Having achieved “huge success” in Victoria last year, SPC Ardmona’s Collect-A-Tub program has gone national through Coles and BiLo. When you buy certain Goulburn Valley “fruit snacks” in a plastic tub, you get points for your school, which can eventually be redeemed for “sporting goods“. High-scoring schools will be “rewarded” with visits from athletes while the highest scoring wins the Flying Fruit Fly Circus.
Sounds all very admirable, active and healthy and no doubt it speaks to the national anxiety about food, exercise and childhood obesity, but as a parent my critical antennae went up when I first saw these collect-a-tub ads on TV.
Why should I buy a processed, if fruity, food when I can simply give my child fruit? These products might not have added sugar or any fat but they still have unnecessary sweetness from the fruit juice in them and don’t have as much fibre as a simple piece of fruit.
The website advises me as a parent to be a role model with my eating: the key is to enjoy fruit based snacks and desserts together. But too many snacks and desserts are part of today’s eating problem, not any solution. And notice that these eating occasions (I wouldn’t call them meals) are to be fruit-based rather than fruit.
Why should I buy packaged fruit in a plastic, non-recyclable tub when I can simply give my child fruit? I find this image of a child using a plastic spoon to eat out of plastic tub – an image meant to evoke health and naturalness – quite disturbing. School playgrounds are often awash with plastic rubbish – ziplock bags, yoghurt tubs, clingfilm. This generation of children is going to have to contend with the mind-blowingly huge garbage problem created by our consumerism and the mass production of plastics, many of which are basically unnecessary. Yet this advertising campaign puts the plastic tub at the forefront, almost as a love object. I don’t think that’s an exaggeration. Advertising encourages children’s fascination with packaging, so that peeling off the foil or flipping a lid becomes almost as important as eating the food inside.
The stress on making fruit an “easy” option for children is, I think, disingenuous. Easy=tub. “Ensure it is in a ready-to-eat format to make it more manageable”. Ready-to-eat=tub. Yet from a very young age children can peel bananas and mandarins themselves. They can hold apples in their hands and eat them. They can pop grapes into their mouths. They can bite into plums, peaches and nectarines. Sure, some children are suspicious of any banana with black marks on the skin, but a la Jamie Oliver, I think it’s important that they become familiar with real food and don’t run screaming from blemishes. I once had the pleasure of watching a five month old baby eat her first solid food in the shape of slivers of mango – freshly peeled mango. She beamed. It was clearly delicious. She was ecstatic and wanted more. There was no tub.
Yup, for convenience you can’t beat plastic packaging. Have you ever tried any of these snack packs? They are very ordinary in terms of taste and texture and don’t add up to a tasty option compared to a pear/apple/peach etc etc etc
Love the website that tells us just how convenient they are though! Marvel as they conveniently fit in the fridge door and gasp in wonderment at how easy it is to unscrew the lid on the 1kg tub!!
We are blessed with a superb mango tree in our backyard and this is a true source of wonder for my family each year. We even get to freeze the pulp (how convenient!) and use it for smoothies through the ‘off-season’.
Slightly unrelated – on the health report on RN last week was a very interesting story on the deleterious effects of excessive fructose consumption – which is added to these snack packs as pear juice and is something you don’t get with a piece of fruit. By deleterious I mean insulin resistance and obesity which just happen to be a bit of an issue for us at the moment.
For breakfast, a Goulburn Valley Peach & Mango tub plus a sliced banana on a bowl of ‘Just Right’ with low-fat milk. Yum!
Just the ticket for a type II diabetic trying to keep off the kilos.
For special treat, add a handful of sliced strawberries on top.
I’m guessing my “Get bento, tubby!” campaign isn’t going to get off the ground.
Won’t somebody think of the children?
For breakfast, a Goulburn Valley Peach & Mango tub plus a sliced banana on a bowl of ‘Just Right’ with low-fat milk. Yum!
Just the ticket for a type II diabetic trying to keep off the kilos
Bill, as rf pointed out, the tub is not the ticket at all. Why not a real peach or mango or, in other seasons, a sliced apple [Pink Lady] instead?
I think Bill had his tongue in his cheek.
Where do you find ‘real’ fruit? In my supermarket there is only fruit that was picked six months ago or early last year, how would you know?
Fruit is often treated with preservatives to prolong its shelf life so not only do you get old fruit but a mouthful of chemicals as well (no extra charge)!
Brave New World!
I wondered (about tongue in cheek). Couldn’t quite tell.
Daniel, yes supermarket fruit (and vegetables) leaves a lot to be desired. There are produce markets, including farmers markets, there are greengrocers and there are organic stores (expensive I know).
What a post dripping with unease at the modern world. I can think of at least three benefits to preserved fruit (canned or tubbed):
1. It has a use-by date measured in years rather than weeks
2. It’s non-fragile to carry, in backpacks for instance
3. It allows fruit to be eaten out of season, and in places far from the producing areas, without adding to the cost through airfreight overheads
Yeah, of course it’s nutritionally different. But preserved fruit doesn’t pretend to be the same as fresh fruit, any more than wine pretends to be grape juice.
Schoolyards overflowing with rubbish? Have garbage bins there too been banished to satisfy antiterrorist urges?
We have an avocado tree in a small Sydney backyard the previous owners planted and which bore fruit for the first time in 10 years the year after they sold and we moved in. Such intense flavour.
There are few more satisfying things for a child (admittedly one not brainwashed by advertising to think that fruit should come in packets and should be blemish free) than picking and eating fruit from a garden bed, vine or tree. Even quite small gardens can have a passionfruit vine or an avocado, which aren’t big trees, or a strawberry patch.
