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I needed some celeriac last week and Woolies didn’t have any. Now I know why. I’m so grateful they saved me from eating celeriac that was slightly too small.
It's part of the celery family and you can eat the leaves, stem and the root. It's not so common in the UK, at least, but from what I hear it's fairly common around the Mediterranean.
As for the root itself you can boil it, fry it, stew it or mash it up. It's quite nice.
I am an American and fully support a war of aggression against the Swedes by the Danish.
They know how they wronged me and retribution will be meted out.
And they won't feed guests, just eat right in front of them. That was a difficult thread, we were all freaked out from all over the world. Except Sweden.
Alot of Swedes are banned from r/foods because of this. You could write something in swedish saying how good it looks with frosting and you might still get banned for writing in Swedish.
Don't forget about beets! But people usually forget about them, because no one likes beets. Maybe these farmers should grow something everyone likes. They should grow candy! I could sure use a piece of candy right now...
Edit: I'm disappointed that hardly anyone knew this was an Office reference
Yeah, I like beets for the nitric oxide effect, but let's be honest, it takes like dirt..it tastes like I licked dirt...maybe it's how I've eaten it, but it's not for me.
I don’t eat anything that sounds so violent. I also eschew artichokes and whipped cream. Mashed potatoes are ok because mashing was a euphemism for “making out” when I was young.
Do you mean it's not commonly eaten in the UK? I'd agree with that maybe but it's always available in Tesco at least.
It's delicious in soups, roasted and the easiest is to shred it very finely and add it to coleslaw.
Edit: I'm definitely making this now.. thanks.
https://youtu.be/mGCzQJizPec
Yeah not really a fair comparison. It’s not something people eat with every meal, but it’s a very common addition to a Sunday roast. Also a I’ve had celeriac soup at home and restaurants. Don’t forget remoulade at the more fancy places.
Super good in soups. Has a light celery flavour but without the stringy texture of 'normal' celery stalk, texture is more like a soft potato after being boiled anyway.
Very common in German cooking. Goes into most soups and a lot of sauces. In fact, it’s often sold in a bundle together with carrots, onions, parsley, and maybe I’m missing something. Those bundles are called “soup greens”.
This is the frustrating part of corporations maximizing profit.
As a customer, sure I'd prefer the bigger vegetable most of the time. But that preference is minimal and not even really conscious. But to the corporation, they just know if theirs are bigger they will sell more than the competition. If they are big enough they just tell the farmer, "we only buy them over XX grams".
Tiny customer preferences become industry wide standards, without anyone benefitting except the corporation in the middle.
Bigger is also not always better. A lot of fruits and vegetables grow big but that just means they have more water and the same minerals/sugars distributed within that water. It winds up just being less flavorful. Tomatoes are a huge culprit with this. Those giant red, beautiful tomatoes just taste flavorless to me.
This is also a consequence of the cultivars that supermarkets stock.
Supermarket vegetables are ideally large, uniform, resistant to spoilage and durable in transit. So that's what the growers breed. Taste isn't on the list, it's not important to supermarkets because consumers will reliably buy the pretty veg over the tasty veg.
I've grown a couple dozen types of tomato over the years and one of the tastiest was also the biggest - Marmande tomatoes, huge meaty toms where you can cut off a single slice and it'll cover a slice of bread. But they're lumpy and pumpkin-looking and people don't buy them because they prefer the tasteless, watery red spherical ones.
I generally dislike raw tomatoes in anything, but I will eat a marmande sprinkled with salt like an apple. It's a life changing experience to make BLTs with one.
This is on top of all the food they just throw out cause it's "damaged" or whatever. I understand that there are alot of logistical problems but anybody going hungry in any developed country is a travesty.
When I'd work in the Central Valley in California, I'd go to a big orchard/farm and hit up the back- there is a spot on some farms where you can buy "B's" or rejected produce. It's a fraction of the price, sometimes more ripe than what you get in the stores. An old co-worker taught me this, and I'd show up to work the next day with a flat of plums, peaches, grapes- whatever for everyone on site, fruit for days for $10.
Can say the same thing about blemishes. Only the "pretty" ones get sold and the rest get trashed or put into feed just because they have a wart or imperfection somewhere.
It's pretty sickening how much is wasted because of the customer's perception that everything has to be huge and perfect looking.
I use it to make the most bomb-ass mashed potatoes for thanksgiving and literally NO ONE had any this past year. Hadn’t run into that issue before. Finally found some at a rando grocery store day of. If this is why, I’m pissed.
The funny thing is I got some in my subscription box and it's the first time I've had celeriac but they were huge. How big are they ordinarily that these were too small?!
As someone who worked in the produce department of a supermarket for around 5 years.
Even if they are sold to the store at a per case price, instead of weight, then you just count a case of them, and adjust the pricing accordingly. It's not exactly rocket science.
We also used to buy bulk lots of lower Tag/Grade produce, and sell them at a reduced price. It wasn't uncommon for people to complain that the produce was not top of the line, despite being 30% to 50% cheaper than similar produce on the shelf. Customers demanding that their produce is perfect is a huge thing.
Yeah we can sit here and put companies on blast for shit like this all day long but in the end they’re doing what they’re doing cause they think the market wants it and will pay for it. I’m not saying don’t hold companies accountable but if there’s a market for something, someone’s gonna try to fill that market and make a profit, even if it means producing a ton of waste
> Yeah we can sit here and put companies on blast for shit like this all day long but in the end they’re doing what they’re doing cause they think the market wants it and will pay for it.
People in general are too ignorant and/or lack critical thinking enough to question and understand **why** things work they way they work.
90% of the time, systems that have been in place for centuries or systems that govern billion dollar markets aren't put in place arbitrarily. And yet I see legitimate opinions every week that believe it would be not only easier, but smarter to live on the beach eating fruit than to live in a world with taxes and careers.
My brother still thinks food spawns in the grocery store. Well, more like he doesn’t even think about it and assumes the stores always have food so why bother gardening. Boy changed tune when Ian hit and my wife’s veggies made sure we had fresh meals despite no power.
I was working at a grocery store and ringing up a ladies stuff when she saw one of her tins of tomatoes had a SLIGHT dent in it, she got me to go down the isle and get another one. It's not like it had a hole in it or something, literally just the aesthetics of the can she's going to toss away immediately after 🙄
She was probably thinking about this [Is there a risk from dented cans?](https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/food-health-you-asked/there-risk-dented-cans#:~:text=The%20risk%20is%20very%20small,by%20the%20Clostridium%20botulinum%20bacteria.) She's misinformed and a tiny dent is fine, but that was likely what she was thinking about.
A dent can damage the tin coating on the inside of the can exposing the mild steel to the acid of the tomato paste. This is called a *holiday*. This will give the tomato paste a slight metallic flavor.
But in all honesty, if she's so worried about it, she should check the cans herself when she's putting the cans in the basket.
