In a grocery store, we are likely to buy perfectly looking vegetables and fruits.

Buying Standards – As consumers in the United States, we have unrealistic cosmetic requirements for our produce.Because of this, they might have a surplus that there is no demand for. Hedging against Weather and Disease – Farms will often over-plant because they worry about bad weather or other potential harm to their crops.Farms waste food for a variety of reasons: Farms, distributors, stores, and consumers are all guilty of too much food waste.įor the purposes of this post, let’s focus on the beginning of the supply chain – farms. Food is wasted for a variety of reasons and at different points along the supply chain. It isn’t only consumers who are wasting food. In the United States, approximately 40% of our food is wasted. Before we get into that though, I’d love to share a bit more context. Therefore, we’ve decided to try out both services again, so I can provide you with an updated review (as of July 2022)īased on my test of both of these products again in 2022, it’s time to again choose which service is better and write a review of both. In the summer of 2022, we realized that these services have both shifted their products and level of customization. We originally wrote this review in the fall of 2019 and chose our favorite at that point. The next week we’d receive an Imperfect Foods Box. We decided to try them both, alternating weeks between the two. There are two options for ugly produce where we live: Misfits Market and Imperfect Foods. CSA shares provide a lot of food, and I wasn’t sure that we could use it all. The ugly veggie services also provide the option of customizing the size of the box you want and the products inside. CSAs typically require you to pick it up from a central location. First, these services ship the produce directly to your house. I found these services appealing for two reasons. When I was doing research into this, I stumbled across ugly produce delivery services. What this means is that you buy a share in a farm and then you get a big box of produce each week for the summer and fall. Someone mentioned that they save money by using a CSA (community-supported agriculture). I didn’t feel like we were getting the appropriate value for the money we were spending. I wanted to save more money on groceries. We have reduced our food spending quite a bit, but we felt like it was still high. We’ve focused on not wasting food, meal planning based on what we already have, and buying in bulk.

Through some research, we realized that we spent more money on food than the USDA’s guidance for a (liberal spending) family of four. I would have assumed that we’d spend a little bit more on groceries than the average. We like to eat healthy, fresh foods, which also tend to cost a bit more. I eat gluten-free and have a variety of weird food allergies.

One of the first things that we realized was that we spent way too much on groceries. When we first learned about financial independence, we started to analyze our spending.

Misshapen produce