Why do you have to pick organic fruits?
Why do people still sell and buy organic fruits when they are so expensive?
Why are fruits in supermarkets and street markets so cheap?
In fact, most of the fruits you buy on the market, whether imported from the mainland or shipped by air from foreign countries, are chemically ripened and soaked in medicine!
What are these things? Are you blind to them? The industry and businessmen want to keep you in the dark.
Kinetin (细胞激动素)
Enlargement agent watermelon
There are many fruits in the market, such as watermelon, which are particularly commonly grown with growth agents and sweeteners. The growth agent is also called Fufensu. It is one of the common dragon leaps, commonly found in fruits such as watermelon, kiwi, winter melon, grapes, peaches, pumpkins, etc. The growth agent can increase the weight of the fruit. The capacity is small but the fruits can grow and grow overnight.
At present, there is no scientific research to prove that growth enhancers are harmful to the human body. However, in order to achieve high yields and more harvests, some vegetable farmers often use excessive amounts of growth enhancers when spraying, causing fruits and vegetables to expand abnormally. At this time, the ripened fruits are 1 to 2 times larger than normal fruits and vegetables, and their shapes become more strange, such as tomatoes becoming pointed and watermelons cracking. Although the fruits and vegetables after using growth enhancers are larger, the taste is very light. Although there is no clear scientific proof that eating fruits and vegetables that have been overused with growth enhancers is harmful to the body, their nutritional value is definitely not as good as those that have been used normally with growth enhancers.
Cyclamate
Some people say that many fruits need to be added with cyclamate to ensure sweetness, such as watermelon, tangerine, grapefruit, orange, etc. Is this true? First of all, according to GB 2760-2014 "National Food Safety Standard for the Use of Food Additives" of the People's Republic of China, cyclamate cannot be added to fresh fruits, and the use of cyclamate in fresh fruits is illegal. In addition, applying or injecting cyclamate to fruits does not affect the sweetness of fruits. Cyclamate is highly water-soluble, and the skin of fruits such as oranges, grapefruits, and tangerines is thick and oily, so it is difficult for cyclamate to adhere and penetrate the surface; if it is sweetened by injection, the fruit needs to be injected in all directions, which will damage the cell wall of the fruit and accelerate the decay of the fruit. Therefore, injecting cyclamate into fruits is harmful and has no benefit, and vendors do not need to do so.
Fruit wax and preservatives
Fresh fruits including apples, sweet oranges, and lemons are specially processed with imazalil, thiabendazole, and wax (E904, E914).
Fruit wax and preservatives
Sulfur dioxide
The bananas we usually buy on the market are beautiful in color, but the taste and flavor are obviously "unripe". How is this done?
Fruit vendors said that bananas are not easy to preserve. Due to the long transportation distance, if ripe bananas are transported to the market, they will be ripe and black with plum blossom spots when they arrive at the market. Bananas are usually transported at 50% ripeness. They are ripened during transportation, and when they arrive at the market, they are golden and beautiful.
In fact, ripening bananas is very simple. It is to use ammonia or sulfur dioxide to ripen them. The skin of this kind of banana is tender yellow and beautiful, but the flesh is stiff and not sweet. Sulfur dioxide not only damages the human nervous system, but also affects liver and kidney function.
Ripening tomatoes - using ethephon
The most important point in the judgment criteria: whether it is pointed
Ripened tomatoes are more like peaches, usually with pointed tops, while tomatoes with sunken tops are naturally ripe and relatively safe.
The substance that ripens tomatoes is "ethephon" applied to the surface of tomatoes. Ethephon is a plant growth hormone. Because the ripening process of tomatoes itself is completed by ethylene in the body, artificial addition of ethylene can play a "ripening" role in the ripening of tomatoes.
In addition to the fact that the nutritional value of tomatoes picked too early is definitely not as high as that of ripe tomatoes, experts also say that ripened tomatoes may contain tomatine, which interferes with the central nervous system. Naturally ripened tomatoes have very low tomatine content, or even no tomatine at all.