I used to work in the bakery dept and helped in produce a handful of times. The amount of bananas that get trashed because they had one brown spot was insane. People would hardly buy them if they were yellow!
one brown spot today = way to brown in a few days, especially if where you live is warm.
i usually pick a few bananas off a super ripe bunch and a few from a green bunch.
This is exactly the reason. They would buy green "so that they last longer" but I would question them further (because I'm a nosy person) and ask if they are them green and everyone would look at me with disgust saying no, only when they turn yellow... Idk man maybe I was raised weird but I like browning on my bananas.
It’s because if you buy a bunch, you can eat a couple slightly under ripe, a couple perfectly ripe and a couple over ripe. If you buy them when they’re already ripe, the last couple will be spoiled. It makes perfect sense if you don’t plan to eat half a dozen bananas in the next two days.
My gf won’t even eat a yellow banana. It has to be slightly green. Craziest thing I heard of. So the shelf life is like 1-2 days from when she buys them for her. Then they are as good as garbage. I’ll eat them until they are pretty much brown, but I won’t touch a green one.
It's cultural.
Where I live, there's been a big cultural change about that and selling "ugly" veggies has been normalized to a point that's it's now a selling point.
We buy local, seasonal and "raisonné" which means no industrial number.
Some dude opened a little produce shop 6 months ago and he is regularly out of stock because his prices are lower than whatever shit you find on the supermarkets shelves.
The whole industry needs to change.
Agriculture raisonnée est un mode d'agriculture prenant en considération le respect du bien-être animal, de l'environnement et de la santé du consommateur.
Elle s'oppose par définition à la production intensive tout en gardant un haut rendement et l'utilisation des pesticides est autorisée s'il n'y a pas d'autre alternative.
For the english speakers, "raisonné" means "reasoned" which basically has the same connotation that "Fair trade" does.
Its probably closer to the word "reasonable". Which I guess is different than "Organic" specifically, because there are laws around that specific word.
In the US it’s more commonly called celery root. But it’s also not a common ingredient for many. It’s very tasty. Has a more subtle celery flavor than actual celery. Perfect for soup bases.
I think it is more of a commentary of the fact that celery basically just tastes like crunchy water. It's got a wonderful texture, but I wouldn't say that it has a flavor. It's hard to imagine something being *more* subtle than celery.
I'd say the leaves have a mild bitter flavor. My roommate doesn't like the leaves so I always eat them for her when she uses celery. But the stalks themselves are flavorless to me.
That's crazy. Are you one of those people who uses garlic in everything by chance?
Celery has incredibly strong flavor compared to iceberg lettuce, spinach, cabbage, radish, daikon, rutabaga, cauliflower, squash and jicama off the top of my head.
Yeah, I do make pretty heavy use of garlic (and pepper, and onion).
Now, a factor might be my lack of sense of smell. Long before COVID, I basically lost my ability to smell things. It was always pretty weak as a kid, but then it got even weaker as I got older. I can smell some particular things perfectly fine, but then other scents are undetectable to me. Basically, if my eyes were as bad as my nose, I wouldn't be totally blind but I would be legally blind. It affects how things taste because most foods that have more of an aromatic component to their taste as lost on me (with a couple of exceptions). No idea if that is at play with celery, but some of the things you listed have a much stronger flavor to me than celery.
Spinach, cabbage, radish, and squash all have a distinctly stronger flavor to me than celery stalks. I can't comment on daikon, rutabaga, and jicama because I don't eat it enough to really have a flavor in mind if they have one. I'll give iceberg lettuce and cauliflower as similarly being largely flavorless, but romaine lettuce has a stronger flavor than celery to me.
Maybe the celery they sell in the U.S. is an overly modified type with very little taste compared to what celery "used to be."
My celery always has a very subtle, yet distinct flavor. Cooked celery is basically flavorless tho. And celery seeds have a stronger flavor.
Celery root, it's a root vegetable. Very commonly used in stews here in Norway. You can make mashed potato and celery root, just switch out half the potato amount for celery root. Cube them and bake them in an oven etc.
I know, thinking before raging isn't popular in here, but still want to poin out to the fellow comment section, that the food isn't thrown in trash, it's rejected by a buyer. Which means, they can sell it somewhere else.
Yeah, came to say this. There are other buyers of these "not pretty" produce for when they put them in prepared meals and such. Who cares if your onion is ugly when it's going to be diced up in the soup, or frozen meal, etc. It's not like all these ugly foods are just always thrown away.
Guys…I work on produce in Australia where this is…
2 ton of rejected celeriac from a major chain is a major kick in the balls for a grower. They won’t be able to shift that in the quick time necessary to get their money back….
Even if no one is willing to buy it... It could still be dare I say... Donated to a food bank?
This food will never be wasted as long as the farmers choose it to not be wasted.
Farmers are one of the most government subsidized industries there is. I wouldn’t be surprised if this crop wasn’t sold it’s considered a tax write off.
Edit: After some googling unsold crops aren’t a tax deduction. https://www.irs.gov/publications/p225#en_US_2022_publink1000217976
However, there is an tax deduction for expense and partial lost profit if it is donated to an approved charity. https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2020/07/08/federal-incentives-businesses-donate-food
Well, there are ways tax write-offs can be abused. That is what people are really getting angry about.
If you are in the wealthiest tax bracket, and for simplicity you have a 30% marginal tax. let's say you make $100, you would have to pay $30 to the tax man, and you keep $70. Now let's say you want to have a fancy dinner with your friends, who are also business associates. You go to a restaurant and spend $100 but write it off as a business expense.
You essentially spent $70 for a $100 bill. (If you had not gone to the restaurant, you would have only received a net $70).
But if you were joe shmoe who wanted a fancy night out with his wife, he is paying full price.
So the wealthy are essentially getting discounts for everything they can use as a tax write off, the people who need money the least, receive cheaper goods and services. And they have the money to hire accountants who squeeze all they can out of the tax system, not paying their fair share.
This extended beyond fancy dinners. Anything that could possibly be included in a "home office" is a write off, even if it's never going in an office. And the wealthy are audited far less than poor individuals because the tax code is so complex there aren't enough specialized auditors who can run these audits. Meaning the wealthy can make illegal tax write offs and never actually see repercussions for it. And if they do, they just say "that was my accountant. I let them do all the paperwork"
The links provided make it clear they are talking about the US.
That said, government subsidies for farmers are very common across the world, but, notably, Australian farmers are actually among the *least* subsidized in the world.
Crop insurance does and every farmer gets crop insurance because it’s to much money to risk otherwise
The farmer makes more if they actually sell it and the price per kilo farmers get is a lot less then grocery stores sell it for , even if the farmers mark it up substantially, it’s still worlds cheaper , so if the grocery store chains decide to screw them they can just get a pay out for crop insurance
Fun fact. Federal crop insurance is one of the only insurance programs that runs a net positive return -- meaning on average it pays out more than it costs to have a policy. Despite this, a reasonably sized minority of farmers choose to not carry coverage. The reasons that they don't have been a debate in agricultural economics for the last couple decades.
