Are you eating one year old apples?

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If you are eating apples from the grocery store, like many people in the Western world, be aware.

You might think you are eating fresh. You might think you are nourishing your body with raw produce picked recently from the tree. But you would be mistaken.

Did you know that the produce found in the ‘fresh food’ section of a supermarket, is generally anything but fresh? 

In fact, the apples in a standard grocery store could be OVER A YEAR OLD, having been picked when they are slightly unripe, treated with a chemical called 1-methylcyclopropene (1-MCP), waxed, boxed, stacked and stored in a cold room for an average of 12 months ‘for your convenience’. 

I am not sure what is convenient about eating fresh fruit that is NOT FRESH, but maybe that’s just me. 

In fact, it’s such a standard phenomenon to those in the industry that year-old apples actually have a pet name – ‘birthday apples’. Can you believe it? 

So What Does This Mean?

When we are tucking into an apple or feeding them to our children, aside from dealing with fruit that has been chemically tampered with, we are also depriving our bodies (and those of our children) of the nutrients that an apple specifically provides.

Aside from dietary fiber and natural sugars, apples are a vital source of polyphenols – rich antioxidants that help our bodies in numerous ways, including fighting cancer. 

Yet antioxidant activity in apples declines after only three months of storage in the cold. After a year, the antioxidant content is near to zero. And that’s BEFORE we start looking at flavor and texture.

What To Do?

Buy fresh. Buy in season (US apples generally ripen between August and September). Buy from a local farmer. The less time between harvest and plate, the better. Why risk your health?

Where do you purchase your apples and fresh produce from? Let us know in the comments below.

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