Pre-peeled and repackaged bananas, offered by a grocery store that claims to be the “common sense” alternative to its competitors, recently sparked controversy when it offered the aforementioned items to its customers. According to Time , the German-owned, Austria-based supermarket Billa began offering the products to consumers, that is, until everyone on the planet decided the company had lost its collective mind.
Since taking the skin off the fruit is simply too daunting for some people to handle, Billa began selling pre-peeled bananas, stripped of its natural packaging and crammed inside plastic. Although the idea of purchasing the naked food might appeal to some, most people were quite upset with the product, so much so that they took their anger and irritation online.
CBC reports that the backlash over Billa’s pre-peeled bananas was so great that the company was forced to deactivate its Facebook page for the time being. Apparently, its legion of customers weren’t too thrilled about the picture of the pre-peeled, repackaged bananas it posted on the social media website, prompting many to leave snarky and ill-tempered comments.
“Has this ever happened to you? You want to enjoy a delicious banana. But who has the time for all that unpeeling? After struggling with the peel for a full hour, you sigh and decide to just give up,” Facebook user William Huston wrote.
Billa, meanwhile, is still trying to recover from the pre-peeled banana controversy. The company has since removed the item from store shelves and openly admitted that the product was a “one-off” mistake. According to the supermarket chain, this sort of thing won’t happen again.
“If there is an easy to open ready packed food it’s the banana — peeling it only to pack it in environmentally unfriendly plastic is just madness,” a Greenpeace spokesperson explained to the Austrian Times .
What do you think about the supermarket chain offering its customers pre-peeled bananas?