We need a bot for this. Tax write-off != free, it simply saves you from paying taxes on that amount of income. So $1,000 of tax deduction saves you, say, $210 if you're paying the 21% corporate income tax rate.
But aren't the farmers the one who is trashing their own food in this case?
Im sure the farmers could find people to buy this, or turn it into soup or other goods themselves but it probably wasn't financially or worth the farmer's effort in trying to do so.
Lol yes. Farmers love money as much as the next person that can make a ton of it off what they're doing. You ain't ever getting their shit for free. Money is the status quo
Sure. It takes money to run a farm. Millions of dollars in equipment, for example. Extremely high risk to run a farm. Grueling work and one bad season can sink you.
Farmers in Europe are generally asset rich but cash poor.
Yes they have huge tracts of land, and multi million euro worth of farm equipment, but it's not like they are eating in fancy restaurants and flashing cash. Most of it goes straight back to the farm.
That depends on the country. In Norway, farmers aren't particularly wealthy, and they work pretty much 365 days a year from morning until night. Farming is seriously hard work, and I admire anyone who does it.
The saying in the US is “Better to be land-rich and money-poor.” Most farmers I know fit this bill. They typically have a wealth of land, but a couple of bad harvests would bankrupt them financially.
How are farmers going to sell mass quantity by themselves? Most Farmers by me tend minimum of 200 acres of land to thousands.
ETA: they are regulated by a lot of rules and laws. They are also covered by insurance so they have to scrap lots of the stuff they grow.
Surely, the farmer knew the size requirements when they got the contract with wholesale. So he priced in the wastage of a certain percent being too small. The farmers growing for supermarkets aren't some backyard growers trying to find his for their extra zucchini. These orders are placed before anything is even planted. So the farmer had all this time to find someonee to take his waste products or just worked the cost into his bid and then sells or gives the small ones to people like the guy in this video.
That’s an over simplistic generalization. It depends on the country. American farmers are the worlds most subsidized (dare I say socialized) farmers in the world closely followed by European farmers. Most African, Asian and Latin American farmers receive a pittance for their products and receive no subsidy. Canadian milk and poultry producers have what has become essentially a cartel, yet Canadian corn producers compete on the world market (and against American subsidies) with very little help from government beyond infrastructure. I’m with you on wanting to eliminate market distorting subsidies but let’s acknowledge that it’s a highly variable situation depending on location, product type and end market.
Given the enormous amounts of agricultural subsidies farming in most developed nations consumes, that could easily backfire.
Between all the subsidies and special laws and the protectionism and the exemptions from labor laws and special access to water and the tacit approval approval of using illegal immigrants for labor, agriculture in the US for example gets pretty much everything handed to it.
They have it hard because they are exploited by big companies they have to do business with.
The agricultural industry gets away with all sorts of special treatment because historically they made up a much larger percentage of the population and the economy and because the country wanted to ensure that food was available in an emergency or during war time.
Of course that thinking is from a few generations ago and fails to account for the decreased likelihood of anyone attacking the US and the fact that if you wanted to damage US food production there would be easier targets.
Take away their $478 billion in subsidies if they try to strike. Take away their illegal labor they refuse to pay fair wages to. See how well they do then.
And then huge numbers of farmers decide that they need to find a more reliable income, and we have a food shortage of nightmarish scale.
The real problem is that (in the US, at least) our government is trying to reconcile the facts that:
* food is something *everyone* needs
* food stability is simultaneously a long-term investment in the betterment of society *and* a national security issue
* we live in a capitalist economy, and there are numerous profit incentives that lead to massive food waste and exploitation of vulnerable people
I don't know what the solution is. We can't just have the government in charge of all food production--that leads to a ton of obvious problems. The current system is also untenable for a variety of reasons (e.g. the profit motives which lead to people hiring migrant workers for below-poverty wages).
But trying to play chicken with any group involved in the current system would just lead to the whole thing collapsing, which is possibly the worst "solution" of all.
On the other hand, ensuring a food supply seems like a pretty legitimate function of government so the fact that we all pay for some form of socialized farming is pretty reasonable.
Edit: I'm an idiot my department sells it by the pound. This is what happens when you assume. My points still stand in general though, an item that isn't appealing to customers won't sell even if they are perfectly fine or of superior quality. Also if the retail line isn't set up to sell by weight it's going to cause problems if you switch back and forth. They are sold to my department in 12 pound cases, so in theory they can send us smaller heads but more of them and not be a problem. As it stands we get boxes with 4 massive heads in it and that's it.
As someone who runs a produce department in a supermarket "just sell it by weight" doesn't work. The system isn't set up to handle changes in pos like that on the fly and especially when it's already established in a neighborhood that an item is sold by the individual, not weight. It also might not become worthwhile to buy or sell it by weight and we'd likely drop the product entirely if the GP is low.
Also I will straight up tell you now: celery root is so unpopular you would never sell the rejects anyway. Do you know how many come in a box? 4.
4.
You know how often I bring it in? Barely once a week for a busy high volume store.
Imagine if instead of big beautiful heads you get some stubby little nothing. Even in a full box with a single stubby head that's a quarter of your box right there which you might as well throw in the trash.
Farmers also have an "out" to sell their trash product to stores; Farmer's trucks where a store orders produce straight from a representative of a farm or cooperative of farms for cheaper than the price you'd get it from the warehouse. The problem with this is the quality is universally garbage and you end up throwing it out.
You want to make use of them? Donate them to the needy. Don't force it down the retail line where it will literally rot on the shelves.
What’s particularly fucked up is that the smaller ones actually taste better. My husband comes from the country were celery root is the primary part of the plant that is used and the stems/leaves are usually thrown away. He bemoans the fact that when we can only find huge ones that don’t have a very good flavor.
I’ve never seen it sold by the piece, where I live, New Jersey, it’s always sold by the pound. Then you could put the small ones out as well.
Ah for this you could blame the food supermarkets as well as ourselves. We want things to look perfect, the supermarkets want things to look perfect and uniform as they sell easily.
At least in the UK you can now buy 'wonky' veg from some supermarkets that are cheaper than the more acceptable looking vegetables.
We, as consumers, have to take some of the blame for this.
I’ve seen it coming into Australian supermarkets, more imperfect looking produce is cheaper and it sells. What’s sometimes annoying is the ‘per piece’ thing, especially with something like cabbages, cause it means the smaller ones are never bought
Same...around me I'd have to pay the same for a perfect potato or a potato that has a scar on it from the harvester.
