Crooked cucumbers: Buy vegetables with character!

If you have a garden, you know three-legged carrots and heart-shaped potatoes. But in the supermarket there is no room for vegetables with quirks: There, the carrots lie straight up in plastic bowls, as fresh as they are fresh from the carrot beauty parlor.

We may soon see more of the tripod carrot: Under the motto "Nobody is perfect" Edeka and Netto now sell vegetables with blemishes - first in some test markets. Customers in the regions of Southern Bavaria, Northern Bavaria-Saxony-Thuringia, Rhine Ruhr and North can enjoy the ugly harvest.

We throw far too many foods away

Ugly vegetables were thrown away for decades: One fifth of the harvest, SPIEGEL writes, is already sorted out on the farm. During storage, washing, packaging and finally in the trade, even more fruits and vegetables end up in the trash. Almost 40 percent of the harvest never reaches the customer.

The crooked cucumber is no longer banned, the corresponding EU standards have been tipped since 2009. But instead, the trade has set voluntary rules. So far, almost all major supermarket chains have stuck to it, fearing that the ugly vegetables could scare off customers.

High time that changes. Because: We throw far too many food away. The food we throw away in Europe would be enough to feed the hungry in the world twice, we learn in Valentin Thurn's memorable film "Taste the Waste".

A similar idea as Edeka with the initiative "Nobody is perfect" is pursued by Rewe with his "Wunderlingen": In Austrian supermarkets, the retail chain is currently selling apples, carrots and potatoes with blemishes - also on a trial basis. The Swiss Coop stores have been selling fruit and vegetables beyond the norm since summer under the name "Ünique".

Why not? If you want to process your potatoes into mashed potatoes anyway, you do not need any specimens that could win a beauty award. The apricots for jam may have hageldellen quietly. And bet that children find three-legged carrots much more exciting than normal ones? On top of that, the tainted cucumber is even cheaper to sell than their stromlinierten siblings, while it is just as healthy as the standard vegetables and tastes just as good.

Tanja Krakowski and Lea Brumsack have long since recognized that the two Berlin product designers founded the startup "Culinary Misfits" in 2012. They buy up, which the farmers of the region do not get rid of, and sell the vegetable nerds on weekly markets - like fresh from the field or processed to soups, dumplings, quiches or cakes.

Ugly vegetables have what it takes to be a star

That ugly vegetables even have what it takes to be a star is proven by three graduates of the Bauhaus University in Weimar. For their diploma thesis in visual communication they invented the brand "Ugly Fruits" and developed advertising campaigns for it. Meanwhile, there are postcards with their bizarre shaped vegetables, a calendar is planned.

If you look at the pictures, you will see vegetables with character. It does not correspond to the common vegetable-beauty ideal. And that's why it's interesting.

Therefore: Buy oversized beets, burst radishes, scarred zucchini and knobbly potatoes, that lasts! So that in the end not boring standard vegetables are left in the supermarket.