Dive Brief:

• The U.S. Department of Agriculture has launched a marketing campaign in Japan aimed at getting foodservice companies and restaurants there to use more American-grown fruit.
• The centerpiece of the  "Enjoy Fruits!" campaign is a brochure that promotes fruit consumption as healthy and essential to "maintaining beauty."
• The USDA initiative comes as fruit consumption continues a decades-long decline in Japan.

Dive Insight:

As government expenditures go, the "Enjoy Fruits!" campaign is no doubt a bargain. We haven't seen any cost estimates from USDA, but it doesn't seem like it would take millions of dollars to create a brochure. Still, we have to question the wisdom of spending any taxpayer money on this effort. 

Fruit eating in Japan is a remarkably different experience than it is in the United States. The Japanese look for perfection in fruit. Exquisite pieces are often given as gifts. And the eating of fruit tends to be done after a meal -- a perfect combination of dessert and digestive aid.

As Japan's farming population has dwindled, the cost of fruit in Japan has risen. And thus the consumption of fruit has declined. In fact it's been declining for some 40 years! And the USDA has been trying to increase American fruit sales there for at least half as long.

But the problem isn't marketing. Culture and taste are the problem. The sale of higher-end fruits such as melons and strawberries, grown locally, are still strong in Japan. But Japan has never developed a taste for the sort of mass-produced fruits that Americans will eat (consider if you will the differences in taste between a red delicious apple from Washington State and a Fuji apple imported from Japan.) There are some exceptions -- U.S. grapefruit and some other citrus varieties do pretty well in Japan. 

It's also worth noting that all discussions about fruit imports and exports involving Japan take place in the shadow of years worth of protectionism and phytosanitary concerns.

But perhaps the thing that annoys us the most about USDA's efforts in Japan is the lack of self-awareness it implies. Seriously, is there anything funnier than the idea of Americans lecturing the Japanese on how to eat healthily? No one eats better than the Japanese!