The United Nations has urged shoppers around the world to buy misshapen or aesthetically imperfect fresh produce in a bid to limit the volume of fresh produce that goes to waste every year and feed millions of people around the world who go hungry every day.
Referring to the products as "funny fruit", the UN made the recommendation as part of a new campaign launched by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and other partners to cut food waste and help the world to "shape a sustainable future".
The campaign, dubbed Think-Eat-Save, Reduce Your Foodprint, is aimed primarily at mobilising consumers, food retailers and the hotel and restaurant industry to reduce waste and tackle global hunger.
"In a world of seven billion people, set to grow to nine billion by 2050, wasting food makes no sense - economically, environmentally and ethically," said UNEP executive director Achim Steiner.
"We're doing something that is completely irrational," he told reporters in Geneva, before adding that he hoped the campaign would "literally mobilise tens of millions of people to become part of the solution."
FAO director General Jose Graziano da Silva pointed out that, in industrialised nations, around 300m tonnes of food are wasted each year, "because producers, retailers and consumers discard food that is still fit for consumption."
He added that this was more food than was produced in sub-Saharan Africa, and was enough to feed the estimated 830m people who now go hungry worldwide.
Wasted opportunity
The programme estimates the overall cost of wasted food at about US$1.0tn (€751bn) per year, with most losses occurring in production stages -- such as harvesting and distribution -- and blamed on problems from storing food in difficult climatic conditions to unreliable harvests.
However, retailers and consumers are usually the ones who are guilty of wasting food, the agencies said, pointing out that planning meals, making shopping lists, avoiding impulse purchases and resisting "marketing tricks" would help address the problem.
The suggestion that consumers should buy "funny fruit" or vegetables – products that would otherwise be thrown out because their size, shape or colour did not meet market standards – was met with support.
Tristram Stuart of the Feeding the 5,000 campaign told reporters in Geneva that consumers had to appreciate the value of food much more.
"Wonky fruit and vegetables are very often left on farms across Europe and North America simply because they don't meet the cosmetic standards of retailers, and they are left on fields to rot," he said.
Paying attention to expiry dates and "zeroing down your fridge" with recipes that use up food set to go bad would also help, the agencies said, as would freezing food, asking restaurants for smaller portions, eating leftovers, composting food or donating it to food banks, soup kitchens and shelters.
Retailers, for their part, could offer discounts for food that was nearing its sell-by date, standardise labels and donate more food.
Restaurants, meanwhile, were urged to limit menu choices and introduce flexible portioning, to audit how much food they wasted, and to set up staff engagement programmes.
Online push
A website, thinkeatsave.org, has also been set up to provide information on other initiatives designed to limit and reduce food waste.
A spokesperson for the FAO, based in Rome, said the campaign would only work if everyone –families, supermarkets, hotel chains, schools, sports and social clubs, company directors, city mayors and national and world leaders – got involved.
The UK-based Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP), which worked with the FAO to develop the campaign, said the average British family could save £680 (€815) per year by tackling food waste.
Throwing away good food wasted land, water, fertilisers and even the effort expended on growing it, Steiner said, while the transport involved generated excess greenhouse gases.
European Commissioner for the Environment Janez Potocnik told reporters he was "delighted" with the new campaign against food waste.
"Food production and consumption must be one of the most inefficient uses of global resources," Potocnik said, adding: "We must stop taking our resources for granted before it is simply too late."
