Abstract
Consumers often throw away faded greens, because taste and appearance are less appealing compared to fresh ones. We report here a family of antioxidants, the phyllobilins, which increase during storage in iceberg lettuce and cucumber. We show that informing consumers about rising levels of phyllobilins leads to a longer willingness to consume faded lettuce and to an improved health and safety perception.
Highlights
11% of the world population suffer from poverty and hunger while one third of the food produced for human consumption worldwide is wasted every year[1]
With the aim of reducing food waste, what if one could shift consumer behavior towards judging aged produce as still valuable and too good to be thrown away? By informing consumers about a family of antioxidants that occur in food stored for a couple of days, we were able to initiate a revaluing of stored lettuce by consumers
Lettuce is a source of fiber, vitamins, and folate, amounts in iceberg lettuce were found to be comparably low in regard to other types of lettuce[19]; in general, lettuce and cucumber are lower in nutrients than some other greens[20,21]
Summary
11% of the world population suffer from poverty and hunger while one third of the food produced for human consumption worldwide (roughly 1.3 billion tons) is wasted every year[1]. Samples of lettuce and cucumber peels were collected and phyllobilin contents were analyzed (Supplementary Fig. 5). On day 1, when the lettuce and cucumber still appeared fresh and green (Supplementary Fig. 6), only low levels of phyllobilins were detected; the amount of phyllobilins, increased significantly over time.
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