Grapples – The Flavored Apples

Every time I go food shopping I always find the most ridiculous products.  Today I found grape and bubble gum flavored apples.  Yep, your eyes didn’t play a trick: grape and bubble gum flavored apples.  When I first saw this product I thought of Snow White and the Evil Witch.

The Idea Behind Flavored Apples

“Why choose only one flavor of fruit when there can be many flavors, it’s more fun this way”, the company claims. Seriously, how bored or greedy does one have to be to come up with the idea of a  flavored fruit? And how exactly do you get a fruit to taste like something totally different?

It all started with grape flavored apples, which they called a “grapple”, so I went to the producer’s website to see exactly how these are made.  But after doing some research my question still hasn’t been answered, as I only found very little explanation of the process:

This Patented Process is complex and the ingredient mix primarily includes concentrated grape flavor and pure water (USPP #7,824,723). All ingredients are USDA and FDA approved and the process has been licensed by the Washington State Department of Agriculture.

There is nothing but flavor being infused into the apple. A relaxing bathing process prepares our apples for you or your kids.

A Relaxing Bathing Process? 

Is it just me or does it sound kind of creepy? I closed my eyes and saw apples taking a bubble bath and rubbing each other’s backs. And I’m not quite sure where the back and front of an apple is.

As this company started to become pretty successful selling people the “good for you” and “fun” aspects, another one decided to start making flavored apples as well and now they come in a variety of different flavors.  But still there is no real explanation of how these apples are made. The second company writes this in the FAQs part of their site:

Question – Are the flavors really all natural? How can a flavor like Bubble Gum be “natural”?

Answer – The flavors we use are really vegetarian and all natural.  We know from experience that sometimes companies claim that their flavors are natural but actually have small amounts of non-vegetarian or artificial ingredients.  We say what we mean and mean what we say.

A flavor like Bubble Gum comes from a careful mix of dozens of natural flavor notes.  It seems crazy to us, too.

Well, I still don’t know how they are made, but this at least it makes perfect sense to me: if its sounds crazy and the company admits it, then it’s definitely crazy and I don’t recommend you trying it!

So How Does The Flavored Apple Taste?

Being the nosy guinea pig I am, I bought them. With bubble gum flavor. They look like regular apples when you cut into them, but taste just like promised. I only took one bite because bubble gum fruit is not something I enjoy or would consider a food choice.

The price tag of these apples is 2 for 5 dollars. Just so you know, you can buy one pound of organic apples for $2.99.

Are we seriously becoming that numb to real food taste that we need to flavor our fruit?

Picture © lovingfit.com.