Twitter Thread: Woman Debunks Marketing Behind Fruit Companies

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    Font - Dr Sarah Taber @SarahTaber_bww -Most "ugly" produce gets turned into soups, sauces, salsa, jam, ice cream, etc. You think that stuff gets made from the pretty fruit & veggies?! jeebus, think about it for a minute 7:18 PM 17 Jan 19 Twitter Web Client 546 Retweets 105 Quote Tweets 3,783 Likes Dr Sarah Taber @SarahT. · 17 Jan 19 Replying to @SarahTaber_bww -The amt of produce wasted bc of labor problems (can't get a crew to harvest) & bad weather (melons that rot in the field bc it's too hot
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    Font - Dr Sarah Taber @Sarah. : 17 Jan 19 As someone who works in produce, this whole "ugly fruit" movement is actually kind of enraging bc it's completely disconnected from what really happens in the supply chain. It's a big honkin wad of that self-promoting foodies get away with bc nobody knows better. 63 27 2,316 O 7,490 Dr Sarah Taber @SarahT. 17 Jan 19 v After it leaves the farm, most produce goes to a packinghouse. This is where they cool, wash, sort, & package it. In other words, it's whe
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    Font - Dr Sarah Taber @SarahT. · 17 Jan 19 Produce gets graded by size, prettiness, and (sometimes) flavor/eating quality. Know what happens to most of the produce that's edible, has enough shape to survive in transit, but looks funny? IT GOES TO THE GROCERY STORES THAT POOR PEOPLE SHOP AT 29 17 592 3,712 Dr Sarah Taber @SarahT. · 17 Jan 19 In the broke times of my life I did not shop at farmers' markets, bc they're at bizarre times when working class people are usually working or sleeping (late
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    Font - Dr Sarah Taber @SarahT. · 17 Jan 19 Most of your real poor ppl, when buying produce, get it from shops white collar ppl don't go to. Those shops stock ugly produce. That white collar ppl don't go to. Then conclude, looking at their nice stores stocked w pretty #1 produce, that nobody's eating the ugly stuff. 14 27 392 3,273 Dr Sarah Taber @SarahT. 17 Jan 19 So there's one beef. The "eat ugly fruit!" movement is classist as You've got to have a debilitating level of ignorance to assume tha
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    Font - Dr Sarah Taber @SarahT. · 17 Jan 19 v Back to the packinghouse. When produce is EXTREMELY UGLY, it goes into cull bins. My fave cull bins to date: -Sweet potatoes. Did you know that they make a *lot* of giant, freaky-shaped spuds? Like a rat king of sweet potatoes, somewhere btwn football & basketball sized. 14 17 160 2,311 Dr Sarah Taber @SarahT. · 17 Jan 19 v What happens to these ugly, unloved sweet potatoes? OH WAIT THEY GET LOVED, THAT'S WHERE SWEET POTATO FRIES COME FROM O 15 17 187
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    Font - Dr Sarah Taber @SarahT. · 17 Jan 19 v -Apples. We love to *say* we don't mind "spots on our apples," but actual sales data tells us really, really do. And honestly, we should. Even "cosmetic" lesions can make micro-breaks in the apple's skin, allowing fungus to enter. One rotten apple, barrel, etc. 9. L7 139 O 2,202 Dr Sarah Taber @SarahT. · 17 Jan 19 Fugly apples ARE WHERE APPLE JUICE AND APPLE SAUCE AND APPLE CIDER AND APPLE BUTTER AND APPLE JELLY AND APPLE PIE COME FROM "wasted" my O 1
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    Font - Dr Sarah Taber @SarahT. · 17 Jan 19 "but some apple variety are better for fresh eating, not processing" d'ya think Hy-Vee brand apple juice from concentrate really gives a single crispy that today's shipment of cheap juicing-grade apples are not The Optimal For Juicing? NO THEY'RE GONNA JUICE THAT 20 27 206 3,442 Dr Sarah Taber @Sarah.· 17 Jan 19 Did you know: Honeycrisp apples are extra prone to a mostly-cosmetic skin defect called bitter pit? Ergo, most Honeycrisp apples become apple j
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    Font - Dr Sarah Taber @SarahT. · 17 Jan 19 Yes, every once in a while you'll run into a variety of produce that only really works for fresh & doesn't lend well to processing. This mostly happens w leafy greens (we don't make. lettuce sauce), which is such a minuscule amt of the ... produce tonnage grown per year. 12 27 95 1,824 Dr Sarah Taber @SarahT. 17 Jan 19 v When produce is too far gone to sell & there's no processing market (say, melons), it often gets fed to livestock. That's. actually a
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    Font - Dr Sarah Taber @SarahT. · 17 Jan 19 Feeding crop & food waste to livestock also means we're not having to use as much livestock-only cropland. Just assume that most years a certain %age of human food crops will get messed up & become livestock feed, and that's less pasture/grain land needed for livestock. 27 106 O 1,912 Dr Sarah Taber @SarahT. · 17 Jan 19 That Listeria outbreak in cantaloupe back in 2011? As best we can tell it happened bc they fed ugly melons to cattle. Which, in itself,
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    Font - Dr Sarah Taber @SarahT. · 17 Jan 19 This whole "ugly fruit! uwu" thing is bewildering bc in order to believe that retail consumers can change the world by buying ugly fruit, you have to believe that the entire supply chain is made of numpties who make a regular habit of leaving money on the table. 22 27 651 O 3,877 Dr Sarah Taber @Sarah. · 17 Jan 19 The food system is a hot mess but using ugly produce is one thing it's actually really good at. Using every single part of what's grown, if t
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    Font - Dr Sarah Taber @SarahT. · 17 Jan 19 v These labor shortages come down to 2 things: 1) Bad immigration policy 2) Farm biz models that can't survive a competitive labor market (which kinda tends to feed back into that first one) We SHOULD be worried about THAT. And "buy ugly fruit!" does -all to address it. 14 27 597 4,131 Dr Sarah Taber @Sarah. · 17 Jan 19 v But those aren't fun problems to fix, because they're not the kinds of problems that the everyman consumer can fix by just making a s
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    Font - Dr Sarah Taber @SarahT. · 17 Jan 19 v anyway that's my semiweekly grinching about shallow attempts to reform the food system that completely miss the point and at this point the ugly fruit thing is such an accepted belief that. like. you can't even blame people for believing it, everywhere it's 122 27 178 3,174

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