One could argue that those preferences make the world a worst place. If we just accepted the first carrot we see rather than overlooking the crooked ones, there would be less waste.
We are so picky and so fussy that extra waste and energy is expended just to make fussy people happy.
I like to get what I want too but I can't help think that if we were all a little more relaxed in this area that the world might be a better place.
I have an anecdote too - I used to work for SAP and lead their FMCG practice in EMEA. We did many ERP projects for large grocery chains and we could see that a lot of their material waste was down to damaged good and expired goods. Two of the largest chains had a field in the their system to track items that had expired due to being left to rot on the shelves, the amount of fruit and veg that expired was large and it was mostly oddly shaped veg. We introduced a business process where the suppliers could only send produce that met a certain 'grade', this radically changed the amount of wastage on the store side but increased the wastage on the supply side.
Programmes like 'the odd bunch' where produce that looks funny is sold cheaper has gone some way to addressing the issue for certain grocery chains.
I don't believe there are any public studies on individual store wastage over this issue.
"Around 25 per cent of edible fresh produce is thrown away due to visual imperfection or cosmetic damage every year in Australia. According to a 2013 study from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO),"
Original source is somewhere in there - sorry for the laziness.
Even without the citation I believe this and take it at face value. I'm not sure what would make you not believe it? Have you never passed over something based purely on looks or noticed someone else do the same? My kids instinctively do this when they eat fruit; even my 2 year old does it and they've never been told to!
If you were getting 15 lemons per week, maybe contract the vendor and try to address the issue?