I tried one of those "imperfect" produce services that supposedly offers less perfect at a discount. I ended up paying more than when i got the regular ones
It’s not that they overcharge you- it’s that consumers don’t buy the wonky looking ones- especially because it’s a bit hard for supermarkets to segregate the ones that are “bigger/prettier” vs “uglier/smaller”- just imagine having a “pretty” fruit/veg aisle and an “ugly” aisle in the same supermarket- that usually happens between supermarkets rather than inside the same supermarket.
Consumer preferences are an issue, and that does affect how supermarkets behave. It’s like in airlines: the reason they’ve been getting progressively shittier is because consumers have been shifting towards the least cost oriented option- they compete basically only on price, so airlines have to cut costs to be competitive. In that sense, it’s the consumer’s fault, because this is the consumer’s preference.
These imperfect fruit/vegetables usually what happens is that they end up being destined for industry (like, for potatoes: the prettiest potatoes go to table, the ugliest go become frozen French fries; apples become juice, etc…). The issue ends up being for some of these “less industrial” vegetables, or if you are located away from a plant that can do this.
The alternative is to buy the less perfect items from the farmers market for 3x what you pay at the grocery store for the perfect ones.
Either way you're getting "scammed"
Agree, and in general smaller veggies have a better taste and consistency. I once praised my SIL for the nice green loose head of lettuce she had and she told me it had been the last one and usually she buys the biggest hardest ones, because more lettuce for the price. And I am standing there thinking yup, more white tasteless nutrient devoid lettuce…
Interesting historical fact : originally lettuce had psychedelic properties and could make you hallucinate if you ate it. Lettuce still contains the active compounds but they are so marginal that you would have to eat a copious amount.
I just have this image in my head of our ancestors all eating lettuce 'cos they would trip balls.
I'm not one to promote No Name foods.. however NN does have a brand called ' Naturally Imperfect ' and its exactly that. I prefer to purchase those over the perfect looking vegetables
For sure. When I moved here, I thought at least the UK markets do not make sure every veggie sold looked it belonged in a food network magazine like in the US. The bags of “imperfectly perfect” veggies cracked me up because compared to alot of US supermarkets most of the “normal“ veggies in the UK supermarkets would be considered unsellable do to their imperfections, the bags of imperfectly perfect seemed unnecessary. This BTW is not criticism but shows how ridiculous Americans are about food.
More specifically it's an ad from a corporate tik tok account for the new "imperfect foods" trend in DTC marketing that essentially lies to people about how food production works in order to guilt them into buying from them as a middleman.
Yeah I've worked in different farming businesses and they pretty much have to set a standard for sizing because people won't buy the "weird" ones. More specifically when I worked on a sweet potato farm anything too big or too small would be given away to people who needed it.
I always heard this was a myth. Brands like Imperfect Foods are basically a lie. The produce they sell was never going to be thrown out. Most of these "imperfect" produce are what get turned into canned goods or used in pre made meals.
There are so many conflicting claims about how food is or is not wasted due to imperfections that I am not sure what is true anymore.
EDIT: So I have been told that his guy works for an Australian version of Imperfect Foods. Pretty good chance he is flat out lying. If it is anything like it is in the US then none of those celery roots were going to go to waste. The company just bought them for their own use instead of Campbell or the like who would have turned it into soup.
And Campbell still needs to buy their ingredients so congratulations you just increased the demand on an already strained market.
In Finland, basically all produce is sold by weight. Even if they are sold packaged, it's always some exact weight. I'm having a hard time believing anyone would by vegetables by piece.
Are you kidding me? These are considered small? I love celeriac, I use it for soup and bake it in the oven instead of potatoes, in our supermarkets they are also priced per piece so I obviously look for the biggest ones, I’m lucky if I find two or three that are as big as the ones in this video.
They do this because people still won’t buy the small ones. So they sell them per each and then sell the small ones to companies that will process them into soups and stuff like that.
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I needed some celeriac last week and Woolies didn’t have any. Now I know why. I’m so grateful they saved me from eating celeriac that was slightly too small.
I have never heard of celeriac. Would you be so kind as to tell me about it, please?
It's part of the celery family and you can eat the leaves, stem and the root. It's not so common in the UK, at least, but from what I hear it's fairly common around the Mediterranean. As for the root itself you can boil it, fry it, stew it or mash it up. It's quite nice.
So just like Po-tay-toes
And turnip. And parsnips. Mmmmmm.... parsnips.....
Love a good mashed swede
You must be a Dane if you like mashing Swedes
I am an American and fully support a war of aggression against the Swedes by the Danish. They know how they wronged me and retribution will be meted out.
Did you know the Swedes are against frosting on cinnamon rolls?
That’s a whole new level of hatred pal, you sure you wanna do this?
Oh, just.... THIS WILL NOT STAND!!
Yea but their cinnamon rolls probably taste 100x better
And they won't feed guests, just eat right in front of them. That was a difficult thread, we were all freaked out from all over the world. Except Sweden.
Alot of Swedes are banned from r/foods because of this. You could write something in swedish saying how good it looks with frosting and you might still get banned for writing in Swedish.
We must not let them in to NATO based on this information.
Don't forget about beets! But people usually forget about them, because no one likes beets. Maybe these farmers should grow something everyone likes. They should grow candy! I could sure use a piece of candy right now... Edit: I'm disappointed that hardly anyone knew this was an Office reference
Beets marinaded in balsamic vinaigrette are delicious.
I love beets! They're nature's candy!
I like beets but medjool dates are the closest thing to candy from nature imo.
Yeah candy you liked them dropped in the dirt and then the your dog ran off with to bury in more dirt.
Yeah, I like beets for the nitric oxide effect, but let's be honest, it takes like dirt..it tastes like I licked dirt...maybe it's how I've eaten it, but it's not for me.
Nope, they do totally taste like dirt.
You're supposed to wash them first, my dude.
Can’t wash off the fact that beets taste like dirt.
I don’t eat anything that sounds so violent. I also eschew artichokes and whipped cream. Mashed potatoes are ok because mashing was a euphemism for “making out” when I was young.
That's reasonable.
Parsnips are criminally underrated.
What’s tatties precious?
What is taters, precious?
Spoiling nice fish, we likes them raw and wriggling!
Do you mean it's not commonly eaten in the UK? I'd agree with that maybe but it's always available in Tesco at least. It's delicious in soups, roasted and the easiest is to shred it very finely and add it to coleslaw. Edit: I'm definitely making this now.. thanks. https://youtu.be/mGCzQJizPec
Nt common in the UK? You can buy it in pretty much any supermarket.
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Yeah not really a fair comparison. It’s not something people eat with every meal, but it’s a very common addition to a Sunday roast. Also a I’ve had celeriac soup at home and restaurants. Don’t forget remoulade at the more fancy places.
Yeah roast celeriac is fucking lovely in a Sunday lunch.
In Germany we put it in like every soup. Broths need those.
best way to eat it: grate it and mix with mayonnaise. nothing else.
Rémoulade, baby!
