1.5 Four trends experienced by consumers

2.3 It’s time for fruit to get up on stage and perform

Fruit is at risk of being lost and forgotten in today’s competitive food landscape. The industry and the worlds’ fruit and veg departments need to find a way for fruit to play more and bigger roles at different meal occasions – not just breakfast, lunch & dinner. Snacks and light-meal culture vary a lot between markets. But they have one thing in common: fruit is losing ground to unhealthy processed snacks. The potential is huge for the industry and for customers to find new roles for fruit to play. Fruit needs to be there and be relevant and accessible as a snack, as we argue in Section 4.2, but it also needs to be part of other meals in consumers’ minds, hearts and stomachs.

Is fruit the new salad?

Do people who eat a lot of fruit do anything differently than others? It would seem so. When examining which elements in the survey data correlate with each other, we came across one interrelationship between responses to three different survey questions which were important: people who eat a lot of fruit are likely to be the same people as those who eat fruit because it tastes good – and also the same as those who eat fruit cut into pieces.

It should perhaps come as no surprise that people who cut their fruit enjoy it more and therefore eat more of it. Who would expect people to eat a whole un-cut cucumber and appreciate the experience as much having cucumber sticks, or a salad? And who would deny that the sensation of indulging in a plate of finely cut pieces of apple is different from taking bites of a whole apple? We dare say that newly cut fresh fruit both looks better, is often more fragrant, and that its texture definitely feels different.

This experience seems to vary a little among the countries. While France and Germany are more reluctant to pre-cut fruit and vegetables, it is more common in the Netherlands and Denmark. One interpretation is that even a cut carrot or pear may seem like processed food, something considered less attractive in Germany, for example. This should not make the industry give up on convenience purchases, however. Fruit at the entrance to the store or at the cashier, perhaps packed, should also be available within arms-length for the consumer, whether cut or not.

Inspire consumers to cut their apples

How can we get more fruit salad to the people? One path is to inspire more people to spend the extra minutes it takes to cut fruit and make fruit salads at home. If more people can be encouraged to try to eat fruit in new forms and shapes, chances are that many will discover that they like it more. While not everyone will become a big fruit consumer by starting to cut their fruit into pieces before eating it (or having family members do it for them), some will.

High fruit consumption Buying because it tastes good

Eating fruit out in pieces

Figure 10. Overlap between respondents who eat a lot of fruit (green), who choose to buy fruit because it tastes good (orange), and who ate fruit cut into pieces over the last week.

Fruit salad bars – the new juice bars?

Another path is to make pre-cut fruit and mixed fruit salads easily available wherever people might be in need of a snack. One example of how this can be done can be seen in China, where ‘fruit bars’ have in recent years popped up in shopping centres and along shopping streets. Customers are offered the chance to pick and mix different kinds of pre-cut fruit – as well as small tomatoes and sometimes diced cucumber – for which they pay by weight. The concept is very similar to that of North-European candy stores, but with much healthier offerings. More on fruit snacking in Section 4.2.

2.4 What’s in a name – your fruit is my vegetable

Several discussions, in the fields of biology as well as law and policy-making, have received attention for categorising species in ways that many outsiders find absurd. Notable examples include banana being a berry in scientific terms (which strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries are not), and carrots and cucumbers being treated as a fruit in the European Union’s directive for jams.

Smoked watermelon – the culinary applications of fruit expands

Aside from scientific and political language quirks, we see category boundaries continuously being blurred and pushed also in the actual food world, by gourmet chefs as well as the big brands and home cooks. Tropical fruits are added to savoury dishes – think Mangoes in tacos – or added to BBQ dishes – such as grilled pineapple. All over the food landscape products are being introduced in new situations. Recent innovative uses of fruit include smoked watermelon ham and banana peel bacon, where the use of fresh produce is being expanded to new situations and tastes.

Grapes are my favourite berries – or is it fruit?

How about the everyday consumption of fruit and vegetables? It turns out that it is not only scientists and policy-makers who are making the distinctions between fruits, vegetables, and berries confusing – consumers are also contributing to blurring the boundaries between fresh produce categories. When we asked survey respondents to separately list their favourite fruits, berries, and vegetables, several products show up in more than one of these categories – in other words, what is a fruit to one person is a vegetable or a berry to someone else. Some respondents even expressed their own ambiguity, for example by giving the answer to their favourite berry as: ”grapes (if that’s a berry)”.

Vegetable

Avocado

Rhubarb Fruit

Grape

Cherry

Strawberry Berry

Figure 11. Vegetables, fruits, and berries for which there is notable disagreement about classification.

Being aware of the disagreements around which category certain products belong to may have relevance for product placement in stores, not least to help consumers find the products they are looking for. Perhaps some consumers among the 40% for whom avocado is a fruit buy less of it because they cannot find it among other fruits, although it is available in the vegetable aisle.

Intentionally blurring boundaries between greens and other food categories can also help to increase fruit and vegetable consumption. Behavioural researcher and consultant Nurit Nobel suggests that to “focus on putting products close to other categories, meet the consumers where they are and where they make their purchase decision in the store. For example, a supermarket chain put beans in the taco aisle to nudge people to make a vegetarian choice instead of buying meat.” This ties in with making the choice of fruit and vegetables more timely, focusing on finding ways to promote fresh produce where consumers are making their purchasing decisions in-store. Give consumers an idea of what vegetables can be used for, how they can complement other products, or be used as a substitute.

4 Encyclopaedia Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/science/berry-plant-reproductive-body 5 Council Directive 2001/113/EC of 20 December 2001 relating to fruit jams, jellies and marmalades and sweetened chestnut purée intended for human consumption, Annex III: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A02001L0113-20131118