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Ugly and Expired Food Stores

EJCC

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Trader Joe's ex-president to open store selling expired food | Fox News

excerpt said:
We’ve all heard about the massive food waste Americans incur every year.

'Sell-by', 'best-by' and 'use-by' dates are mostly unregulated and confusing for consumers when it comes to throwing items out --a factor that contributes to $165 billion of food wasted every year.

But the former president of Trader Joe's Doug Rauch says he’s got a solution.

In May, he’s launching The Daily Table, a grocery store and restaurant in Dorchester, Mass., that will offer inexpensive food considered 'unsellable' by regular grocery stores.

Food available will include fruits and vegetables that are expired and repurposed food that will be incorporated into hot meals. Other items for sale will be products that are fine to eat but may have damaged packaging.

“Most families know that they’re not giving their kids the nutrition they need. But they just can’t afford it, they don’t have an option,” Rauch recently told Salon.


In Europe, Ugly Sells In The Produce Aisle : The Salt : NPR

excerpt said:
Retailers (at least in Europe and the U.S.) by default now cater to the perfectionist shopper who prefers only the plump, round tomato or the unblemished apple to grace the fruit bowl. But many fruits and vegetables, while edible and nutritious, don't measure up.

That means farmers end up tossing out a huge amount of food that fails to meet retailers' cosmetic standards — in some cases, as much as 20 to 40 percent of fresh produce gets wasted, according to estimates from the United Nations Environment Program.

But the European Union declared 2014 to be the Year Against Food Waste. And earlier this year, French retailer Intermarche, the country's third-largest supermarket, took that initiative viral, launching a cheeky "inglorious fruits and vegetables" campaign to get consumers to see the beauty of ugly produce.

...That initial campaign, launched in March, was quite successful: Marcel, the creative agency behind Intermarche's campaign, says overall store traffic rose 24 percent. It was so successful, in fact, that Intermarche brought the idea back for a week in October in all of its 1,800 stores, and its competitors in France, Auchan and Monoprix, have launched similar initiatives.

And ugly fruit fever is spreading.
 

JocktheMotie

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I'd really like this. I eat expired stuff all the time anyways, it'd be nice to have the option to buy it at a lower price.

They're more like guidelines anyways.
 

Amethyst

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Cheaper health foods? I'm so down!

I don't care what it looks like, more than what it tastes like.
 

/DG/

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This is a great idea, but it really depends on the food. Fresh fruits and veggies tend to go a bit fast and get moldy...I dunno if it'd be ok to sell/eat those. Canned and boxed foods will last for months and months after they've expired, but others might not last that long. I'm wondering how long they intend to sell the merchandise after the expiration date and which type of merchandise we're talking about here.
 

prplchknz

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I know expired food usually is fine, but i'm so paranoid that if i'm eating it and then i see its expired i'll convince myself i'm gonna get food poisoning and make myself throw up. i try to be ok with it i just can't.
 

aanule

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I know expired food usually is fine, but i'm so paranoid that if i'm eating it and then i see its expired i'll convince myself i'm gonna get food poisoning and make myself throw up. i try to be ok with it i just can't.

It's all in your mind!!! ;)
 

EJCC

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BadOctopus

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Isn't ugly produce the whole point of farmer's markets? If it's weird and misshapen, it must be organically grown!
 

EJCC

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Isn't ugly produce the whole point of farmer's markets? If it's weird and misshapen, it must be organically grown!
Well that's SOME of the ugly produce in America, but definitely not all of it, or even most of it. I can only imagine how much non-organic, industrially farmed produce is thrown away on a daily basis because it isn't pretty enough.
 

prplchknz

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It is. Before food packaging, you'd use your senses and judgement to decide if something was good. That still holds true!

my nose and taste buds lie. actually all my senses do. that's not the point. that is the point we're not getting into this right now.
 

Jaguar

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but what if it's not? see the problem?

Some yogurt I bought went bad even before the expiration date. When I got home and opened it, I ended up spitting it out in the sink because it tasted like rotten crap. I took it back to the store.
 

gromit

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There's a place in Boston, Haymarket, where vendors sell super cheap produce that's on its way out but still fine to eat in the next couple days. And there was a little grocer that had a little shop by where I lived for a couple years that sold the same kind of stuff, reduced price for slightly older, but still totally edible food. I love that.

Especially with fruit you usually have to wait so long for it to ripen if you buy it from the grocery store anyway. It usually tastes the sweetest right before it's about to go bad. So it is nice to have food that you can eat the day you buy it!
 

Doctor Cringelord

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Some yogurt I bought went bad even before the expiration date. When I got home and opened it, I ended up spitting it out in the sink because it tasted like rotten crap. I took it back to the store.

That was probably the store's fault. They might've let it sit unrefrigerated for too long before stocking it.
 

Destiny

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This reminds me, I actually ate a moldy mooncake before when I was 11 years old. But thank goodness nothing happened to me. There are some stores out there that not only sell expired food, they also sell moldy food :dry:
 
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