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Europe relaxes anti-ugly fruit and vegetable laws

misshapen carrots
"Unfortunate-looking" fruits and vegetables will no longer face discrimination in Europe, where a ban on the sale of misshapen produce was repealed on Wednesday.

Shape standards, which prohibited curved, knobby or otherwise different-looking fruits vegetables from going to market, will no longer be enforced come next July. The unpopular law had meant that oddly curved bananas and bulbous carrots would simply be thrown away by vendors looking to avoid fines. As food prices have risen in recent months, it became hard to avoid acknowledging the, uh, complete stupidity of these laws.

"It makes no sense to throw perfectly good products away, just because they are the 'wrong' shape," said Mariann Fischer Boel, European Commissioner of Agriculture. Amen to that.

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Filed Under: Newspapers, Ingredients, Fast Food
Tags: europe, fruit, laws, produce, vegetables

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Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)

kim

11-13-2008 @9:53AM kim said... research for my essay on whether food can be art has led me to read analogies (which only now seem obvious) between food and the life we lead on earth. The major one being temporality in our present form as well as the multiple identities we all juggle as our life proceeds. The other analogy pertinent to this article surfaces on its own. We are all diverse and the 'norms'we have imposed on us for normality have to be challenged. So many of us are sooooo nourishing as we participate in each others lives and it has little to do with the form we have been given by nature. Plato would agree that there are ideal forms out there in a realm not on this earth. Nothing temporal and dealing with living materials could ever be those forms. Sounds like brave new world style people: Pneumatic, eh?
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lesley

11-14-2008 @2:31AM lesley said... Hi
I grew up with a Dad who owned a fruit and vegetable shop, and found it hard to swallow when this ridiculous system was put in place! Many a Sunday morning I would help out in the shop, stacking the shelves etc, and not once did anyone say "I'm not buying that 'cause it's a funny shape!" I agree Amen it's over!
http://www.cookingwiththejoneses.com
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beanspants

11-13-2008 @12:14PM beanspants said... So Santa will be making a stop by the Isle of Misfit foods this year. Rudolph, the Peppermint Miner, and that wierd dentist elf came through!

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3 Comments / 1 Pages

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