Beautiful Inside

Following on from Jake’s recent blog about the challenge of getting children to not only eat more veg but to love it and request it ahead of more tempting unhealthy fayre.

Veg is on the agenda again across the retail environment – not only for the obvious health and diet benefits but now for it’s appearance.

Vegetables come in all shapes and sizes, however, the ones we tend to see and buy on supermarket shelves are modified or selected on their visual appearance. This is not new news, but times look like they may be changing.

This year ‘Ugly Veg’ is an actual thing. Consumers are realising that fruit and veg do not need to be supermodels, it’s what’s inside that counts.

This movement has many benefits as it should reduce wastage, increase volume of produce and in many cases help drive competitive prices for products.

More organic and smaller producers should reap the benefits of this change in opinion and expectations, this can only be good for the end user.

The USA are following Europe in making great strides in this area. Through entrepreneurial activity and guerrilla campaigns, people are finally accepting misshapen, bruised, and just down-right ugly foods as totally edible.

Start-ups that send boxes of said fruit and vegetables to your home in the US, including Imperfect Produce (which has just expanded) and Hungry Harvest have been around for a little while, and new ones like Philadelphia-based Misfits Market continue to crop up. Even the huge US retailer Kroger has announced it will be launching Pickuliar Picks this year, a program that will encourage customers to buy produce that is nutritious and tastes fine, but is physically flawed in some way.

Great news for your health and pocket in this very visually perfect Instagram generation we find ourselves living in!