Stores Are Now Selling Pre-Packaged Avocados And People Can't Handle It
Fruits and vegetables are delicious, but unlike bread and chips, they have skins that naturally preserve the food inside rather than plastic wrap that quickly becomes environment-harming waste.
Tired of the compostable, sustainable nature of foods like avocados, grocery stores like Stop & Shop and Canadian chain Sobeys now carry pre-peeled and pre-pitted versions, BuzzFeed reports.
Sobeys shopper Christine Kizik shared a photo of the product to the store's Facebook page, calling the packaging “wasteful” and seeking an explanation.
Ol' Sobes swiftly replied to Kizik's request on Facebook, writing,
This product was developed for people who might be new to using avocados and for a little more convenience. It eliminates the guess work when it comes to ripeness and any challenges if you are not familiar with peeling and seeding a fresh avocado.
Ah, yes, the struggle of figuring out how to eat food. We all know it well. It's like everyone always says,
Prepping an avocado for consumption is like driving a car: It's very, very difficult at first, and you could end up killing yourself and others.
In defense of the product, one blogger, Kim Sauder, pointed out on her blog, Crippledscholar, pre-packaged foods can make life easier for disabled shoppers.
She wrote,
This discourse completely ignores how preprepared food impacts people with disabilities… As a person with limited hand dexterity, I look at this and see an easier way to eat healthy food. I actively avoid eating oranges, not because I dislike them (they are definitely tasty) but because I have so much difficulty peeling them. Any attempt to peel an orange is likely to result in an unappetizing mess because I've squeezed the orange to hard while trying to maneuver it for peel removal… While adapted cooking tools do exist to help offset those issues they are really expensive.
We can all agree making vital routines, like food-prep and eating, easier for the disabled community is a must.
Some readers, however, argued the manufacturer's intention was not to create a product for disabled users but to prey on all consumers' love of convenience.
In response, Sauder said,
In many way things that are accidentally accessible are better than things that are specifically designed to be. This is because things that are accidentally accessible are marketed and available to everyone and are thus likely to be more easily available that an accessible product which is likely only sold in specialized stores. Seriously, accessibility that requires no thought to implement is the best.
With a little luck and a lot of planning and revising, we all can, one day, enjoy prepped and pre-packaged natural foods that don't abuse environmentally harmful packaging.
After all, everyone deserves extra avocado on his or her sammies and salads.
Citations: Everyone Is Freaking Out About These Pre-Peeled Avocados Sobeys Is Selling (BuzzFeed), When Accessibility gets Labeled Wasteful (Crippledscholar)
