New juice range made from wonky fruit and veg aims to cut waste

• by Ronnie Smith
• May 3, 2018

New juice range made from wonky fruit and veg aims to cut waste

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/01/new-juice-range-made-from-wonky-fruit-and-veg-aims-to-cut-waste

A new story has just been published about a range of juice being made from “wonky fruit”:

It states:

One of the UK’s largest fresh produce growers has teamed up with a Spanish fruit supplier to create a new product, Waste Not, which will stop edible but visually ‘imperfect’ ingredients such as fresh celery, beetroot and oranges from being dug back into the soil, or used for animal feed. The new juices will go on sale in branches of Tesco.

The move is one of a growing number of innovations to reduce food waste throughout the supply chain, following criticism of supermarkets and suppliers that perfectly good food is being thrown out while UK consumers are relying increasingly on food banks.

It goes on to say:

Supermarket chains have been selling ‘wonky veg’ ranges for some time, at discounted prices to make them more appealing to consumers. In April, Morrisons added wonky chillies to its misshapen fruit and veg range – the same heat and flavour but costing 39% less than standard chillies. Defects include missing stalks, imperfect colour and extreme curves. 

Meanwhile, companies such as Rubies in the Rubble specialise in making chutneys and sauces from surplus ingredients that would otherwise go to waste, and in May is launching a new range of ‘vegan-friendly mayonnaise’ (made from aquafaba, the liquid in tinned chick peas) through Ocado.

Soft fruit, root vegetables and salad are particularly prone to waste. One in 10 strawberries in the UK ended up as waste according to a recent study by the government’s food waste reduction advisory body Wrap – equivalent to 10,000 tonnes and valued at £24m. And one in five lettuces were unharvested, with 38,000 tonnes lost with a value of £7m.

It truly seems like an awful lot of fruit is getting wasted simply for not looking right.  This is a great solution to this problem.

An added bonus is that the juices will be “cold pressed” and therefore as close to raw and unprocessed as possible.  They will also be cheaper than the average juice:

All the fruit and vegetables in the drinks will be cold-pressed – which involves squeezing the juice in small batches instead of heat-pasteurising it. Putting the juice under high pressure in this way maintains freshness.

At £1.50 per 250ml bottle, the range will undercut the premium prices typically charged in the ‘trendy’ cold-press juice drink market and it is hoped that within the first 12 weeks of going on sale will save around 3.5 tonnes of surplus or waste fruit and vegetables.

“These juice drinks are the latest way that we are helping tackle food waste by ensuring as much of the crop as possible gets used,” said Tesco prepared fruit buyer Jo Batty. “The fruit and vegetables being used in the range fall outside the specifications for fresh produce and offer shoppers a great taste.”

What do you think?  Leave your comment below.

New juice range made from wonky fruit and veg aims to cut waste https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/01/new-juice-range-made-from-wonky-fruit-and-veg-aims-to-cut-waste A new story has just been published about a range of juice being made from “wonky fruit”: It states: One of the UK’s largest fresh produce growers has teamed up with a Spanish fruit supplier to create a new product, Waste…