tip for you: If you intend\nto eat the fruit the same day, buy the ones that are already ripe. If no one\nchooses them, they will end up in the garbage instead of someone\u2019s stomach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEverything has beauty but not\neveryone sees it.\u201d- Confucius<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some foods like, potatoes, are lost or\nwasted when they are processed into other types of food. For example, potatoes\ndestined to be French fries can be wasted in the stage where they are cut into\nstrips. These strips break easily during the processing and packaging stages.\nThe broken pieces are then often thrown out because it is usually cheaper to\ndispose of them than to reuse them. Other potatoes that get damaged during the\nloading or transport phase get excluded before even making it to the packaging\nfactory. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Developing markets for \u201csub-standard\u201d\nproduce and products, like broken potatoes, which are still safe for\nconsumption, nutritious and taste good, would be one way to reduce food waste\nor losses caused by errors in processing, packaging or transporting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of this waste is preventable.\nChoosing ugly produce, storing fruits and vegetables properly and eating what\nyou already have in the refrigerator before what is newly purchased are just\nsome things that each of us can do in our daily lives to create a #ZeroHunger\nworld and combat climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Make room in your heart for ugly\nfruits so that they fill stomachs not landfills.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is often said that beauty lies is in the eye of the beholder. When it comes to fruits and vegetables, one-third of them never even make it to our…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5849,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[111],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-responsibility"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}