80% of Singaporeans will only buy beautiful food. At the same time, food waste increased 1.5 times in the last decade. We want to change this. ImEdible aims to show people that “ugly” food is the same as pretty food in both taste and nutritional value. Instagram will be our main channel of publicity. We’ll change the views of the public, then use a petition to persuade supermarkets to give ugly food a chance.

We’ve already started on our project. We set up a booth demonstration at Victoria Junior College. 2 plates of oranges were cut up to look alike. We then asked students to taste if there’s any difference in the oranges from the two plates. Most participants said they tasted similar. At the end, we revealed to them the original appearance of the “ugly” and “pretty” oranges. Then, we asked them to sign a petition and fill in a survey. We collected 76 signatures. Before the booth, half of our respondents rarely or never bought ugly fruits. After our booth, all our respondents were willing to try ugly fruits out.

Our demonstration booth:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0kCeNO2Q3kwUExnNzNZeXBXQUE

We also worked with Vegetarian Society Singapore for their smoothie bike - students could cycle and make their own fruit juice. This brought home the message that while fruits may look different, their nutritional value is still the same. Fruits, no matter their appearance, make great juice.

The bike in action:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0kCeNO2Q3kwUmtKa2FiUUZCRXM

Next, we’ll work with fruit stall owners in schools. Fruit stores in schools sell a lot of fruit juice. For school canteen vendors, cost is important - the cheaper the better. To save ugly fruits and also help vendors cut costs, we’ll link them up with grocers to buy the much-cheaper ugly fruits for fruit juice. This way, it’s a win-win situation. We plan on expanding this to hawker centres, and eventually, we’ll convince supermarkets to sell ugly fruits, too.

Let’s reduce food waste together!