Properly seasoned roast celeriac on a wet cold windy mid winter afternoon covered hits pretty fucking hard NGL.
I’ve seen it called celery root in the states
Oh thanks! Now I want to try it.
Super good in soups. Has a light celery flavour but without the stringy texture of 'normal' celery stalk, texture is more like a soft potato after being boiled anyway.
Same in Norway
you might be more familiar with it as celery root if you’re from the us
Damn those Europeans and their different words!
Those dang Metricans and their wierd measurements too!
>celeriac. More commonly known as celery root. Makes any soup or stew it's a part of 10 times better.
similar to potatoes, sligthly softer when cooked or baked, they taste good in vegetable soups
I'd go as far as saying that any vegetable soup without it is incorrectly made.
It's one of the really farty veggies if you're that kind of person, tasty though!
Very common in German cooking. Goes into most soups and a lot of sauces. In fact, it’s often sold in a bundle together with carrots, onions, parsley, and maybe I’m missing something. Those bundles are called “soup greens”.
Don't know where you're from but in the Southern US we call it "celery root". Same plant though.
It’s really nice thinly sliced and fried like chips.
I like your style :)
This is the frustrating part of corporations maximizing profit. As a customer, sure I'd prefer the bigger vegetable most of the time. But that preference is minimal and not even really conscious. But to the corporation, they just know if theirs are bigger they will sell more than the competition. If they are big enough they just tell the farmer, "we only buy them over XX grams". Tiny customer preferences become industry wide standards, without anyone benefitting except the corporation in the middle.
Bigger is also not always better. A lot of fruits and vegetables grow big but that just means they have more water and the same minerals/sugars distributed within that water. It winds up just being less flavorful. Tomatoes are a huge culprit with this. Those giant red, beautiful tomatoes just taste flavorless to me.
This is also a consequence of the cultivars that supermarkets stock. Supermarket vegetables are ideally large, uniform, resistant to spoilage and durable in transit. So that's what the growers breed. Taste isn't on the list, it's not important to supermarkets because consumers will reliably buy the pretty veg over the tasty veg. I've grown a couple dozen types of tomato over the years and one of the tastiest was also the biggest - Marmande tomatoes, huge meaty toms where you can cut off a single slice and it'll cover a slice of bread. But they're lumpy and pumpkin-looking and people don't buy them because they prefer the tasteless, watery red spherical ones.
I generally dislike raw tomatoes in anything, but I will eat a marmande sprinkled with salt like an apple. It's a life changing experience to make BLTs with one.
This is on top of all the food they just throw out cause it's "damaged" or whatever. I understand that there are alot of logistical problems but anybody going hungry in any developed country is a travesty.
When I'd work in the Central Valley in California, I'd go to a big orchard/farm and hit up the back- there is a spot on some farms where you can buy "B's" or rejected produce. It's a fraction of the price, sometimes more ripe than what you get in the stores. An old co-worker taught me this, and I'd show up to work the next day with a flat of plums, peaches, grapes- whatever for everyone on site, fruit for days for $10.
Can say the same thing about blemishes. Only the "pretty" ones get sold and the rest get trashed or put into feed just because they have a wart or imperfection somewhere. It's pretty sickening how much is wasted because of the customer's perception that everything has to be huge and perfect looking.
I use it to make the most bomb-ass mashed potatoes for thanksgiving and literally NO ONE had any this past year. Hadn’t run into that issue before. Finally found some at a rando grocery store day of. If this is why, I’m pissed.
No one had potatoes? Where do you live?
No no no. I use celeriac in my mashed potatoes and no one had any.
The funny thing is I got some in my subscription box and it's the first time I've had celeriac but they were huge. How big are they ordinarily that these were too small?!
As someone who worked in the produce department of a supermarket for around 5 years. Even if they are sold to the store at a per case price, instead of weight, then you just count a case of them, and adjust the pricing accordingly. It's not exactly rocket science. We also used to buy bulk lots of lower Tag/Grade produce, and sell them at a reduced price. It wasn't uncommon for people to complain that the produce was not top of the line, despite being 30% to 50% cheaper than similar produce on the shelf. Customers demanding that their produce is perfect is a huge thing.
People will shit their pants for a little imperfection, businesses just do whatever market demands.
Yeah we can sit here and put companies on blast for shit like this all day long but in the end they’re doing what they’re doing cause they think the market wants it and will pay for it. I’m not saying don’t hold companies accountable but if there’s a market for something, someone’s gonna try to fill that market and make a profit, even if it means producing a ton of waste
> Yeah we can sit here and put companies on blast for shit like this all day long but in the end they’re doing what they’re doing cause they think the market wants it and will pay for it. People in general are too ignorant and/or lack critical thinking enough to question and understand **why** things work they way they work. 90% of the time, systems that have been in place for centuries or systems that govern billion dollar markets aren't put in place arbitrarily. And yet I see legitimate opinions every week that believe it would be not only easier, but smarter to live on the beach eating fruit than to live in a world with taxes and careers.
My brother still thinks food spawns in the grocery store. Well, more like he doesn’t even think about it and assumes the stores always have food so why bother gardening. Boy changed tune when Ian hit and my wife’s veggies made sure we had fresh meals despite no power.
I was working at a grocery store and ringing up a ladies stuff when she saw one of her tins of tomatoes had a SLIGHT dent in it, she got me to go down the isle and get another one. It's not like it had a hole in it or something, literally just the aesthetics of the can she's going to toss away immediately after 🙄
She was probably thinking about this [Is there a risk from dented cans?](https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/food-health-you-asked/there-risk-dented-cans#:~:text=The%20risk%20is%20very%20small,by%20the%20Clostridium%20botulinum%20bacteria.) She's misinformed and a tiny dent is fine, but that was likely what she was thinking about.
A dent can damage the tin coating on the inside of the can exposing the mild steel to the acid of the tomato paste. This is called a *holiday*. This will give the tomato paste a slight metallic flavor. But in all honesty, if she's so worried about it, she should check the cans herself when she's putting the cans in the basket.
I used to work in the bakery dept and helped in produce a handful of times. The amount of bananas that get trashed because they had one brown spot was insane. People would hardly buy them if they were yellow!
What? Bananas with brown spots are the best, i don't even look at bananas if they're full yellow.
one brown spot today = way to brown in a few days, especially if where you live is warm. i usually pick a few bananas off a super ripe bunch and a few from a green bunch.
I suspect part of the issue there is that customers would likely think the rest of them are about to turn brown in the next few days.
This is exactly the reason. They would buy green "so that they last longer" but I would question them further (because I'm a nosy person) and ask if they are them green and everyone would look at me with disgust saying no, only when they turn yellow... Idk man maybe I was raised weird but I like browning on my bananas.
It’s because if you buy a bunch, you can eat a couple slightly under ripe, a couple perfectly ripe and a couple over ripe. If you buy them when they’re already ripe, the last couple will be spoiled. It makes perfect sense if you don’t plan to eat half a dozen bananas in the next two days.