My childhood home in suburban Brisbane, a sprawling Queenslander on a double sized block, had two mango trees, and a papaya, banana, loquat, orange, grapefruit and peach tree. We ate all the fruits from these trees and so did many of our visiting neighbours. The fruits were never cooked or processed in any way and we usually ate them in situ. No fruit ever tasted as good.
I’m a mango only eating backpacker heading out for a few years to the land without greengrocers and, frankly, I’d be lost without my tubbed fruit.
Suz – well spotted
There a new WHO-gonged program in Ireland (to cover each primary kid) that combines real fruit (see pic here) with cartoon characters (see pic here) to get them interested if parents can’t.
According to New Scientist, the "Food Dudes" need their charge of vegies and fruit just before they go battling the supervillians. (I was thinking, drag out the old Popeye vids to get the tykes eating spinach)
What a post dripping with unease at the modern world.
I’ll own up to being uneasy about many aspects of the world we live in. Anything wrong with that? Do you accept it all without reservation? Don’t try and paint me as a Luddite for being critical of an advertising campaign which seeks to hook children into what I consider an inferior form of food with packaging which has negative environmental consequences.
I can think of at least three benefits to preserved fruit (canned or tubbed):
1. It has a use-by date measured in years rather than weeks
2. It’s non-fragile to carry, in backpacks for instance
3. It allows fruit to be eaten out of season, and in places far from the producing areas, without adding to the cost through airfreight overheads
I’m not dismissing preserved fruit out of hand. I’m criticising an advertising campaign.
And 1. should the mass of children be routinely eating years-old fruit?
2. fresh fruit can be placed inside reusable containers eg tupperware, for protection on the way to school
3. yes some fruits are seasonally-specific, such as stone fruits, but many fruits are now available year-round in most parts of Australia.
Schoolyards overflowing with rubbish? Have garbage bins there too been banished to satisfy antiterrorist urges?
Children drop things. And the more rubbish they have in their schoolbags, the more rubbish is dropped.
So many questions, from ethics to economic or morlaity to mechanics, come back to how we live in the 21stC.
Oz is the most urbanoid population on the planet and has been since that fateful day in 1788. The cities & towns always held the vast majority of our population despite the sturdy yeomanry myths transplanted from a different history.
If people insist/choose to live in such vast conurbations the food has to brought to them, over vast distances (and the waste removed – another story but integral really).
Now before the agoraphobics (bucolophobics?)start claiming they’re only here for the beer, sorry jobs and kultural facilities, I’m saying DON”T do it, just stop whining about it if you do.
The rural areas of Oz have been depopulating since WWII so imagine if the unemployable huddled masses on the outskirts of the SydMelb megacity were to go inland. No jobs, no ‘facilities’, no skools. And why/how would there be any of those with no population.
Chicken or egg? Not really the chook is now at Steggles, (viz. aforementioned urbanoids) in its climate controlled, apartment with feed & water on demand and the fruit & vegs don’t come from trees or the soil but from plastic tubs.
Actually suz, while I agree with all you’ve said, you forgot to mention another advantage of canned fruit (although the processing of metal for the can is a big environmental bummer), it’s that when the cannery is next door to the orchard, the fruit can ripen on the trees rather than change color in truck and warehouse, and there’s a whole lot of chemistry going on that makes tree-ripened fruit better for you. The chemicals in tree-ripened fruit are usually still there after canning, so in some senses, canned fruit is “fresher” than fruit from a typical supermarket.
Do you advocate irradiating food which also dramatically increases shelf life without the need for those evil cans?
Younger children in particular struggle with eating ‘whole fruit’ and as one might image, going to school with a knife to cut up an apple into manageable pieces is not really an option.
Which is why teachers assistants or parent helpers chop up the fruit that they bring for morning tea for the little ‘uns.
I agree with you Suz; it’s not canned fruit that is the problem (we have a nice list of pros to go with the cons now), it’s the marketing of canned (or rather, ‘tubbed’ fruit) that is the issue. The promotion of little tubs as somehow more convenient than a piece of fresh fruit is risible.
Younger children in particular struggle with eating ‘whole fruit’ and as one might image, going to school with a knife to cut up an apple into manageable pieces is not really an option.
The only whole fruit younger children (which would be five year olds, as we’re talking about school) might have problems with are apples. Most other fruit is soft enough and/or easily peelable. Dried apples (and other dried fruit) are another option, for variety.
But my main point isn’t that children should only ever eat fresh, whole fruit (and no, Dave, I wouldn’t choose irradiation over canning). My objection it to the marketing of fruit in small,”child-sized”, unrecyclable plastic tubs as though these should be a routine, everyday food. I think it’s insidious to imply that children won’t want and are unable to eat fruit except in this sanitised packaged mode. I think it’s insidious to link a processed food like this with healthiness.
you are right Suz, the whole thing is a friggin’ disgrace.
Why, my parents tied a piece of beef jerky to my wrist on a piece of string when I was four and let me wander by day naked for as long as I wanted over the dunes and along the beach, playing to my hearts content, having a chew of the jerky if I felt hungry before dinner time.
I knew to rinse it in the ocean if it got too salty from the sand castle building. And when I came back to camp there was a feast of fresh fish cooked over coals and coconut juice to wash it down.
If you can break a coconut on a rock or drill a hole in it with an oyster shell at age four, I am sure a five year old can manage sectioning a mere apple without the aid of a knife.
you have to wonder whether the gormless, helpless, cluelessness of so many parents is what is being projected on to poor defenceless children these days and to such ill effect both individually and socially.
Good post Suz. Cooked, canned fruit tastes like mush, also.