The Psychological Reason Why We Hate Ugly Fruits

We look for attractive people to mate with, cute animals to bring home and nice clothes to wear. So is it any wonder we judge good-looking food to be tastier? This behavior may seem harmless, but it often means that cosmetically challenged fruits and vegetables end up rotting on the ground -- even though they're perfectly edible. Each year we waste 1.3 billion tonnes of food produced for human consumption worldwide. In the fruits and vegetables category, almost half of what’s produced is wasted. That’s a billion bags of potatoes, 3.7 trillion apples -- the list goes on. In industrialized countries alone, the cost amounts to billions of dollars. That's a very high price for being superficial. Movements to bring ugly fruits and vegetables to grocery stores and cut back on food waste have already begun in Europe and elsewhere, and companies like Tesco in the U.K. have started to offer odd-looking produce at lower prices.  Take action now: Sign this petition urging Walmart to sell “ugly” fruits and vegetables to reduce food waste. Is there actually any valid reason to avoid buying ugly fruit? Could anything possibly explain this strange behavior? Let’s face it, there’s an aesthetic element to everything Our preference for prettiness is a cognitive bias that reaches into every area of our lives. We assume beautiful people to be more intelligent, honest and successful than their less conventionally attractive peers, according to a...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news