Sticker shock
SOLVE ONE problem, create a bigger one. It's a familiar cycle, and it's hitting the fruit bowl.
The fruit bowl has enough problems, corrupted as it is by those little stickers that are hard to remove from peaches, apples, and plums. The vegetable bin has also been invaded by stubborn ''PLU" (price look-up) codes, designed to provide a quick read at the supermarket cash register and save consumers time -- never mind that they lose the minutes gained when they stand in the kitchen trying to pick labels off their tomatoes.
So now the produce industry -- which also uses the codes to track sales and record where America's food originates -- is testing a replacement for the unpopular sticker. But the ''improvement" is likely to meet with even louder groans in the produce aisles, because it permanently tattoos the information on the food with a laser.
The process, being marketed by Durand-Wayland, Inc. of LaGrange, Ga., was nine years in the making and uses a high-speed beam of light to imprint the price code and other information right into the skin of the fruit or vegetable.
The imprint is said to be nontoxic, and it certainly eliminates the sticker aggravation, but a person can't help wishing it away, if only because it looks ridiculous. Buying a green pepper imprinted with the words ''green pepper" above the price code might seem like an Andy Warhol creation, or condescending assistance from the store management.
One can picture a short-fused consumer accosting the produce clerk: ''You think I can't tell a green one from a red one, pal? You think I just fell off the t-u-r-n-i-p truck?"
Basically, a person wants fruits and vegetables to look as though they were just picked, even though they most likely traveled miles to get to the store. It's still possible to maintain a bit of the fiction once the sticker is removed -- providing the skin blemish where the label was isn't too big. But the tattoo keeps shouting ''agribusiness assembly line" until it's eaten or peeled.
The tattoo may eventually shout advertising slogans, too, given that marketers see every blank space as a potential commercial. Cantaloupes might one day come branded with promotions for a basketball team, while onions advertise a tear-jerker of a movie.
The whole thing could make consumers wish they hadn't griped about the stickers -- or responded so enthusiastically to the proliferating varieties of apples, pears, and cucumbers, which are labeled, in part, to make the cashier's job easier.
The problem is that the food industry has grown so big -- or maybe it's that the world has grown quite small. Either way, a tattooed lemon is a tattooed lemon, and maybe the best commentary on a depressing idea.
