Well-presented, shiny and uniformly sized apples, carrots and other fruits and vegetables are what weve come to expect in our local grocery store.

But its a perfection that does not always reflect the produce being grown on farms across the U.S., says Danielle Nierenberg, co-founder of the nongovernmental organization Food Tank.

Food grows in the soil and is dirty and comes in all shapes and sizes, yet weve been trained to believe that everything is pristine and perfect. Its part of our culture now. The grocery aisles tell our eyes one thing and we dont realize that there is nothing bad about misshapen or imperfect-looking food.

And many of us associate aesthetics with eating pleasure. People think food that looks perfect tastes perfect, but thats not the case. Ugly can be tasty and nutritious, Nierenberg says.

It all started with the spread of refrigeration technology in the 1980s that enabled fresh fruits and vegetables to be kept chilled soon after being harvested all the way through to the grocery aisle. The ability to preserve perfect-looking produce over longer distances gave retailers the option to source fresh produce from further afield and so be more selective about what they would take, enabling them to set increasingly stringent quality standards.

The result is that if you go to a grocery store in the U.S. today, you see aisles of apples all the same shape and color. It teaches kids that this is what fruit and vegetables are meant to look like, says Evan Lutz, co-founder of the food waste company Hungry Harvest.

That culture is being reinforced by social media and the focus on immaculate, Instagram- and Pinterest-worthy meals, says Andrea Spacht, a food specialist at the Natural Resources Defense Council.