Why do the Chinese paint apples? A mysterious video reveals why.
Nature generously colors fruits and vegetables to evoke a desire to eat them. The brain signals the body to increase appetite when the eyes gaze at the colorful peel of a ripe apple, a firm orange, a juicy tomato, and a bright green cucumber. It's hard to resist this feeling in a supermarket, when display cases filled with crates of ripe fruits and vegetables greet shoppers as soon as they enter. Your hand instinctively reaches for the enticing fruit, and, in anticipation of a delicious and healthy meal, you pick up a whole basket of apples and fragrant strawberries. What bad or dangerous things could lurk in ripe red berries and fruits?
The beauty industry at the service of food commerce
It turns out that pesticides and genetic engineering aren't the only tools of modern marketing. Fruits and vegetables can be made more beautiful not only through complex, years-long breeding processes, the development of new varieties, and expensive genetic modification, but also by using the good old, inexpensive method of hand-dyeing.
In China, as in many other countries that export fruits and vegetables, apples are often literally dyed.
To prevent fruit from spoiling during long transportation, it is picked from the branches unripe: this explains why seemingly ripe apples often lack aroma and flavor. Marketers know that the appearance of fruit itself is an appetite stimulant, so they strive to make it as appealing as possible. To achieve this, producers use a special wax antiseptic spray with coloring pigments, which they apply to the apples on the conveyor belt. This achieves several goals:
- protection of fruits from rotting during storage and transportation;
- maintaining the marketable appearance and elasticity of the peel for a long time;
- attractive, appetizing appearance of fruits.
Having traveled thousands of kilometers and ended up on supermarket shelves, apples of perfect shape and appearance remain plump, juicy, and bright, and to the average consumer, they look as fresh as if they were just picked from the tree.
Processed apples can retain their original appearance for a long time thanks to their thin, waxy, glossy skin.
To minimize damage to health, experts recommend using one of the following methods before eating fruit:
- peel an apple with a knife;
- wash the apple thoroughly under running water with soda;
- Use special detergents for fruits and vegetables that can be washed off completely with water.
Brightly colored fruits may not necessarily be tinted with artificial pigments, but if a ripe apple without a single scratch or bruise has a dull flavor and aroma, this should be a warning sign.
Fake news to refute fake news. Where's the truth?
"Exposé" videos from China are surfacing online, showing viewers a conveyor belt of pale apples being hand-painted and transformed into vibrant, appetizing apples. Comments quickly reveal that the footage depicts nothing more than a dessert, given a realistic appearance by artistically painting a chocolate apple-shaped figurine. Numerous "exposé" articles claim that what viewers thought was fruit coloring in China is a fake: in reality, the Celestial Empire merely masterfully crafts desserts—spectacular white chocolate candies.
A video showing the process of making apple-shaped desserts does not exclude the possibility that natural fruits and vegetables, including red apples, are artificially colored.
In pursuit of profit, producers care least about the health and safety of consumers, so the best shopping strategy for fruit lovers is to buy seasonal fruits and not rely too much on the flawless appearance of imported apples.
