#Orangegate? Whole Foods' pre-peeled oranges spark Twitter backlash

Whole Foods prides itself as a grocery store that seeks "the finest natural and organic foods available," so one consumer was a little surprised when she stumbled upon peeled oranges stored in plastic and marketed as fresh produce.

Nathalie Gordon took a picture on Thursday and tweeted it out with the sarcastic message, “If only nature would find a way to cover these oranges so we didn’t need to waste so much plastic on them.”

Twitter users were quick to weigh in with the hashtag #orangegate. Gordon's tweet has been retweeted more than 89,000 times, which was significant enough for Whole Foods to issue an apology.

"Definitely our mistake. These have been pulled. We hear you, and we will leave them in their natural packaging: the peel," the store tweeted Thursday.

The chain also poked fun at itself with a second tweet.

“A lot of our customers love the convenience of our cut produce offerings, but this was a simple case where a handful of stores experimented with a seasonal product spotlight that wasn’t fully thought through,” a company spokesperson said in a separate statement given to the Huffington Post. “We’re glad some customers pointed it out so we could take a closer look.”

(H/t PIX11)

Cox Media Group