France: Intermarché Finds Success With 'Inglorious Fruits & Vegetables' Campaign

Not all carrots look alike, but you wouldn’t know it from scanning the shelves of your local supermarket.

Supermarket chains often display only the most perfectly shaped apples, potatoes and other produce for their shoppers. The rest may get cooked for the store’s prepared foods or, more often, tossed out with the garbage.

“Most consumers buy their fresh products based on aesthetic criteria: If the product looks good, then it must taste good,” said Patrice DeVilliers, the photographer of a campaign by Marcel Worldwide that is changing the way French consumers view unattractive produce. Last year, these “ugly” fruits and vegetables accounted for 40 percent of France’s total food waste, according to Ms. DeVillers. “Fruits and vegetables are suffering from unjustified aesthetic prejudice,” she said.

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