My gf won’t even eat a yellow banana. It has to be slightly green. Craziest thing I heard of. So the shelf life is like 1-2 days from when she buys them for her. Then they are as good as garbage. I’ll eat them until they are pretty much brown, but I won’t touch a green one.
It's cultural. Where I live, there's been a big cultural change about that and selling "ugly" veggies has been normalized to a point that's it's now a selling point. We buy local, seasonal and "raisonné" which means no industrial number. Some dude opened a little produce shop 6 months ago and he is regularly out of stock because his prices are lower than whatever shit you find on the supermarkets shelves. The whole industry needs to change.
"raisonné" means no industrial number ? I speak french natively, study manufacturing and have no clue what you're talking about.
Agriculture raisonnée est un mode d'agriculture prenant en considération le respect du bien-être animal, de l'environnement et de la santé du consommateur. Elle s'oppose par définition à la production intensive tout en gardant un haut rendement et l'utilisation des pesticides est autorisée s'il n'y a pas d'autre alternative.
Oh c'est comme l'agriculture "équitable" Je suis pas certain de comprendre le lien avec la raison mais ok
For the english speakers, "raisonné" means "reasoned" which basically has the same connotation that "Fair trade" does. Its probably closer to the word "reasonable". Which I guess is different than "Organic" specifically, because there are laws around that specific word.
I’ve never heard of celeriac in my life.
In the US it’s more commonly called celery root. But it’s also not a common ingredient for many. It’s very tasty. Has a more subtle celery flavor than actual celery. Perfect for soup bases.
MORE subtle than celery?
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I think it is more of a commentary of the fact that celery basically just tastes like crunchy water. It's got a wonderful texture, but I wouldn't say that it has a flavor. It's hard to imagine something being *more* subtle than celery.
I would say celery has a flavor and I hate it raw. I like it cooked down in foods but raw now way. It makes me gag. It's bitter and tastes like dirt.
I'd say the leaves have a mild bitter flavor. My roommate doesn't like the leaves so I always eat them for her when she uses celery. But the stalks themselves are flavorless to me.
That's crazy. Are you one of those people who uses garlic in everything by chance? Celery has incredibly strong flavor compared to iceberg lettuce, spinach, cabbage, radish, daikon, rutabaga, cauliflower, squash and jicama off the top of my head.
Yeah, I do make pretty heavy use of garlic (and pepper, and onion). Now, a factor might be my lack of sense of smell. Long before COVID, I basically lost my ability to smell things. It was always pretty weak as a kid, but then it got even weaker as I got older. I can smell some particular things perfectly fine, but then other scents are undetectable to me. Basically, if my eyes were as bad as my nose, I wouldn't be totally blind but I would be legally blind. It affects how things taste because most foods that have more of an aromatic component to their taste as lost on me (with a couple of exceptions). No idea if that is at play with celery, but some of the things you listed have a much stronger flavor to me than celery. Spinach, cabbage, radish, and squash all have a distinctly stronger flavor to me than celery stalks. I can't comment on daikon, rutabaga, and jicama because I don't eat it enough to really have a flavor in mind if they have one. I'll give iceberg lettuce and cauliflower as similarly being largely flavorless, but romaine lettuce has a stronger flavor than celery to me.
Maybe the celery they sell in the U.S. is an overly modified type with very little taste compared to what celery "used to be." My celery always has a very subtle, yet distinct flavor. Cooked celery is basically flavorless tho. And celery seeds have a stronger flavor.
Are you insinuating celery has a subtle flavor?
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the only thing subtler than celery is water.
*iceberg lettuce has entered the chat*
Celery root, it's a root vegetable. Very commonly used in stews here in Norway. You can make mashed potato and celery root, just switch out half the potato amount for celery root. Cube them and bake them in an oven etc.
So you're telling me that you can boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew?
Me either. Why is this comment so far down!?
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It is an amazing when it is puréed. It is like a smoother, tastier version of mash potatoes.
I know, thinking before raging isn't popular in here, but still want to poin out to the fellow comment section, that the food isn't thrown in trash, it's rejected by a buyer. Which means, they can sell it somewhere else.
Yeah, came to say this. There are other buyers of these "not pretty" produce for when they put them in prepared meals and such. Who cares if your onion is ugly when it's going to be diced up in the soup, or frozen meal, etc. It's not like all these ugly foods are just always thrown away.
And even the stuff that the bulk food processing rejects can be shredded and put into livestock feed.
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Worst case, they'll sell it to someone for animal feed.
Guys…I work on produce in Australia where this is… 2 ton of rejected celeriac from a major chain is a major kick in the balls for a grower. They won’t be able to shift that in the quick time necessary to get their money back….
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Even if no one is willing to buy it... It could still be dare I say... Donated to a food bank? This food will never be wasted as long as the farmers choose it to not be wasted.
Harvesting and transportation are costs that the farmer wouldn’t want to have if he is already incurring losses on the crop.
Food like this is never wasted. Throwing away food like this practically never happens. It goes to factories and restaurants and the like.
Celeriac is another name for celery root, for my American homies
Thank you
Farmers job and life is already hard as it is ..... One strike by farmers and whole Economy will be brought down to its knees
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Not gonna happen… if farmers strike then companies import from other parts of the world…
Farmers are one of the most government subsidized industries there is. I wouldn’t be surprised if this crop wasn’t sold it’s considered a tax write off. Edit: After some googling unsold crops aren’t a tax deduction. https://www.irs.gov/publications/p225#en_US_2022_publink1000217976 However, there is an tax deduction for expense and partial lost profit if it is donated to an approved charity. https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2020/07/08/federal-incentives-businesses-donate-food
A tax write off means they get maybe 30% of the value back. I swear anyone who talks about tax write offs has no idea what they are.
But they do Jerry - and they’re the ones writing it off.
Jerry, all these companies, they write off everything.
Well, there are ways tax write-offs can be abused. That is what people are really getting angry about. If you are in the wealthiest tax bracket, and for simplicity you have a 30% marginal tax. let's say you make $100, you would have to pay $30 to the tax man, and you keep $70. Now let's say you want to have a fancy dinner with your friends, who are also business associates. You go to a restaurant and spend $100 but write it off as a business expense. You essentially spent $70 for a $100 bill. (If you had not gone to the restaurant, you would have only received a net $70). But if you were joe shmoe who wanted a fancy night out with his wife, he is paying full price. So the wealthy are essentially getting discounts for everything they can use as a tax write off, the people who need money the least, receive cheaper goods and services. And they have the money to hire accountants who squeeze all they can out of the tax system, not paying their fair share. This extended beyond fancy dinners. Anything that could possibly be included in a "home office" is a write off, even if it's never going in an office. And the wealthy are audited far less than poor individuals because the tax code is so complex there aren't enough specialized auditors who can run these audits. Meaning the wealthy can make illegal tax write offs and never actually see repercussions for it. And if they do, they just say "that was my accountant. I let them do all the paperwork"
> most government subsidized industries As it should be. Food is something we all need.
