Many of us have been flirted with by fruit; perhaps it can’t help being fruity, following the principles of nominative determinism. ‘PLEASE DON’T SQUEEZE ME TILL I’M YOURS’ blushing peaches on market stalls used to beg, lest we bruise them with our greedy paws. ‘UNZIP A BANANA’ leered a television commercial, so typical of the licentious 1960s. As if knowing that vegetables can never be as sexy, fungi could only fight back with the highly uninspired ‘MAKE ROOM FOR THE MUSHROOMS’ slogan of the 1980s – a limp retort at best.
What they all had in common was the anthropomorphisation of food. It seemed like a bit of fun at first. But then Nanny State put herself firmly between you and your foodstuffs and a scolding tone replaced the bit of banter about not getting many of those to the pound. It started with fruit juice sternly advising us that it was one of our NHS-mandated ‘5 A Day’; don’t just think you can drink the whole carton and fill up on bonbons! Then the makers of sugary cereals and savoury snacks started advising us that they were only to be ‘enjoyed’ as part of a balanced diet.
Things were getting boring – and then came the rise of ‘wackaging.’ A portmanteau of ‘wacky’ and ‘packaging’ the word was coined by Rebecca Nicolson in 2011 to describe the retail trend whereby anything from cleaning products to banking apps appear to address the putative consumer directly in a conversational manner. But mainly – and this could be traced all the way back to Alice and her EAT ME and DRINK ME treats – it was used by eatables and drinkables.
These might be as basic as ‘Keep me in the fridge’ or ‘Wash me thoroughly before consuming’ – no one objects to helpful suggestions like these. But the rot set in with Innocent Drinks; the self-righteous smoothie line founded by a group of Cambridge graduates in 1999. It was a harbinger of the hideous century to come, in which we have had our rights systemically removed by the state while being babied by it in the hope we won’t notice. ‘WORLD WAR TWEE’ was the headline for Gareth Roberts’ Spectator cover story, the hilarious but horrifying illustration for which had a Hello Kitty-shaped mushroom cloud rising up grinning inanely over a giant Paddington Bear looking strangely sinister as he stalked along a deserted post-apocalypse street, still clutching the inevitable jar of marmalade, tiny fighter planes failing to halt his onward march.
Innocent smoothies were the most passive-aggressive product ever, both coy and bossy, like a girlfriend who doesn’t really rate you; ‘Keep Me Cold So I Stay Tasty’, ‘Shake Me Before Opening, Not After’, ‘Stop Looking At My Bottom.’ As they got more personal and flirtatious, one wouldn’t have been surprised to read ‘If You Don’t Know What’s Wrong, I’m Not Going To Tell You.’ Lucie Bright, Innocent’s copywriter, told the Guardian: ‘It wasn’t a conscious decision designed to differentiate us from anyone else. We’ve always talked to everyone in the same way we talk to our friends, but with fewer swear words. It’s how we started off, and we saw no reason to change as we got bigger.’ Innocent weren’t quite as nice as they sounded; indeed, they could be quite nasty. In 2021, they made a big thing of ‘unfollowing’ a 75-year-old feminist campaigner on the then-Twitter, after being told to do so by a transvestite with ten followers; ‘The other day we unfollowed a Twitter account because content on their feed about trans people wasn’t in line with our values of inclusivity and respect,’ they lisped sadly. But they soon cheered up after selling 90 per cent of their shares to Coca-Cola.
Après Innocent, a deluge of delicacies jostled to make us see the error of our ways. RxBar wrappers bragged that they had fashioned their protein bars by excluding anything that they considered unsuitable for us; get down, bad dog – not for you! ‘No BS’ they barked beneath the list of ingredients, but regrettably in 2022 the brand did receive a Proposition 65 Notice from the State of California regarding trace levels of lead that could potentially lead to ‘birth defect and reproductive harm’ from the consumption of its products’. The vegan milk Oatly speaks more in sorrow than in anger, at one point launching the ‘Parent Your Parents’ campaign, the aim of which was to raise an army of tiny tyrants who would pester their poor ma and pa into giving up the gold-top for their own good.
But it is with Tony’s Chocolonely that the full ridiculousness of being lectured by confectionary is demonstrated. The bar was the baby of the Dutch television journalist Teun van de Keuken, who grew frustrated after years of attempting to draw attention to child exploitation, sometimes amounting to slavery, in the chocolate industry. In 2005, he had the brainwave of creating a chocolate bar to do the talking. It’s without doubt an admirable aim, but rather self-dramatising. ‘Chocolonely’ because poor old Teun (‘Tony’) felt like he was the only man in the sweetie racket keen on abolishing slavery. As with a lot of get-me maverick types, Tone is nowhere near as pure as he painted himself, being involved in a brief hazelnut-harvesting scandal involving Turkish under-10s and is not on the Slave Free Chocolate Organization’s list of ethical suppliers. Still, inside the wrapper of this outrageously over-priced cocoa-based tooth-rot can be found a passionate missive thanking you for being part of the fight to end child slavery. It’s all a bit Greta Thunberg-gy for my liking; look at me, saving the world! I can’t help but think of the heroic things throughout history that people who were not slaves did to stop slavery – including the men of the Royal Navy – out of everything from Christianity to plain decency. Now, heroism is displayed by shoving some chocolate down your gob.
Innocent smoothies were both coy and bossy, like a girlfriend who doesn’t really rate you
Counterintuitively, it makes me nostalgic for the old Yorkie bar campaign with its ‘It’s Not For Girls’ slogan which made me feel like a rebel every time I purchased one of the delightful raisin and biscuit versions. Of course, fauxminism was going to get in on the act, and now ‘Maltesers is proud to introduce the Sisterhood Code – a celebration of the subtle, instinctive, and often hilarious ways women support each other every day. Through unspoken looks, gestures, and shared laughs, women connect and navigate life together without needing words. Discover the Sisterhood Code and join us in appreciating the connections that happen all around us.’ Once more – will confectionary please stop lecturing me? It’s not much to ask, surely.
If I sound particularly bitter, it’s because the last thing I ate was a handful of Co-op pitted prunes which not only swanked ‘YES – I’M HEALTHY’ on the front of the bag, but on the reverse repeated the boast again, adding ‘Enjoy me as part of your balanced, varied diet and healthy lifestyle.’ Most people who eat prunes are, let’s face it, likely to be old, ill or constipated, or like me, all three. A bit of straight talk/sympathy mightn’t go amiss in place of the pom-pom waving; ‘Ageing, eh? No place for sissies! Sucks though, doesn’t it? Never mind – soldier on’. Perhaps we could branch out with these targeted truths: ‘Ginsters again? You’ve given up, haven’t you? How much do you weigh now?’ and ‘Pot Noodle? No girlfriend? Never mind, mate – they’re not worth it.’ In the absence of the halcyon days when every fruit stall was a horny horn of concupiscent Cornucopia, there’s some frank food talk I could appreciate.
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