When selecting produce at the grocery store, do you avoid the oddly shaped, inconsistently sized, and slightly blemished items? If the cereal box is dented on one side, do you put it back on the shelf and pick an undented container? These are perfectly natural reactions, but appearance doesn’t necessarily mean those “imperfect” items aren’t delicious. And there’s a cost to wasting imperfect groceries.
We waste an estimated 30% to 40% of the food supply in the United States. Some of this food waste “is caused simply by dumping products that are less than perfect in appearance,” explains the U.S. Food and Drug Administration website. Wasting perfectly good food is bad enough, but food waste also contributes to climate change. “Organic waste, mostly food, is the second biggest component of landfills, and landfills are the third-largest source of methane…
