food waste [General]

2014 Jul 20
This year the European union has decided to tackle food waste as their important cause. Here is how one grocery chain in France is handling the idea.

Brilliantly.


2014 Jul 20
Brilliant, indeed! Wish they would do that here.

2014 Jul 21
I don't think all those fruits and vegetables really get wasted, but rather they get used in processed foods like juices and jams. This is just good marketing.

2014 Jul 21
They don't. Unless they're selling all of their crop exclusively to a particular brand (like Lays chips and their potato farmers), it gets dumped. Companies want control over the quality and uniformity of their products, even if it is only going to make jam.


2014 Jul 21
I smell marketing genius here.

Cute veggies ... save the planet ... no waste ... and we are talking about it here (and they are in France) ... Brilliant ... The Mad Men really hit on a good one. !

It costs big retailers money to have more products . They talk in SKU's.
More SKU's mean more people handling, buying, stalking bins, paying invoices etc.
And they take up precious square footage (space) in the store, that they will want a return on.

I don't think the farmers give those anthropomorphic veggies away.

And they are decreasing price by 30% ?

Do the math.

2014 Jul 21
They probably get used as animal feed normally . . .

It's marketing, but yes, there is a lot of waste in the food supply chain.

I shopped for vegetables on farms in France and there were plenty of misshapen ones. This is straight from the fields though. And no middleman.

In France there is agricultural overproduction anyway . . . sometimes farmers are paid not to grow food, or it's bought by the government then destroyed. The government subsidizes agriculture, as many countries do.