A full apple? This child wants you to fail. (Photo by Sean Dreilinger.)
You’re busy. You live an active lifestyle. You’re constantly juggling multiple tasks, running between your high-powered workplace and a home-that-always-needs-to-be-cleaned. You’re reading this, where? On a treadmill? At a stoplight? While piloting a fighter jet? You are the ultimate have-it-all type — but having it all always comes at a price.
You don’t have time to eat a whole apple.
Who does? No one, that’s who. Whole apples can take minutes to eat in a world that only allots seconds. If you were to eat that apple, that whole apple, that means you can’t be doing something else that’s more important with that hand and that mouth. Want to write a thank-you note to your biggest client while putting a Band-Aid on your kid’s skinned knee? Can’t do that if you’re eating an apple for 10 to 20 minutes. Need to finalize the sweetheart deal for your new house on the coast? Good luck with a mouth full of apple pulp.
That’s why you, on-the-go consumer, will be furious to learn that Big Apple (the uber-powerful fruit lobby, not the city) is the one thing standing in the way of your enjoying a delicious apple while still maintaining your outrageously complex lifestyle.
After decades of research in labs filled with bubbling beakers and small models of apple molecules, science has completed the No. 1 task we presented to it: the creation of an apple that will never brown. Canada’s Okanagan Specialty Fruits has done the impossible. Cut it in half, leave it in the open air, walk away. No matter when you come back,* your apple will be as white as when you left it.
But Big Apple doesn’t want you to have that luxury. Big Apple says, no, successful community and business leader, you may not have this thing that you have always demanded. We will not let you.
The New York Times has the story:
[T]he U.S. Apple Association, which represents the American apple industry [Ed. — Big Apple!], opposes introduction of the product, as do some other industry organizations. They say the genetic engineering, while not dangerous, could undermine the fruit’s image as a healthy and natural food, the one that keeps the doctor away and is as American as, well, apple pie.
Big Apple doesn’t understand you. Big Apple doesn’t care about you. You know who cares about you, who wants to see you succeed? Okanagan’s Neal Carter.
Neal Carter, the founder and president of the company, which is based in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia, said the nonbrowning apples could boost industry sales, much as baby carrots did for carrot sales.
A whole apple is “for many people too big a commitment,” he said. “If you had a bowl of apples at a meeting, people wouldn’t take an apple out of the bowl. But if you had a plate of apple slices, everyone would take a slice.”
Yes. Yes, Mr. Carter. You get it. Picture it: You’re in a business meeting, you’re giving a presentation that will knock the socks off your company’s CEO, Mr. Big. You feel your blood sugar drop right as you get to the PowerPoint transition that will seal the deal. What are you going to do — put down the clicker, stop talking while you fumble with a huge bulky Fuji? No you will not, not if Neal Carter has his way. You will pick up a slice, consume it, and earn yourself a little reward known as executive vice president.
The real concern here isn’t that Big Apple might just get its way. The real concern is that Big Apple doesn’t understand America as well as does Neal Carter of Okanagan Specialty Fruits. The real concern is that the Arctic Apple (Cool! Crisp! White!) is what America demands — and that it’s America’s hypercomplex apple politics that prevent us from getting it.
Write your congressmember! Call the president! If we are to maintain our status as the greatest country in the history of the world, we must have an apple that will not brown as rapidly while sliced. We must not be forced by lobbyists and cronyism into eating entire apples like some 1930s-style layabout. It is up to you to take action on this critical issue.
I think you’ve got three minutes between yoga and your Starbucks run. I’ll just go ahead and pencil it in.
* Unless, you know, it rots or whatever.
