The well known version of this is "Ugly Fruits". http://www.frutafeia.pt/en http://www.uglyfruits.eu/

Here's a BBC Radio Four programme that talks about Ugly Fruits and two other "food waste" initiatives. (Zimbabwean orphans growing mushrooms in food waste - raising their status from social outcasts to useful members of society with produce to trade; and John Greany Sørensen who vacuum dries pulps to make crystals from food.)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05mpx0k

Canada's largest supermarket chain recently started doing this: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/loblaws-sel...

So did French supermarket Intermarché and Dutch supermarket Albert Heijn. It's encouraging to see that bigger chains are starting to do this. Throwing away perfectly good food just because it doesn't look 'perfect' is pretty ridiculous.

Do they really throw that stuff away? You can make juice and the like with it; no-one would ever know what it looked like.

I can tell you right now that 100% of my friends are thrifty enough that they would exclusively buy "reject" produce even at only a marginal discount. By the time you're done preparing the vegetables for the meal you can't even tell what it looked like originally anyway.

All you need to do is ensure that people are aware that the edibility is the same (which, if sold by reputable supermarkets, will be taken as a given) and give them accurate guides on discerning the ripeness of such produce (assuming that our usual standards of ripeness are based on color, or other traits that rejects might not fulfill).

There's a fortune to be made here. Market it to broke post-college grads, counterculture hipsters, and earth-loving hippies. Hint hint, entrepreneurs.

They're also often called "visually distressed".

Food is so subsidized that we may as well throw out any food that consumers dont want, the tax payer will eat the cost (but not the food).

Not all produce is subsidised.

There are places like that... Near me there is a decent sized Persian population and there are some Persian owned markets that get the non "top" quality produce and sell it for a steal. (Top in quotes because it's still usually high quality just not "perfect" looking) I find it hard to buy produce anywhere else.

Intermarché in France did just that: https://vimeo.com/98441820

Ugly or not, peeling janky-shaped potatoes sucks.

Agreed, but offer odd shaped potatoes at 20% less and let people decide the value of their potato peeling time.

Just choose a preparation that uses the peel.

Woolworths in Australia started doing this recently. Though, to be honest the stuff they're selling looks just like the regular ones.