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When I was young, my mom used to always tell me not to waste food and to finish off everything that was on my plate. However, I never really thought about the food waste problem until I grew up and started living on my own, but let’s backtrack a little bit…
As an Italian living in London, I can see there are many obvious differences between Italy and the UK, but one of the starkest is the fresh produce in supermarkets.
Multicultural towns and cities in the UK offer a much wider array of exotic fruit and vegetables that are rarely on offer in regular supermarkets in Italy.
But one of the drawbacks of this extra choice is that most of the fruit and veg is imported and often tastes pretty bland. Some “farmers” markets are slightly better, but with a busy lifestyle, I sadly haven’t got the time to go to markets to buy my groceries every week.
Recently, my Italian cousin moved to London, and one day she sent me a text:
“How do you cook those tiny peppers?”
I wasn’t sure which ones she was referring to. Was she talking about Mexican chillies? Was she talking about Spanish Padrón peppers?
It turns out she was talking about regular “British” peppers like the ones pictured below (which are often not British, as most of the time they are imported from warmer countries).
Why was she confused? The thing is, like many other fruits and vegetables, peppers in UK supermarkets are extremely uniform: same size, shiny, entirely one colour (green, orange, yellow or red) and are all the same shape. They are so alike to one another they almost look made out of plastic (and to be honest sometimes taste like it too!).
In Italy, peppers are much, much bigger, and come in the weirdest shapes imaginable. They are often multicoloured, green and red, or green and yellow, or orange and green and are almost always very tasty.
You can see why she thought the UK supermarket peppers were a special kind of pepper that you would cook in a particular kind of way, rather than cooking it the same way as you would regular peppers in Italy!
As mentioned above though, it’s not just peppers. Most of the produce in UK supermarkets has to be a certain size or look a certain way, otherwise, supermarkets won’t buy them, as they believe the UK public won’t be interested.
To a point, it makes sense. If everything is “perfect” looking, the few that don’t conform will be the odd ones out, so people are more likely not to pick them. However, if they were all a little misshapen or had marks on them, then I think the public wouldn’t be so picky.
Food waste is a global issue
According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, one-third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted globally. That’s the equivalent of 1.3 billion tonnes per year. The UK alone wastes a staggering 10m tonnes of food annually, according to the Waste and Resources Action Programme. £3m tonnes of produce is wasted even before it leaves the farm! But this is never recorded as supermarket waste because it is rejected before it hits the shelves.
This is because UK supermarkets (and perhaps most UK consumers) want their produce to fit certain “beauty” standards. Fruit and vegetables grown in the EU are governed by European Union food regulations but UK supermarkets require producers to meet higher cosmetic standards, which leads to perfectly edible food being “graded out”.
Carrots and cucumbers have to be straight, and a certain size. Potatoes have to a certain size, and so on. So, if fruits or vegetables are a little wonky, have marks on them, are too big or too small, they get rejected and will never reach supermarket shelves.
Fixing the food waste problem
As mentioned in previous posts, in 2019 I started looking for ways to live a more sustainable and eco-friendly life. Tackling our household food waste was part of it. One of the easiest changes I made was to sign up to a weekly food delivery service from a company called Oddbox, which rescues “lost” i.e. unwanted fruit and vegetables from stores and supermarkets, packs it up and sends it to subscribers.
Some background: In 2016, I attended a course at Escape the City, which offers courses designed to help professionals in a “career-crisis” or help launch start-ups. In 2017, I discovered that one of the Oddbox founders also did a course there, so I was looking forward to supporting a fellow Escape School alumni. At the time, however, Oddbox was just getting started and didn’t deliver to my area.
Fast-forward a couple of years, and luckily lots of Londoners think this idea is great, which means Oddbox has quickly grown and expanded to other areas.
How Oddbox is different
Oddbox is not the usual food/grocery delivery company. You don’t get to pick what vegetables and/or fruits will be delivered to you. Instead, you pick what size box you’d like: small, medium or large, and whether you just want vegetables or fruits or both. (You do have the option to tell them of any products you dislike, are allergic or intolerant to.)
What makes Oddbox different is that the produce you receive would have otherwise gone to waste. They buy from farmers what the supermarkets won’t. Produce that is too big or too small, that is surplus or has marks on it. Frost, wind, rain and drought can discolour and blemish produce but there is no loss of nutrients, so why should this food go to waste? In the box, you also get a leaflet explaining what’s in your box, why it ended up there (if it was surplus, size, etc…), and a few recipe suggestions.
My husband and I are a little picky when it comes to fruit, so I signed us up just to receive the smallest box of vegetables, to give it a try. Although the main reason I signed up was to avoid supermarket waste, I also wanted to see if it was also going to be cheaper than buying at the supermarket overall.
For the first two weeks, I weighed all the produce and tried to compare it to my local Sainsbury’s prices, and it was equal or just over what I would have spent in Sainsbury’s. Of course, you need to remember you’re saving wonky vegetables from going to waste, so I think the slight price difference is worth it.
However, as we’re also trying to eat a more plant-based diet, I switched our deliveries from a small box to a large box (which they say suits a family of 4-5).
I re-did the experiment, weighing every item in the box and comparing prices with my local supermarket and this time the box was consistently a few pounds cheaper, so a win-win in my eyes!
Weird and wonderful
Oddbox sends an email the week before telling you what to expect in the box, but I don’t always check it as frankly I love the surprise! Sometimes I read it excitedly and ask my husband if he wants to know what’s coming, and he always tells me to leave it as a surprise for him. It has added a bit of spontaneity to our cooking. For us, the delivery arrives between Friday night and Saturday morning, so it’s always a nice thing to get up for.
A large box tends to last us a week, just in time for the next one, and besides small tomatoes, which we eat our own body weight in, we usually buy no additional vegetables in the supermarket. It has forced us to try new vegetables that we wouldn’t have otherwise bought, some my husband had never heard of (rainbow chard, Chinese leaf), and attempt new recipes and generally be more adventurous with our food.
The Oddbox experiment has proved a huge success for us; we are helping to rescue food that was needlessly destined for landfill, adding more colour to mealtimes, and generally becoming more aware of the processes involved in the food we eat each week.
If you’re in London I really recommend you give Oddbox a try. This is my referral link. If you sign up through that, we both get £5 discount off our orders.
If you try it, let me know in the comments how you find it.
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