‘Wrong Color’ Says Danish Supermarket, 1 Ton Italian Pears Rescued By Bakery

Sustainability ‘Wrong Color’ Says Danish Supermarket, 1 Ton Italian Pears Rescued By New Nordic Pioneer Chef Daniela De Lorenzo Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. I write about sustainable food & agriculture production systems. Following New! Follow this author to stay notified about their latest stories.

Got it! Oct 31, 2022, 05:15am EDT | New! Click on the conversation bubble to join the conversation Got it! Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin The over 1300 kg of pears collected by Meyers with the help of anti food waste company Eat Grim. Meyers A Danish supermarket chain refused last week over a 1,3 tons of an Italian farmer company’s organic pears, which according to the buyers had the “wrong color” – a red shade on the skin. Acros the World, national food regulations allow retailers to apply some cosmetics standards, such as size, color or ripeness, when buying and selling fruits and vegetables as consumers would not buy food items that looks imperfect.

The alarm was launched by a anti-food waste company Eat GRIM (meaning “Eat Ugly” in Danish), which buys organic and “ugly” fruit and vegetables from farmers and retailers, and delivers food boxes with these produce to consumers that are not interested in fruit beauty standards. In the last four years the company saved around 572 tons of food and created over $1 billion income for farmers. However, 1.

3 tons of produce was impossible for them to take in once. When Petra Kaukua, co-founder at Eat Grim wrote on their LinkedIn page that they were looking for somebody to rescue and buy the amount of fruits, a famous local food producer brand moved quite swiftly. Eat Grim said that Danish Meyers was ready ‘with open arms’ and helped to avoid this useless waste of quality product: “As a food producer, reducing food waste is essential across Meyers, and all entities of the company take action to meet our goal to become CO2-neutral by 2025,” said Jesper Uggerhøj CEO of Meyers A/S.

“We collaborate with farmers, food producers, researchers and stakeholders throughout the value chain, but it never ceases to inspire me how our own kitchen professionals find creative ways to reduce food waste every single day,” he added. The Meyers Group was founded by the Danish chef Claus Meyer, co-owner of Noma, culinary entrepreneur and founder of the New Nordic Cuisine movement. Across the Danish capital, Meyers holds different business activities among which four bakeries, as well as the ‘Meyers Canteens’ – a food contractor solution for some of the most that serves lunch to the most innovative and and largest companies in Copenhagen.

In 2015 Claus Meyer brought his cinnamon buns, dark bread and other Danish pastries to the American audience, setting a bakery and restaurant in New York City. MORE FOR YOU $100M Magic: Why Bruno Mars And Other Stars Are Ditching Their Managers After Pulling Its SPAC Deal, Startup Bright Machines Raises $100 Million On Factory-Reshoring Trend The SaaS Stack: Consolidate Or Grow? Thanks to their canteen service solution, the company was able to absorb this huge quantity of fruit by adding it to the lunch box delivered to its set customers. With the leftover fruits they delivered as well the ‘Thursday cake’, a tradition in Scandinavia, where a sweet treat is added on Tursdays’ menu, and employees eat together during their coffee break.

Employees receiving the pears said they were “delicious”, where Petra Kaukua commented the pears reached their right destinations: consumers tummies instead of trash bins. Reducing food waste also results in a decreased climate footprint: the organic fruits travelled in fact all the way from Italy, and might have been send to incineration or simply to waste if they would not been used, increasing the CO2 emissions within Denmark. As an additional measure, Meyers Canteens works with the company Too Good to Go to make food left over from lunch available as takeaway.

According to Mayers group, reducing food waste should be part of the daily routine of all responsible kitchen professionals, the teams also work to save herbs and meat cuts produced from local farmers. Italian pear producer Bio Fruit Service is located in the south of the Piedmont region, and during the early autumn it harvest, apples, kiwis and plums, alongside its pears, Their company was founded in 1998, aiming at producing organic baby food or simple fresh products. Asked if supermarkets’ rejections happen frequently, a representatives said they are in general unaware of what happens to their product after they have delivered them.

However, the representative mentioned that, due to their products being organic, and not containing any additional chemicals, the fruits can in fact be more fragile when transporting, or perishable therefore landing the supermarket in potentially non perfect condition According to the latest data released from Eurostat, around 127 kilogrammes of food waste per inhabitant were generated in the EU in 2020. Households generated 55 % of food waste, whereas the remaining 45 % was waste generated upwards in the food supply chain. Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn .

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