Why cucumbers have found space in women’s handbags

Sometime back, Market Talk revealed what’s in a woman’s handbag. PHOTO| FILE| NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • A fortnight ago, the reader in question was in a matatu when a woman unleashed a huge cucumber from the depths of her handbag and started eating it.
  • The ‘doubting Thomas’ quickly turned into a paparazzi and sent me a photographic evidence validating the findings.
  • According to the findings, the cucumber is popular in handbags for its multipurpose uses. One is that it is a low-calorie snack, making it a perfect weight-loss diet food.

Sometime back, Market Talk revealed what’s in a woman’s handbag.

While the findings of the study were received well by the men, some women disagreed.

One reader of the article gave me permission to check her handbag to confirm that she didn’t have any of the ‘shocking things’ the survey revealed women carry.

The primary objective of the study was to identify brands found in handbags as an insight to marketing to women but like any good study, the findings offered much more insights than was initially intended. The survey was trying to prove the theory that you can find anything in a handbag apart from the kitchen sink, but we got surprises.

The reader in question ate a humble pie after seeing what she had referred to as ridiculous in another woman’s handbag. Cucumbers! That’s what she was arguing about despite the study showing that cucumbers were found in slightly above five per cent of the bags sampled.

CUCUMBER UNLEASHED

A fortnight ago, the reader in question was in a matatu when a woman unleashed a huge cucumber from the depths of her handbag and started eating it.

The ‘doubting Thomas’ quickly turned into a paparazzi and sent me a photographic evidence validating the findings.

According to the findings, the cucumber is popular in handbags for its multipurpose uses. One is that it is a low-calorie snack, making it a perfect weight-loss diet food.

When I shared the findings with my trainer from Denmark, she joked that if this study was done in her country instead of cucumbers, we would find bread because that is the most popular snack in Copenhagen.

Cucumber is preferred because of its cosmetic purposes. After a long night if your eyes are red, all you need is to put a slice on your eyes. For this reason, you are twice more likely to find a cucumber in a smoker’s handbag than in that of a non-smoker.

This would also mean that smokers are more open to non-convectional solutions than the general population and they should therefore be targeted with new products for quicker market acceptance.

The cucumber is also used as an ingredient in home-made cellulite remover. The minerals in a cucumber make its juice good for the hair.  Its mild bleaching properties make it a good solution for a tan-free skin.

They are many other purposes which some women summarised as it being a ‘friend.’

Some Google results confirmed what ladies were talking about. There is a recent saying that, “if you can’t Google it then it’s not a question.”

One blog had listed endless uses of a cucumber in an article titled, “Why the cucumber should be your best friend” and another one on how it can change your life.

The articles listed the many nutritional benefits of cucumbers especially the Vitamin B1, B5 and B7 which makes it a perfect anxiety cure. It is also a hangover cure due to the hydrating ability and electrolytes that help fight toxins resulting from excess alcohol intake in addition to clearing bad breath.

The cucumber is also a stain remover on stainless steel items, tools and countertops due to its chemical components. It is also an emergency shoe polish when there are no shoe shiners in the vicinity.

All these and many other uses make the cucumber the undisputed vegetables king of the handbag.

As a company, if your brand has not found space in a woman’s handbag, you could learn something from the cucumber. The few challenges expressed include the perishability and lack of specific sizes during dry seasons. With ongoing rain season both the cucumber users and farmers should be smiling.

This article was first published in the Business Daily.