A GLOBAL food trend has proved to be deliciously rewarding locally.
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Harris Farm Markets has been named "Produce Marketer of the Year" at the PMA Fresh Connections trade show in Melbourne.
Their "Imperfect Picks" campaign to save tonnes of fresh produce from going to waste was recognised as a winning initiative.
"As much as 25 per cent of the fruits and vegetables grown in Australia go to waste every day," Harris Farm spokeswoman, Carol Brown said.
"This is often because they simply haven't grown to the size, shape or colour buyers require for mass storage, transport or presentation.
"But our 'ugly food' bin saves on that waste by selling imperfect produce at up to half the usual retail price."
This week's imperfect picks included misshapen eggplants, knobbly carrots, and apples lightly speckled by frost, among other entirely edible produce.
The 'ugly food' trend originated in France, where its parliament has recently passed a bill to ban supermarkets from refusing 'ugly' food.
Harris Farm managers picked up the trend last September, and have since added to it by making an in-house range of dips using the imperfect produce.
Co-chief executive Tristan Harris called the initiative "a killer success" and "a team effort, the likes of which I've rarely seen".
"We had over 100,000 YouTube views ... thousands of positive comments [and] saved hundreds of thousands of kilos of product from the scrap heap," Mr Harris said.
The PMA is the Produce Marketing Association, a national peak body for companies in the fresh food and floral supply chain.
Fresh Connections, Australia's biggest produce conference, hosted more than 1000 attendees from some 500 companies in mid May.
Barrengarry nutritionist Dr Rosemary Stanton recently urged consumers to look for the "unglamorous" fruit and veg in supermarkets.
"Buy these products and show we don't care if fruit and veg aren't uniform in size and shape," she said.
Dr Stanton will be a guest speaker at the New Empire Cinema screening of the Fair Food documentary on Tuesday, June 2, 7-9pm, as part of World Environment Week, (June 1-7). Tickets: free from the box office, or online at empire cinema.com.au