The Fizzy Fruit company will bring their carbon-dioxide-injected fruits to retail outlets this month, says the Portland Business Journal. The gassy fruits already have a following in 50 school districts throughout the U.S., but most adult shoppers don't know about them.
The carbon dioxide boost makes the fruit sweeter and thus more appealing to kids who want a sugar fix. I'm always of two minds about these kinds of technologies. They create a healthy and appealing snack food, but they also train the eaters to prefer the doctored version. Will kids turn away from real oranges because they like the CO2 tampering?
And of course this raises another question: Isn't this just fixing a problem at the end of a production line? If American supermarkets focused on local, in-season, picked-when-ripe produce, don't you think the fruit would be sweet enough?
