Flavored Applesauce

Very recently, I was browsing the aisles of Walmart, looking for regular applesauce. When I approached said applesauce aisle, I found way more than just regular applesauce. There are so many different flavors of applesauce! There’s strawberry, mango, peach, blueberry and cinnamon.

To me, the different flavors of applesauce are branded incorrectly. What is the point of APPLEsauce if it doesn’t even taste like apples? I may be a little biased, as I am an applesauce lover and connoisseur, but I feel as though flavoring applesauce, which I would assume is meant to taste like apples, is defeating the purpose of it.

Before you tell me “maybe it’s because they’re made from apples,” I’d like to ask why they go through all the struggles of mashing up apples to make it if they’re just going to cover up the taste by masking it with artificial flavoring, when you can have tasty, natural tasting apple flavoring.

In my opinion, applesauce is perfectly fine the way it is. Flavoring applesauce is the best way to give it an identity crisis. Is it applesauce if it doesn’t taste like apples? What is it if it tastes like strawberries but isn’t exactly strawberries?

So you tell me: is flavored applesauce really applesauce?