Is this supermarkets capitalising on our laziness or is this great for health?

The Starts at 60 community loves their food… Especially their healthy food. And we’re wondering how you’ll respond to the processing of fruit and vegetables that is coming our way very very soon.

Pre-packaged veggie and fruit snacks are set to become a massive line in supermarkets it seems over the next year. We aren’t talking about vegetable chips or trail mix. We’re talking about pre-peeled, pre-cut vegetables like carrots, celery, tomatoes, apples, oranges, capsicum and cucumber.  Whenever I go overseas I am overwhelmed by how easy it is to buy packaged vegetables and cut up fruit for snacking.  I find myself buying them in glorious quantities rather than packets of chips or boxes of biscuits.  The convenience, and the way these things are packaged makes them look and feel really good.

It’s a trend that was kickstarted in Europe, is very large in America and according to the ABC  snacking vegetables available for purchase at supermarkets in European cities grew by 337% over the three years between 2009 and 2011.

We’ve had trouble finding healthy snacks in supermarkets for years, as anything pre-packaged has been packed with preservatives, sugars and fats that wipe it off the healthy index. So is this movement going to help combat Australia’s obesity crisis? Or is it another excuse for supermarkets to capitalise on our laziness and increase their prices on groceries… I never had trouble picking up an apple whole as a kid or munching on a carrot unpeeled and undiced or unprocessed into cut little shapes that make them highly marketable?

According to the ABC, Perfection Fresh a fruit and vegetable company has developed the snack lines for Woolworths.

Chanel White from Perfection Fresh told the ABC, “We’ve really learnt from that trend and we’ve really focused on baby cucumbers and tomatoes, as well as berry fruit, which are a great snacking line.”

Ms White said that Woolworths’ own research had indicated that shoppers were having trouble finding healthy snacks. They (Nutrition Australia) set requirements for portion size, for sugar control and for carbohydrates.”

The guidelines suggest that men should eat at least six vegetable serves a day and women should eat five.

But, what do you think about it all? Is this a great initiative? Or is it another way to make basic groceries more expensive? Tell us in the comments below…