You’re probably thinking, “What war on apples?”
You don’t know about it because you typically think of apples from your perspective. But think about events from the apple’s point of view for a moment.
The simple, small little apple is the perfect fruit. It’s delicious. It’s portable. It was designed by Mother Nature with such efficiency that all humans had to do was pick it from a tree and eat it.
She was probably thinking, “no way those dumb humans could screw this up.”
Even the apples were likely confident:
“Hey, we know we’ll be eaten,” a Granny Smith probably said to a Macintosh. “But it’ll be quick and painless and we’ll be plucked and chewed and then it’ll be over.”
Not so fast.
Humans have screwed it up. Royally.
And worse, we‘ve involved our kids.
While there was nothing wrong with the old adage, “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”, leave it to a marketing team somewhere to interpret the phrase as fighting words.
“Really??? You’re saying kids only need one apple a day? And it’s just a stupid apple from a stupid tree? No cool names or packaging or sugar added so we can charge a lot more for something made from apples that kind of tastes like apples that we can market during Saturday morning cartoons? Not on our watch!” the marketers said.
What if we smashed it up and added sugar and water and some chemicals to keep it fresh and put it in a little cup or jar and called it apple sauce?
Done.
What if we put the sauce in a pouch with high fructose corn syrup and called it an apple squeezer or paste?
Yes!
We could even grind it down, congeal it, flatten it, add cinnamon and sugar, roll it up in a thin plastic sheet and call it an apple roll up? People are dumb, they’ll buy those for their kids.
Brilliant!
Ohhhh… We forgot about juice! Let’s compress apples and make a mixture that is 80% water, 19% sugar and 1% apples and sell, get this, apple juice!!
Amazing! Let’s do all of it!
I have one more idea, but I don’t even know if people will be suckers enough for this.
Oh, please… Tell us!
You know how apples are just about the easiest food to eat? You basically just hold it and bite it, right? Well, some people like to cut them up into slices. Even though it’s beyond simple to buy an apple, slice it yourself and serve it to your kids or put it in a bag for their lunch… What if we cut the apples ourselves, put them in a bag, and sold them as apple slices? And charged more for less pre-sliced apples than an entire apple costs by itself?!!!
People will buy it! Yes! A thousand times, yes!
And then we can also take just a handful of slices, put them in some plastic next to some sugar-filled caramel or cheap honey and sell them as Apple Dippers for lunch boxes!
You’re a genius!
And on and on the executives at Big Apple have gone, each year finding innovative and unique ways to mangle, mutilate and mash up the simple apple for consumption by kids.
If an alien came down to planet earth and walked through the grocery store aisles, they’d be forgiven for thinking that apples are inedible on their own. Otherwise, why have one set of humans spent so much time and energy rejiggering the apple to be eaten in 4,739 ways by smaller humans? From the outside looking in, it’s insanity.
The war on apples is real and it’s time we put a stop to it.
The good news is it’s super easy for parents to win.
Next time your kid wants something that looks like an apple and tastes like an apple and satisfies like an apple, all you have to do is… give them an apple.
Then we borrow a line from our pal Will Hunting and say to the marketers:
“How you like them apples?”
Jon Finkel is the co-host of the Life of Dad Show. Follow him on Twitter: @Jon_Finkel and Instagram: @Jon_Finkel and visit www.jonfinkel.com