Rejecting perfectly edible fruit and vegetables just because of their bad appearance can be seen as food fascism, a consumer behaviour expert has warned.
David Harvey, a senior lecturer in strategy and marketing at the University of Huddersfield, says British consumers are guilty of shunning misshapen produce in favour of “good-looking” fruit and veg.
He spoke out as the nation prepared to consume mountains of festive food in Christmas meals.
The British market has been described as “more developed”, but if farmers are forced to throw away tonnes of good produce purely on aesthetic grounds, this just exposes UK consumers as misguided, Mr Harvey argues.
He said: “I can testify that the very best-tasting potatoes that you can buy in one supermarket are also the cheapest and muddiest.
“They may not look good, but they are fresher, less processed and well worth the effort required to clean and peel them.”
The lecturer draws a comparison between the attitude to food in Britain and eastern European countries.
Despite the recent problems, Britain’s economy is still more prosperous than that of many former communist states, where anyone over 35 can still remember food shortages, Mr Harvey says, adding: “In the UK, you have to be at least 75 to remember food rationing, so most of us take choice and availability for granted.”
According to the lecturer, fascism and eugenics were the worst example of the obsession with uniform appearance.
And while far-right views are once more on the rise in some eastern European countries, shoppers there remain more tolerant of misshapen produce than Britons.
Mr Harvey’s statement came as a response to a speech made last week by the food sourcing director of Tesco, Matt Simister, at the House of Lords.
Mr Simister said that the UK customers of the supermarket chain demanded “the cream of the crop” unlike people in central and eastern Europe.
For this reason, Tesco tends to sell “class one” products in the UK and “class two” products in central and eastern Europe.
Mr Simister said that supermarkets could do more to rectify this problem and that he was exploring ways to encourage consumers to buy more “ugly” fruit and vegetables.
