Better Than An Apple

Here I go again. Trashing an otherwise perfectly respectable, pretty much good-for-you product. What is WITH me?

I recently attended the Natural Products Expo. It is a super cool event, filled (really filled, that event is HUGE!) with so much natural stuff one hardly knows where to turn. However, from the first second hitting the floor, I had to remind myself this was a "natural products" gig and NOT a green event, per se. The two ought to go hand in hand, yes I agree, but this is not the case. And that's that... you can't quite call it greenwashing here... Oh I wanted to... but you can't quite.

Case in point: the first display I saw. VitaTops. Apparently these things are great for losing weight and are wonderfully healthy and oh so delicious. Everyone loves them, they have all kinds of seals of approval... GREAT. Super. Wonderful. What stopped me dead in my tracks was this huge sign on their display that said, "Better than an apple!" Dead serious. My immediate reaction was, "In what world??? Plasticland???" While these delicious little morsels are the perfect size and calorie count, they are all perfectly wrapped in individual perfect plastic pouches. Yes, that IS much better than an apple. Not. What's the dead giveaway? What's the phrase that jumps out in a warning? The very first thing they say under the VitaTop's product page is: "VitaTops. Deliciously Convenient."

"No time for your vitamin-fortified cereal this morning? Tired of chewing yet another nutritional bar, but still want your vitamins and minerals and 4-9g fiber with very little fat?" Really? This is what we've come to? Yeah, I know, I'm not really surprised either. (Nutritional bars are hard to chew??) How lazy are we. No, that is not a question. I know we are. Chewing is hard work. So is exercise and eating right. Hard hard work. Convenience is definitely the key to losing weight.

So, anyway, this is a good and quality product. I'm sure it is. I'm totally overreacting. Come on. Is there no other way to package it? None? No? Then it has to go in the "reject" pile. Because this is not cool. You cannot recycle these wrappers. They just end up in the ocean. And why? What for? Because eating right is just too plain hard and inconvenient, and we are all too fat and have to lose weight, and damn the consequences to our children's children?

That's what I thought.