Fizzy Fruit a fresh concept

Better-for-you snacking has come down to this: fresh fruit all but guaranteed to make kids belch.

It’s Fizzy Fruit – whole grapes or slices of apples or pineapples carbonated in a secret process with the same carbon dioxide that’s in soft drinks but without added sugar.

At a time of resolutions to eat better and calls for healthier snacks for kids, two powerhouses of food retailing, Wal-Mart and 7-Eleven, just began selling Fizzy Fruit in some stores in the Southeast and Southwest. Disney thinks enough of the product that it plans a March promotion for Fizzy Fruit cups tied to its upcoming film “Meet the Robinsons.”

The fruit is raising eyebrows as one of the more unusual – if not provocative – food items in stores.

Food scientist Steven Witherly predicts kids may like it so much that overall fruit consumption actually could rise. But Witherly, author of the upcoming book “Why Humans Like Junk Food,” warns, “The consumption of nonfizzed fruit may decrease.”

One nutritionist is concerned. “Will this get kids used to eating fruit in an unnatural form and deter them from eating it in a natural form?” asks Kelly Brownell, director of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders. “It’s sad that we’ve come to this state of affairs.”

But Fizzy Fruit executives think they’ve created a genre that will improve kids’ diets and even change the way they view fruit.

“If we could get kids eating Fizzy Fruit instead of candy, that would make a lot of parents happy,” says Jeff Mason, president of Fizzy Fruit and former managing director of a Coca-Cola unit.

Mason says Fizzy Fruit will be sold coast-to-coast by spring. It’s already sold in dozens of school cafeterias as part of the lunches.