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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

> Playing devil's advocate: an enormous amount of food waste is caused by people simply refusing to buy ugly food.

Playing double-devil's advocate:

1) Most people have no problem buying ugly food. Much of the standardization of produce comes from packaging and packing requirements. Non-standard produce is still consumed in other forms: juice, frozen, soup, etc.

2) The vast majority of food waste comes from unsold restaurant food and food that goes uneaten at home (goes bad before you can consume it). This has nothing to do with ugly food.

3) The bruised part on apples tastes like crap. It's mealy and sour and fermenting and off-flavored. It's not my responsibility to eat bruised apples because a store can't be careful in handling. Blame the supply chain and grocery staff, not consumers.

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I've always had an issue with the "people should buy ugly food" argument. It strikes me as being somewhat elitist, and I have my doubts that the people making this argument actually follow through themselves and pick the ugly food at the supermarket, or really know if actually makes any difference.

I feel like I am doing the right thing by buying fruit and vegetables instead of processed food. Do I now need to make further consideration and question the impact of my choices because I am ignoring the ugly apples? Humans developed a highly sophisticated discernment of fruit quality for a reason.

My local store sells 3Kg of potentially bruised apples for the price of 1Kg non-bruised.

I often buy the bruised ones and cut off the bruised parts before eating. But I make this choice because while I do see a lower value in bruised apples, I don't see the value lower by a factor of 3. I usually cut off just 10-20% of the apple.

If I paid full price for a bruised product I'm right to feel taken advantage of.

but that is a very different situation than paying the same price and getting bruised apples where you have to cut off 10-20%.

"bruised" is non-ugly uglified by (mis-) handling/transport/whatever.

Before that there are lots of "ugly" food that never make it to the shop, related previous thread and single point anecdata:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18212680

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18214314

> I've always had an issue with the "people should buy ugly food" argument. It strikes me as being somewhat elitist, and I have my doubts that the people making this argument actually follow through themselves and pick the ugly food at the supermarket, or really know if actually makes any difference.

I wouldn't go so far as to say "people should buy ugly food"--I'm merely observing that there's nothing inherently better about pretty food. But if you want to take my comment as a personal attack on you, I can't stop ya.

I get my fruit and veggies mostly from a CSA, so your accusation of hypocrisy based on "having your doubts" doesn't land.

> Do I now need to make further consideration and question the impact of my choices because I am ignoring the ugly apples?

I don't think so. There's only so much micro-optimization an individual can do in their life, and the impact here is pretty low.

The impact of delivery services as a whole, however, is a lot higher.

> Humans developed a highly sophisticated discernment of fruit quality for a reason.

Really? And what reason is that?

Your entire post is basically, "I think this is wrong because if it were right I'd have to feel bad about my actions", when in fact nobody is trying to make you feel bad, and if they were, your logic would make no sense.

>Humans developed a highly sophisticated discernment of fruit quality for a reason.

Humans also developed a highly sophisticated way of absorbing ideas and images of their environment, some of which portray ideal fruits and vegetables as examples of what should be eaten, and anything outside that norm which was passed down by parents and through the media should not be eaten, or at least looked upon with suspicion.

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