Ugly Food Was Hot Stuff in 2015

2015 was the year of foods I'd consider ugly ducklings. I ate fish that could pass as aliens, gnarly fruits and vegetables, and I wasn’t just doing it to be cool, either. Across the country, diners and cooks were trying out ugly fruits and vegetables with odd shapes and finding...they taste exactly the same. The underdogs became the overlords.

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“This definitely seems like the year where more and more people were interested in trying something new,” says Laura McDonald, communications specialist for NYC’s Greenmarkets.

In trying some new looks, I also managed to waste a little less. Here’s how my year of craving ugly food looked.

For every ready-for-the-runway salmon or tuna, there are dozens of other unsung species in the shadows labeled “abundant, invasive, or rough." They're usually thrown out due to lack of a market demand. Until now.

According to McDonald, varieties like porgy became best sellers at the markets, while mackerel definitely had a 2015 moment. Cooking and eating fish like these is more sustainable and often a heck of a lot cheaper that those top-of-the-line species.

I challenged myself to cook more inexpensive “trash” species, and found they’re just as great. The Epi Test Kitchen turned into ugly fish beauticians and transformed a whole dorade into a salt-baked beauty, and grilled sardines to give their skin a crispier-than-a-chip crunch. I also fell in love with sustainable and healthy canned fish. Epi even threw a party for them.

The line-up features some common ugly food "defects."

Photo by Imperfect Produce

"Cosmetically challenged" fruits and vegetables (to say it nicely) have traditionally been a huge source of waste, and this year was the time I realized how much waste. Each year, 6 billion pounds of America’s produce doesn’t even make it to the market. Fruits and vegetables have to fit a supermarket’s size and aesthetic standards. They're getting wasted because they didn’t fit a “look.” And that's some high school-level shade.

“Most of the ugly produce is being 'tossed out' at the farm,” says Jordan Figuerido, founder of EndFoodWaste. “It’s stuff that the farmer’s rejecting and knows the grocer will not accept, so they don’t even pick it.“

Figuerido spent this year blending food waste advocacy with aesthetics. EndFoodWaste’s Instagram posted fun photos of conjoined carrots, peppers with "noses,", and tomatoes with faces only a mother could love. As it turned out, more than just mothers loved ugly. 17,000 followers later, photos of funny-looking produce helped open up a conversation and even some businesses.

These carrots were judged "too crooked" for sale.

Photo by Imperfect Produce

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Imperfect Produce started as a grocery service for the Bay Area in August this year, offering a weekly 12-pound shipment of “ugly produce” for $12. In between the farmer and the supermarket, Imperfect steps in and looks for the rejects that don’t fit the size requirements for grocery shelves. Or just look plain weird.

Referral after referral later, this subscription service is gaining traction as an alternative approach in bridging the gap between the almost 50 million food insecure Americans and fresh produce.

“We’re wasting 40%—if we could recover 15% and get more nutritious produce to market, that would be enough to feed 25 million hungry Americans," says CEO Ben Simon, who also extends a subscription discount for Americans living on subsidized food stamps like SNAP. “On a systems scale, fighting waste overall reduces hunger.” And it's wasting less.

These apples were discarded because they didn't meet the standard minimum diameter of 2 inches.

Photo by Imperfect Produce

This year, Dana Gunders, a writer and staffer on the Natural Resources Defense Council, released the Waste-Free Kitchen Handbook. One of the book’s key tips is buying what she calls “cosmetically challenged” fruits and vegetables as part of a grander way to waste less food.

“This trend is more and more evidence that people are interested in taste more than appearance,” says Gunders, who also notes the rise of farmers' market sales as an influence on ugly food’s popularity

“Consumers have a higher tolerance than grocery stores give us credit for,” says Gunders, “and farmers' markets are proof of that.” This year, farmers' market sales peaked.

“Our shoppers have always been really open to foods looking differently from what they would at the grocery store,” says McDonald. “You can’t get a farmers' market shopping experience at a grocery store. You don’t get the same thing.”

While the big box grocers haven’t budged on their stocking standards, people are getting the message: eat ugly, help the earth.