To eat better and cheaper, should we reintroduce ugly fruits and vegetables? This is the bet made by some independent initiatives. Especially since the European rules on sizing will soon be removed.
Back to school is the time for good resolutions. And among the most widespread, there is of course that of eating better… By consuming more fruits and vegetables, in particular. But you still have to have the means to do so.
According to a survey by the Familles rurales association, the price of vegetables has increased by 70% in 10 years. As a result, consumption has fallen by 8% between 2020 and 2023.
There is indeed a solution to lower the price of your shopping basket: eat ugly fruits and vegetables. But we don’t find them so frequently on the shelves of our supermarkets. There are two reasons for this, one is mainly due to our consumption habits, the other is legal. Explanations.
Deeply rooted consumption habits
You may remember: about ten years ago, most major retailers launched sales of “ugly fruits and vegetables”. Fruits and vegetables that were good and healthy but too small, too big or too crooked and which, for this reason, are not usually sold in supermarkets.
Despite the possible savings (around 30%), customers were not there. Studies have shown that the appearance of fruits and vegetables was a selection criterion for consumers. They were too used to eating fruits and vegetables that looked perfect, so they did not want ugly ones. Faced with this observation, the latter were removed from the shelves after a few months.
They are thus returned to their original destiny: sold to industry for processing (into juice, puree, etc.), for animal feed, or simply thrown away. In purchasing centers, strict criteria are in fact applied so that only the most beautiful and best-calibrated fruits and vegetables are sent to the shelves.
Faced with these practices, an initial sorting is carried out by the producers themselves: according to the Ministry of Ecological Transition, nearly a million tonnes of edible foodstuffs are thrown away at the primary production stage every year.
Initiatives anti-gaspi
Today, ugly fruits and vegetables are making a comeback thanks to a few independent initiatives, such as the Nous brand, or BeneBono, an online grocery store specializing in anti-waste. The latter boasts of having saved 4,700 tons of fruits and vegetables rejected by traditional distribution channels since 2020.
“It’s not easy to change mentalities. Large-scale distribution has pushed the criteria of beauty by wanting to please consumers, for whom the choice is strongly focused on the visual aspect, shapes and defects,” explains Marie Estangoy, responsible for fruit and vegetable purchases at BeneBono.
“But we are relying on a price approach to convince consumers, by offering prices 5 to 35% cheaper than in mass distribution, depending on the defects of the fruits and vegetables.”
These initiatives are winning over an environmentally conscious public, who see the fight against food waste as almost an act of militancy, and for whom misshapen fruits and vegetables are perceived as having a better flavour and better nutritional qualities.
European calibration standards
However, they cannot absorb 100% of the waste since some ugly fruits and vegetables cannot legally be sold at the moment.
Fruits and vegetables are in fact governed by European standards. The general rule is that they must be “intact, healthy, clean and free from parasites”.
However, specific rules apply to ten of them, among the most marketed, such as apples, tomatoes, and kiwis. These are essentially sizing rules. For example, to be marketable, an apple must weigh at least 90 grams or have a minimum diameter of 60 mm (with a 10% tolerance margin).
Critics of these standards accuse them of being absurd, and this argument is often put forward by Eurosceptics to accuse Europe of extreme bureaucracy. The case of the banana, which must measure at least 14cm long and 27mm wide, was put forward by Boris Johnson in the Brexit campaign in 2016 (but he claimed that the law imposed a specific shape on the banana, which is false).
“It’s true that these strict rules sometimes block us, and can seem a little absurd when we know, for example, that peaches must be of a certain size, certain months of the year…” regrets Marie Estangoy.
“The aim is still to regulate agricultural practices to avoid abuses and ensure sufficient quality for consumers,” she says.
This is indeed how these standards are justified on a European scale. These size and quality criteria serve to standardise these products in order to be able to determine their price on the markets. In a globalised economy, this allows for fairer competition.
Standards soon to be partly removed
But while the rule is useful in import-export, it is less so on a local scale, where concerns about purchasing power, food waste and farmers’ remuneration are becoming increasingly important.
So much so that the European Union is about to eliminate what some see as an excess of standards. From 1 January 2025, these will disappear within short circuits.
Producers will be able to sell all their fruits and vegetables directly, even the ugly ones, and even those that do not comply with the sizing rules (these rules will, however, remain in large-scale distribution and when an intermediary exists between the producer and the customer).
A solution for consumers who want to buy fruit and vegetables more cheaply, while fighting against waste and avoiding financial losses for producers.
