Unattractive fruits and vegetables sell quite well

8-3-2026

Fruits and vegetables with an irregular shape, damage or some spots, often disappear into the rubbish bin. The reason is not that consumers do not want to buy them, but because they are hardly to be found in the supermarket. If the supply is big enough, consumers just take them along. This appears from research by Dutch Wageningen University & Research (WUR). 

A considerable part of food waste is caused by fruits and vegetables being rejected for their outward appearance. Supermarkets say that consumers do not want to buy irregular products. But the WUR research shows a different picture. 

The researchers looked at various scenarios where 5, 10, 30 or even 50% of what was on offer in the supermarket consisted of imperfect products and are to be found on the same shelves as the perfect products. When the proportion is low – 5 or 10% – consumers keep going for the perfect products. The imperfect products stay on the shelves and finally disappear from the shelves into the rubbish bins. Only when 30% of what is on offer consists of imperfect products, the picture turns. At first, sales fall, but after some time sales pick up again.

“It seems that consumers have to get used to it”, according to one of the researchers. “After that, they hardly pay any attention to it and accept that this is what fresh products apparently look like.” An important condition: do not put the imperfect products in a separate place. “Just put them with the rest. No separate shelves, no discount label that suggests something is wrong with them”. 

Practical objections 

And yet the solution is less simple than it seems to be. “The whole food system is geared to uniformity. For instance, transport crates are attuned to straight cucumbers: a crate into which 20 straight ones fit, only takes 15 crooked ones. And food processing companies also operate with machines that can only deal with standard shapes.” (Source: EFM)