Five-year-old spots 'mysterious' letters printed on a blueberry
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An eagle-eyed five-year-old shopper spotted a 'mysterious' discovery in the fruit aisle when he went along with his dad on their weekly supermarket trip.
The child's father, Callum, later took to social media to share his son's discovery, which has baffled hundreds of fellow shoppers.
Callum and his son, who are both believed to be from the UK, were out on their weekly grocery run when the five-year-old suddenly spotted something strange in a pack of blueberries in the fruit aisle.
Apparently, one of the berries had a "mysterious code" made up of a combination of numbers and letters printed on it. The kid showed the unusual find to his dad, who later shared it on a popular Facebook group.
Needless to say, hundreds of fellow shoppers in the group were left baffled and confused as well, trying to figure out what the tiny multi-digit numbers and letters printed on the piece of blueberry meant.
A five-year-old found a 'mysterious' code printed on a blueberry. Credit: Facebook.
Several users commented on Callum's post, with each one trying to guess what the 'mysterious' code on the blueberry meant as well as why it was written on the fruit.
Meanwhile, some 'conspiracy theorists' also flooded the thread, with one user even saying that the printed code was a signal that the blueberry was 'micro-chipped' or held 'secret' government information.
Though, we are not actually sure if they are simply joking or are actually serious - let's hope it was the former…
Callum later found out the explanation for the printed code on the blueberry, which was not actually 'mysterious' or dangerous at all.
One woman wrote in the comments: "They laser print the fruit boxes, it's gone through a little hole onto the blueberry instead of the box!"
"Not harmful though," she added. "It's done with air compression or something so it's delicate."
Callum then inspected the box the blueberry was found in and discovered that the woman was correct in her observation. "The side of the carton was laser engraved with the matching letters…" he said.
"I'm impressed that it etched so neatly on the blueberry without harming it at all."
"On the side of the plastic punnet, there are the same letters and numbers. It seems they do this with a CO2 etching device," he continued. "This must have been done after the fruit was packed. This one blueberry was also etched through the plastic."
"CO2 etching seems to be gentle enough to not harm the surface of the blueberry. So I've learned something new! Hope you have too."
Using lasers to label fruits and fruit packaging has been used for some years now.
The technology uses a carbon dioxide laser to permanently etch all the necessary information to each piece of fruit, eliminating the problem of stickers falling off in distribution, or stores or customers swapping stickers between differently priced items.
What are your thoughts, folks? Do you like this laser-labelling system, or do you prefer the classic fruit stickers instead?
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