Everyone’s talkign about the new wonky veg boxes from Asda. It’s all over my Facebook time line, Twitter, the papers and even in the school play ground it’s what the Mum’s have been chatting about. At £3.50 for a massive box of ‘ugly veg’ the boxes must be flying off the shelf!

When I say ‘ugly veg’ I do have to clarify, we’re simply talking about them not having the pristine perfectness that usually makes superarket shelves – they’re not growing boils and warts or anything. It’s bonker because farmers must have to waste so much of their crops when they don’t grow ‘pretty’ enough and this is not just bad news for them but for everyone! We, the consumer, spend more money as a result of the wasted croppage when it inflates the prices of the picture perfect veggies and think of all that wasted food! Criminal.

When we were in Portugal we noticed that the fruit and veg was pretty non uniform in size and shape but we also noticed they tasted JUST the same and if not better in lots of cases. We thought it was rather fun looking at the wierd and wonderful shapes of our shopping and talked about how sad it was that we didn’t have fruit and veg on sale like it in the UK.

But now we have!

Asda are trialling some fab wonky veg boxes as part of their ‘Beautiful on the Inside’ range. In 128 stores, as a continued effort to tackle food waste across the supply chain and to help famers, these boxes are on sale now and f they do well, they should be able to stay!

I was sent a wonky veg box and it was packed with peculiar potatoes, crooked carrots and curved cucumbers. All of these are in season right now. We also got knobbly peppers, a cabbage, onions, leeks and a huge parsnips. There’s no way I would have been able to purchase picture perfect versions for the same cost of £3.50!

There will 20 boxes available in selected stores from today as part of this trial to see if the box is a hit with customers. See full store list here.

The existing wonky veg range was expanded last November and also includes misshapen carrots, pears, apples, citrus fruits, sweet potatoes and garlic. On top of this they have relaxed the specifications on carrots and sweet potatoes in every store across the country, meaning you’ll find 340 more tonnes of carrots and 300 more tonnes of sweet potatoes on Asda shelves which would have previously been rejected – how can this be a bad thing! No wonder EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT IT!

Ian Harrison, Asda’s technical produce director, said: “We’re excited to launch a unique and exclusive Wonky Vegetable box that is jam-packed with ugly winter veg that not only saves shoppers money but helps farmers get more of their crop onto our shelves.

“However, this range only solves one part of the food waste puzzle. The work we continue to do with our growers to ensure as much of their crop is sold as possible, by flexing specifications, is the golden ticket for farmers.

“The initial reception to Wonky Fruit and Veg has been fantastic and we’ve been eager to take this one step further for a while, so the challenge to make wonky veg more widely available for customers was something we happily accepted from Jamie and Jimmy.”

The Wonky Veg box looks and feels like a high end organic veggie delivery box! You know the one! There was absolutely nothing terribly funny about any of the shapes of my veggies (shame) but they were all a little bit different to each other. Who cares about that? I mean really!

I chopped up a load of them and bunged them in the soup maker which blends everything anyway. Even if the appearance DID make a difference, how would anyone know once it’s been through the blender? We had fresh soup for four people using up about a fifth of the box. Now THAT is value for money!

Good work Asda, I’ll be buying the box regularly should it be a hit – and how could it not be?

I was sent an Asda Wonky Veg Box for the purpose of an honest review.

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