Linden Hills Farmers Market Hosts 'Seconds Sunday' To Reduce Waste

LINDEN HILLS, Minn. (WCCO) – When buying produce, we can all admit to picking the best looking fruits and veggies.

It's a consumer habit that leads to 6 billion pounds of produce waste every year across the U.S. And often times, all that food is perfectly good to eat.

Farmers markets attract their shoppers with the promise of local produce.

"Farmers market is the freshest place for vegetables," Mary Zarling, of Minneapolis, said.

Vendors display their latest harvest, knowing that presentation is everything.

"I like something that looks fresh," Zarling said.

"If they're going to spend their  hard-earned money on something, they want a perfect product," Peter Campbell, Linden Hills Farmers Market board chair, said.

So when produce shows even the smallest imperfection, it can impact the sale.

"It's slightly eaten on the leaves here, and so a consumer would generally feel this isn't good enough to buy," Campbell said about an imperfect head of lettuce.

Each year, a third of all fruits and veggies grown in the U.S. go to waste. The Linden Hills Farmers Market wants to make a difference with an event called Seconds Sunday.

"A lot of people don't understand that we waste so much food, and this is a way to bring attention to that," Steven Brown, Linden Hills Farmers Market founder, said.

Vendors will bring their misshapen veggies, oversized eggs, broken cookies and imperfect loaves of bread to try to encourage customers to see disfigured food differently.

"The food is great, it's just a little misshapen or a little different than what they would expect, tastes exactly the same," Brown said.

And it's not just produce. The same concept applies to all products. Even an imperfection on a label can lead to waste.

"These products are not subpar, they are still high quality products that people put a lot of passion into growing and making and creating," Campbell said.

The hope is consumers see past the surface -- that even imperfect food has value.

"It's what's inside the book, not the cover, so you have to think about those things," Brown said.

On the second Sunday of every month, vendors at the Linden Hills Farmers Market will bring their imperfect produce. It will sell at the same price as other produce.