A perfect looking peel is no guarantee of a better fruit. A new campaign, launched by Plátano de Canarias in partnership with the seal Alimentos de España and the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, is inviting us to think about fruit purchasing based on appearance.
The campaign aims to prevent the unconscious act of "judging with your eyes" and calls on consumers to rate fruit at the points of sale not so much for its appearance, but for its properties and what it has inside, which is, after all, what they will eat.
"Not only people are enslaved by beauty standards. Fruits and vegetables are also subject to the dictatorship of aesthetic precepts. Items with blemishes, an imperfect shape, rough skin or spots are often discarded for the simple fact that they are not perfect to the eye. And in that sense, 2022 is proving to be a particularly challenging year for the banana production in the Canary Islands, after the consequences of the volcano on La Palma, which has left part of the production more affected than usual by purely aesthetic damages caused by the ash," says Asprocan.
"The adherence to marketing standards that only take into account the appearance of the peel, which ends up in the trash in most cases, has increasingly led producers to strive to meet distribution requirements unbecoming of traditional quality agriculture. This penalizes products such as bananas from the Canary Islands, which stand out for the properties of what's inside the peel, and goes against social and environmental sustainability."
In the words of Sergio Cáceres, manager and marketing director of Plátano de Canarias, "our bananas often have a heterogeneous appearance, but this does not detract from their flavor and quality. In a year in which much of the production has been affected by the volcano eruption, it seemed important and necessary to highlight this aesthetic aspect of bananas, as their apparently imperfect skin is actually the best possible packaging, because it protects the most important part: the inside."
The campaign has the support of the Government of Spain. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food is committed to collaborate with the banana sector of the Canary Islands, as this is the main engine of social and economic activity on the island of La Palma, and in the medium and long term, the sector will remain affected by the consequences of last September's volcanic eruption.
For more information:
Asprocan
Tel.: +34 922 53 51 42
asprocan@platanodecanarias.es
https://platanodecanarias.es