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1. Grocery stores sell peeled, cut-up fruits in nasty plastic bubbles so that they can get you to buy produce that was bruised, moldy or otherwise unsaleable in its original, natural form. As a bonus, they get you to pay extra for this service. They must be laughing themselves sick over how they are fooling us.

2. Interesting note on the oranges: I have many friends who feel this new ‘product’, the pre-peeled orange, is the perfect thing for those with arthritis or other conditions that would make it difficult for them to peel the fruit. I can’t deny that this might be useful for certain people. The flip side is that supposedly the packaging itself is difficult to get through, so if you’re pushing this fruit as a way for all people have their oranges and eat it too, it may still miss the mark a bit. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that when this idea popped up, the people behind the thought weren’t actually trying to target that particular group of consumers. OTHER than making fruit accessible to those whose manual dexterity is degraded, I’m not really sure why this product exists or who would think it’s a good deal. I don’t wish to belittle anyone who would have difficult doing tasks I take for granted, so I haven’t audibly rolled my eyes over this product as much as I normally would. But. I still am shocked to see plastic packaging in lieu of the far superior packaging that nature provides.

   • What’s weird about this retail disaster is that Whole Foods chose a very easily peeled variety of citrus (the Sumo mandarin, which is also delicious).

3. As someone mentioned, the differently-abled/disabled have been posting that fruit can be difficult to prepare and that while this might rile environmentalists, they actually look forward to having these available to use. I’ll see if I can find the post, it was on Twitter, but it really offered a very interesting perspective to think about.

   I too was on the rage bandwagon, but then again, sometimes I buy pre-washed salad in a bag. 😐

4. Yeah, I just don’t get why this is so awful. Making it easy for people to eat more fruit seems like a good thing. (I’m not disabled and I hate peeling oranges, for what that’s worth.) Using up borderline, unsaleable, fruit instead of throwing it away seems like a good thing. Sure, it would be awesome if everybody would make their own fruit salad, but that’s not the way of the world. I have several non-cooks in my family–the ones who can burn water–and they welcome shortcuts like this that allow them to eat healthier. Packaging not made of plastic would be better, obviously, but I think those of us who like/don’t mind kitchen work need to remember that some people have more money than time and are happy with their lifestyle. This is absolutely no different that prepared salad in a bag, as another person mentioned…

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