SkyMall's latest invention: Fruit by the vial

On my flight to England, I couldn't help but peruse every airline's unfailingly amusing piece of literature: the SkyMall catalog. For the uninitiated, SkyMall displays a great collection of the newest, flashiest, most overpriced and unnecessary products - electronic tie racks, fake rock lawn ornaments, space-age head massage machines, and so on. This most recent issue featured a full-page spread on a new line of food-like products. FruitAsia, the most prominently displayed variety, is apparently "the original fruit and vegetable shot, offering an exciting new way to get the goodness of fruits and vegetables your body needs each day." The product (which is apparently "mouth-watering") is sold by the 3-ounce vial, and it claims that the producers have managed to compress 5 servings of fruits and vegetables into each shot. Also featured are revelatory products like Proasis, the "original all-natural protein shot," PediaGro, a protein shot for toddlers and young children, and Protein gem, which is essentially a protein-injected Jell-o cup. (You can read about all eight products on SkyMall's online catalog.)

I wondered, since when is it a pain to eat fruits and vegetables? And who's so deprived of protein that they have to resort to getting it from a vial? The FruitAsia series vividly illustrates our collective impatience for healthy eating, and encourages us to eat laboratory-produced Franken-foodstuff in order to spare ourselves the trouble of eating a balanced, nutritious diet.