Cukes - better shrink-wrapped or naked?

Have you seen those triple packs of cukes in Superstore? Maybe only if you shop there. Well, let me tell you about them.

They come wrapped in plastic shrinkwrap, all three of them bundled together. It's a way better price than buying 3 single cucumbers (also separately wrapped in plastic). But the kicker with the triple pack is... the cucumbers inside the triple packaging area ALSO shrinkwrapped! What the heck??

Isn't that double packaging and incredibly bad for the environment? Yes it is! And Superstore got that memo and now those triple-packaged cucmbers are naked inside the packaging. Which is good.

Or is it. I just learned that cucumbers dehydrate three times as fast when they are naked. So the shrink-wrap actually serves a very useful function. A naked cucumber will last 2 days... a shrink-wrapped one will last 7 days. If we want cucumbers in February... then we should be grateful for shrink-wrapped produce... because they can be transported farther and still arrive in good shape.

Sooo... I'm actually kind of missing the individually shrink-wrapped cukes. You see... we bought at triple pack last week and ate one cucumber quite quickly in our salads. And then we ran out of greens for the salad and couldn't get to the store and... now those 2 naked cucumbers are off - going slimy and mouldy. Had they been individually shrink-wrapped, they might have lasted longer.

Now that we know that, however... we can take some steps to clothe our naked cucumbers. Put them in a big ziploc bag and squish out as much air as possible. 

Because... which is worse... some excess plastic wrap or... two wasted cucumber and all of the wasted water and gas and labour and... everything went into producing them and transporting them and storing them and selling them?

Now... having said that... there is no excuse for shrink wrapped bananas! Oh, the Brits...