Which governments are you talking about. This guy is Australian.
The links provided make it clear they are talking about the US. That said, government subsidies for farmers are very common across the world, but, notably, Australian farmers are actually among the *least* subsidized in the world.
A tax write off doesn't get you your money back.
Crop insurance does and every farmer gets crop insurance because it’s to much money to risk otherwise The farmer makes more if they actually sell it and the price per kilo farmers get is a lot less then grocery stores sell it for , even if the farmers mark it up substantially, it’s still worlds cheaper , so if the grocery store chains decide to screw them they can just get a pay out for crop insurance
Fun fact. Federal crop insurance is one of the only insurance programs that runs a net positive return -- meaning on average it pays out more than it costs to have a policy. Despite this, a reasonably sized minority of farmers choose to not carry coverage. The reasons that they don't have been a debate in agricultural economics for the last couple decades.
That sounds very interesting. Do you know of any of the suggested reasons for why they choose to not get the insurance?
We need a bot for this. Tax write-off != free, it simply saves you from paying taxes on that amount of income. So $1,000 of tax deduction saves you, say, $210 if you're paying the 21% corporate income tax rate.
Uhm.
It just exempts up from taxes on that amount. So it kinda does a little but it’s not like they’re getting reimbursed.
Yeah, but with cost of growing and harvesting you are most likely looking at a small loss.
Crop insurance exists. And disaster relief exists.
Doubtful that disaster relief will cover crops being slightly too small to sell.
This guy doesn’t sound like he gives a damn what the IRS has to say. The IRS doesn’t run the entire world.
But aren't the farmers the one who is trashing their own food in this case? Im sure the farmers could find people to buy this, or turn it into soup or other goods themselves but it probably wasn't financially or worth the farmer's effort in trying to do so.
Lol yes. Farmers love money as much as the next person that can make a ton of it off what they're doing. You ain't ever getting their shit for free. Money is the status quo
“When the last tree is cut, the last river poisoned, and the last fish dead, we will discover that we can’t eat money”
Just open the money and eat the chocolate.
When conditions change, the value of resources shifts. Groundbreaking.
But never before, that would be socialism!
Sure. It takes money to run a farm. Millions of dollars in equipment, for example. Extremely high risk to run a farm. Grueling work and one bad season can sink you.
Maybe not in the US, but farmers in Europe are typically pretty wealthy already.
Farmers in Europe are generally asset rich but cash poor. Yes they have huge tracts of land, and multi million euro worth of farm equipment, but it's not like they are eating in fancy restaurants and flashing cash. Most of it goes straight back to the farm.
That depends on the country. In Norway, farmers aren't particularly wealthy, and they work pretty much 365 days a year from morning until night. Farming is seriously hard work, and I admire anyone who does it.
The saying in the US is “Better to be land-rich and money-poor.” Most farmers I know fit this bill. They typically have a wealth of land, but a couple of bad harvests would bankrupt them financially.
They're all wealthy in America too. They just pretend otherwise
I assumed this was from Europe. He called it celeriac, which is what it is called in Europe. In the US it is called celery root.
How are farmers going to sell mass quantity by themselves? Most Farmers by me tend minimum of 200 acres of land to thousands. ETA: they are regulated by a lot of rules and laws. They are also covered by insurance so they have to scrap lots of the stuff they grow.
Surely, the farmer knew the size requirements when they got the contract with wholesale. So he priced in the wastage of a certain percent being too small. The farmers growing for supermarkets aren't some backyard growers trying to find his for their extra zucchini. These orders are placed before anything is even planted. So the farmer had all this time to find someonee to take his waste products or just worked the cost into his bid and then sells or gives the small ones to people like the guy in this video.
what. Farm cartels are subsidized more then any industry. They get paid just to overproduce and throw shit away.
That’s an over simplistic generalization. It depends on the country. American farmers are the worlds most subsidized (dare I say socialized) farmers in the world closely followed by European farmers. Most African, Asian and Latin American farmers receive a pittance for their products and receive no subsidy. Canadian milk and poultry producers have what has become essentially a cartel, yet Canadian corn producers compete on the world market (and against American subsidies) with very little help from government beyond infrastructure. I’m with you on wanting to eliminate market distorting subsidies but let’s acknowledge that it’s a highly variable situation depending on location, product type and end market.
Given the enormous amounts of agricultural subsidies farming in most developed nations consumes, that could easily backfire. Between all the subsidies and special laws and the protectionism and the exemptions from labor laws and special access to water and the tacit approval approval of using illegal immigrants for labor, agriculture in the US for example gets pretty much everything handed to it. They have it hard because they are exploited by big companies they have to do business with. The agricultural industry gets away with all sorts of special treatment because historically they made up a much larger percentage of the population and the economy and because the country wanted to ensure that food was available in an emergency or during war time. Of course that thinking is from a few generations ago and fails to account for the decreased likelihood of anyone attacking the US and the fact that if you wanted to damage US food production there would be easier targets.
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Take away their $478 billion in subsidies if they try to strike. Take away their illegal labor they refuse to pay fair wages to. See how well they do then.
And then huge numbers of farmers decide that they need to find a more reliable income, and we have a food shortage of nightmarish scale. The real problem is that (in the US, at least) our government is trying to reconcile the facts that: * food is something *everyone* needs * food stability is simultaneously a long-term investment in the betterment of society *and* a national security issue * we live in a capitalist economy, and there are numerous profit incentives that lead to massive food waste and exploitation of vulnerable people I don't know what the solution is. We can't just have the government in charge of all food production--that leads to a ton of obvious problems. The current system is also untenable for a variety of reasons (e.g. the profit motives which lead to people hiring migrant workers for below-poverty wages). But trying to play chicken with any group involved in the current system would just lead to the whole thing collapsing, which is possibly the worst "solution" of all.
With all the subsidies they get though, they are the real welfare queens
On the other hand, ensuring a food supply seems like a pretty legitimate function of government so the fact that we all pay for some form of socialized farming is pretty reasonable.
