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To the rescue of ugly food

WASHINGTON – Ugly produce is midway through a massive makeover.

Misshapen potatoes, multi-pronged carrots and past-their-prime apples – rebranded as “cosmetically challenged” and “beautiful in their own way” – are coming into vogue. Campaigns aimed at reducing food waste are bringing these fruits and vegetables, previously reserved for hogs, compost piles and landfills, to the forefront of our minds, if not quite to our grocery shelves.

And now, food entrepreneurs are picking them up as ripe for innovation.

“Entrepreneurs don’t create culture. They take advantage of where there’s a need,” said Dan Barber, co-owner and chef of Blue Hill in Manhattan, who for three weeks this spring turned his prominent eatery into a pop-up he called Waste-ED featuring dishes such as charred pineapple core and “dumpster dive” salad. “But they don’t get to do that if the culture isn’t there to support it.”

Barber has had help in influencing the country’s perception of what’s edible. Food waste is the subject of a new documentary called “Just Eat It” that premiered on MSNBC in April. And Barber’s pop-up opened less than a week after Dana Cowin, editor of Food & Wine, launched a #loveuglyfood campaign during a speech at TEDx Manhattan; it follows the success of similar initiatives in Europe.

“If we could take what we once thought was ugly and see it as beautiful, we could reduce food waste and change the world,” Cowin declared on stage.

Elizabeth Bennett was sitting behind her that day.

A food systems academic-turned-entrepreneur, Bennett launched her food-waste-focused business in Washington in the fall. Fruitcycle has since turned more than 9,000 pounds of excess apples into neatly packaged dehydrated chips sold at stores throughout the city.

She handed Cowin a bag of the cinnamon-flavored snacks after her speech, as if to say, “Ugly food solutions, Exhibit A.”

“I didn’t know I was going to be part of a trend,” Bennett, 29, said afterward on a Friday afternoon at Mess Hall, a culinary incubator in Washington where she runs her business.

At her elbow, one of Fruitcycle’s three employees cored, sliced and cut bruises from a new batch of apples that, after surviving the winter in storage, were no longer in their prime. Along with giving those apples a purpose, Bennett works with local nonprofit groups to hire women who have previously been incarcerated or homeless.

During apple-growing season, the small team gleans much of its supply from what is left in the orchard at regional farms, or farmers hand over their excess from storage. Fruitcycle pays for the produce, which would otherwise go to animals, compost piles or landfills.

Bennett, originally from New York, has grappled with big-picture food issues since receiving a master’s degree in food anthropology from the University of London and interning at Slow Food UK. She fielded her own question about whether she’s making an impact on the food-waste equation:

“Am I going to make a large dent? No,” she said, dusting apple shards from the top of a dehydrator. “But, as my mom would say, ‘If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.’”



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