Americans throw away almost as much food as they eat, inflicting a heavy toll on the environment. Vast quantities of fresh produce grown in the US are left in the field to rot, fed to livestock or sent to a landfill, because of unrealistic and unyielding cosmetic standards. High-value and nutritious food is being sacrificed to retailers’ demand for unattainable perfection. About 60m tonnes of produce worth about $160bn (£119bn), is wasted by retailers and consumers every year – one third of all foodstuffs.

In addition. down on the farm, scarred vegetables are regularly abandoned in the field to save the expense and labour involved in harvest, left to rot in a warehouse because of minor blemishes that don’t necessarily affect freshness or quality. When added to the retail waste, it takes the amount of food lost close to half of all produce grown, experts say.

Within the US, discarded food dumps are a rising source of methane, a far more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. And when you add the amazing fact that 30 million Americans supplement their inadequate incomes with Food Stamps, the whole situation is truly daft.

But not just the US. Globally, about one-third of all food is wasted: 1.6bn tonnes of produce a year, with a value of about $1tn. Food waste accounts for about 8% of global climate pollution. Meanwhile, it is estimated that 5-10% of the world population do not have enough to eat, the United States writ large.

It is not that Governments, and the UN, are unaware of the problem. There is a lot of concern. The plan is to halve avoidable food waste by 2030. But the problem is getting the public, used to beautiful-looking fruit and vegetables, to accept less good looks in return to food that actually tastes of something.