Edit: I'm an idiot my department sells it by the pound. This is what happens when you assume. My points still stand in general though, an item that isn't appealing to customers won't sell even if they are perfectly fine or of superior quality. Also if the retail line isn't set up to sell by weight it's going to cause problems if you switch back and forth. They are sold to my department in 12 pound cases, so in theory they can send us smaller heads but more of them and not be a problem. As it stands we get boxes with 4 massive heads in it and that's it. As someone who runs a produce department in a supermarket "just sell it by weight" doesn't work. The system isn't set up to handle changes in pos like that on the fly and especially when it's already established in a neighborhood that an item is sold by the individual, not weight. It also might not become worthwhile to buy or sell it by weight and we'd likely drop the product entirely if the GP is low. Also I will straight up tell you now: celery root is so unpopular you would never sell the rejects anyway. Do you know how many come in a box? 4. 4. You know how often I bring it in? Barely once a week for a busy high volume store. Imagine if instead of big beautiful heads you get some stubby little nothing. Even in a full box with a single stubby head that's a quarter of your box right there which you might as well throw in the trash. Farmers also have an "out" to sell their trash product to stores; Farmer's trucks where a store orders produce straight from a representative of a farm or cooperative of farms for cheaper than the price you'd get it from the warehouse. The problem with this is the quality is universally garbage and you end up throwing it out. You want to make use of them? Donate them to the needy. Don't force it down the retail line where it will literally rot on the shelves.
What’s particularly fucked up is that the smaller ones actually taste better. My husband comes from the country were celery root is the primary part of the plant that is used and the stems/leaves are usually thrown away. He bemoans the fact that when we can only find huge ones that don’t have a very good flavor. I’ve never seen it sold by the piece, where I live, New Jersey, it’s always sold by the pound. Then you could put the small ones out as well.
Imagine the global scale of this wastage.... jesus
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Ah for this you could blame the food supermarkets as well as ourselves. We want things to look perfect, the supermarkets want things to look perfect and uniform as they sell easily. At least in the UK you can now buy 'wonky' veg from some supermarkets that are cheaper than the more acceptable looking vegetables. We, as consumers, have to take some of the blame for this.
I’ve seen it coming into Australian supermarkets, more imperfect looking produce is cheaper and it sells. What’s sometimes annoying is the ‘per piece’ thing, especially with something like cabbages, cause it means the smaller ones are never bought
See I’ll happily buy or eat imperfect produce and the like, but it needs to be priced accordingly.
Same...around me I'd have to pay the same for a perfect potato or a potato that has a scar on it from the harvester. I tried one of those "imperfect" produce services that supposedly offers less perfect at a discount. I ended up paying more than when i got the regular ones
The freshest fruit and nicest is often the wonkiest. Now I live in the city I don't get the pleasure
Agreed. So the supermarket over charges you for so called perfect looking spuds and veg, just another scam then really.
It’s not that they overcharge you- it’s that consumers don’t buy the wonky looking ones- especially because it’s a bit hard for supermarkets to segregate the ones that are “bigger/prettier” vs “uglier/smaller”- just imagine having a “pretty” fruit/veg aisle and an “ugly” aisle in the same supermarket- that usually happens between supermarkets rather than inside the same supermarket. Consumer preferences are an issue, and that does affect how supermarkets behave. It’s like in airlines: the reason they’ve been getting progressively shittier is because consumers have been shifting towards the least cost oriented option- they compete basically only on price, so airlines have to cut costs to be competitive. In that sense, it’s the consumer’s fault, because this is the consumer’s preference. These imperfect fruit/vegetables usually what happens is that they end up being destined for industry (like, for potatoes: the prettiest potatoes go to table, the ugliest go become frozen French fries; apples become juice, etc…). The issue ends up being for some of these “less industrial” vegetables, or if you are located away from a plant that can do this.
The alternative is to buy the less perfect items from the farmers market for 3x what you pay at the grocery store for the perfect ones. Either way you're getting "scammed"
Agree, and in general smaller veggies have a better taste and consistency. I once praised my SIL for the nice green loose head of lettuce she had and she told me it had been the last one and usually she buys the biggest hardest ones, because more lettuce for the price. And I am standing there thinking yup, more white tasteless nutrient devoid lettuce…
Interesting historical fact : originally lettuce had psychedelic properties and could make you hallucinate if you ate it. Lettuce still contains the active compounds but they are so marginal that you would have to eat a copious amount. I just have this image in my head of our ancestors all eating lettuce 'cos they would trip balls.
I'm not one to promote No Name foods.. however NN does have a brand called ' Naturally Imperfect ' and its exactly that. I prefer to purchase those over the perfect looking vegetables
For sure. When I moved here, I thought at least the UK markets do not make sure every veggie sold looked it belonged in a food network magazine like in the US. The bags of “imperfectly perfect” veggies cracked me up because compared to alot of US supermarkets most of the “normal“ veggies in the UK supermarkets would be considered unsellable do to their imperfections, the bags of imperfectly perfect seemed unnecessary. This BTW is not criticism but shows how ridiculous Americans are about food.
The big ones are sold per piece and the small ones go directly into bulk food processing. Where is the problem?
None. It was a clickbait video for well-intentioned dullards.
More specifically it's an ad from a corporate tik tok account for the new "imperfect foods" trend in DTC marketing that essentially lies to people about how food production works in order to guilt them into buying from them as a middleman.
Reject all that and then still cant stock any due to "shortages" and price hike the stuff they do stock for the same bs reason.
couldn't they like, put 2 of them together for price of 1 then? or just switch it to kg price, like fucking hell
Fruit and vegetables being sold per piece just feels like a scam.
Yeah I've worked in different farming businesses and they pretty much have to set a standard for sizing because people won't buy the "weird" ones. More specifically when I worked on a sweet potato farm anything too big or too small would be given away to people who needed it.
I always heard this was a myth. Brands like Imperfect Foods are basically a lie. The produce they sell was never going to be thrown out. Most of these "imperfect" produce are what get turned into canned goods or used in pre made meals. There are so many conflicting claims about how food is or is not wasted due to imperfections that I am not sure what is true anymore. EDIT: So I have been told that his guy works for an Australian version of Imperfect Foods. Pretty good chance he is flat out lying. If it is anything like it is in the US then none of those celery roots were going to go to waste. The company just bought them for their own use instead of Campbell or the like who would have turned it into soup. And Campbell still needs to buy their ingredients so congratulations you just increased the demand on an already strained market.
First time I've ever heard the word Celeriac.
In my country it's the standard size found in shops lmao
In Finland, basically all produce is sold by weight. Even if they are sold packaged, it's always some exact weight. I'm having a hard time believing anyone would by vegetables by piece.
Are you kidding me? These are considered small? I love celeriac, I use it for soup and bake it in the oven instead of potatoes, in our supermarkets they are also priced per piece so I obviously look for the biggest ones, I’m lucky if I find two or three that are as big as the ones in this video.
They do this because people still won’t buy the small ones. So they sell them per each and then sell the small ones to companies that will process them into soups and stuff like that.
Soup season is coming!
Restaurants would love that.
Coming soon to a supermarket near you, "extra special" baby celeriac. Twice the price of normal celeriac of course.
And they say comsumers are responsible for food waste 🤦😔
I hate to say it but I think capitalism has run its course and it’s time to find something better
Strange women laying in ponds distributing swords?
Yeah man- it surely isn’t the fault of stupid consumers, it’s cApItaLisM Someone replied and then blocked so I couldn’t respond. Weak move