Australia

it's been a weird chicken/egg situation. When I was a kid, weird shaped veggies were nbd, shit came out of the dirt, what did you expect.

Meanwhile hubs (7 years younger) freaks at a two legged carrot because he's never seen produce that wasn't standardised to a catalogue.

A lot of this is on us (the consumers). If they put produce on the shelves that isn’t perfect, we don’t buy it.

To a certain extent, yes. But the sociological phenomenon it has morphed into is being reinforced significantly by supermarkets limiting the types of produce we see on shelves. Where do our ideas of what a banana should look like come from? Very few people live on farms or are buying from farmer's markets, so their main exposure to produce throughout their life is through the supermarket shelf. You say "produce...that isn't perfect" but who is determining what perfect looks like? I would argue it's not the individual who is consciously making the determination that a large banana isn't perfect. The expected norm is that a banana should be smaller and that heavily influences the individual's resulting behaviour to the extent that they cannot be blamed in a way that would actually solve this problem. We need to change society's values as a whole, and that requires large-scale change at the level of something like supermarket regulation.

Personally I don't much care how it looks. In fact with bananas and apples in particular, I find the more "perfect" examples are often the least flavourful.

But I will avoid bruised product. If there are noticeable soft spots, it's staying on the shelf.

Woolies did do a good thing by bagging up the less perfect looking fruit/veggies and selling that separately cheaper. I'm assuming Coles does the same.