Lychees soaked in hydrochloric acid solution
"Lychees soaked in hydrochloric acid solution" have become an open secret in this industry. Since lychees have a much stronger respiration than ordinary fruits, they will become "old and faded" not long after being picked.
After lychees are picked, "the color changes on the first day, the fragrance changes on the second day, the taste changes on the third day, and the color, fragrance and taste are gone on the fourth day." There is currently no good way to keep lychees fresh for a long time.
Therefore, the fruits that are 80% ripe are usually picked and directly placed in foam boxes with ice packs, and then transported to markets across the country. However, the skin of unripe lychees is green, which affects sales. At this time, vendors will soak or spray lychees with "fresh water" (made by adding a small amount of sulfuric acid or hydrochloric acid water) to make the lychees turn into a beautiful red.
Experts remind: Normally mature lychees are generally green and red, and the colors are irregularly distributed. If the whole body is red and some raised points on the shell are black, it may have been treated with "fresh water". In addition, you can smell the lychees when you buy them. Lychees soaked in hydrochloric acid generally have a pungent smell of hydrochloric acid.
Plant Growth Regulators
The practice of using plant growth regulators in agriculture began in the United States in the 1930s. Ethylene is a naturally occurring substance and was one of the first plant growth regulators discovered to effectively promote pineapple flowering. Ethylene has low toxicity to humans. In addition, people have produced synthetic substances similar to these natural plant hormones. Since then, plant growth regulators have gradually become popular and have become an important part of modern agriculture.
For many years, ethylene has been one of the most well-known plant growth regulators. It is a gaseous plant hormone that plays an important role in regulating the ripening process of many fruits such as bananas, apples, pears and melons. It can be produced naturally by fruits that are beginning to ripen or from artificial sources such as ethephon. You may want to try this little experiment: put unripe bananas and fruits that are beginning to ripen (such as apples) in the same paper bag, and then cover the bag. The apples that are beginning to ripen will produce ethylene, which will help speed up the ripening process of bananas, and you can eat ripe bananas the next day.
In order to harvest crops earlier and more effectively control the flowering and fruiting seasons, farmers may use a hormone called gibberellin (also known as stimulant) that promotes plant growth and seed germination. This type of plant growth regulator (PGR) can help elongate cells, make flowering more uniform, and fruits less likely to fall. It is usually used on high-priced fruits. Another PGR is ethylene (also known as auxin), which can increase the amount of ethylene formed and thus regulate plant growth. It can be seen in crops such as mangoes, sugarcane, pears, tomatoes, grapes, and pineapples.
In addition to helping plants grow, PGRs also have the effect of inhibiting growth. For example, Mepiquat, an ammonium ion component, reduces the secretion of gibberellin, causing plants to grow short and the nodes to appear very dense. But because of this, it can help repair uneven growth of trees, increase the growth rate of grass, and accelerate ripening or fruiting time.
Auxin and its related compounds are another major category of plant growth regulators. The earliest research on auxin was aimed at inducing and accelerating the rooting of branches. Indoleacetic acid is a natural auxin discovered in the 1930s. Since then, experts have developed various synthetic auxins, such as indolebutyric acid and naphthylacetic acid. Synthetic auxins have a wide range of applications, including preventing apples from dropping.
As for the "suspect" that caused the "exploding watermelon" reported recently, it is a plant growth regulator called "chlorfenapyr". This chemical is a synthetic plant growth regulator and belongs to the phenylurea type cytokinin (which can promote cell division and differentiation). Chlorfenapyr will increase the fruit size and yield of fruits such as grapes, kiwis and watermelons. Proper application of chlorfenapyr (i.e., adhering to good agricultural practices) can minimize the residue of chlorfenapyr in food, and the safety risk of consumption is not high.
Summary
The most important thing is that excessive intake of pesticides will cause harm to the liver and nervous system of the human body, especially to the elderly, pregnant women and children with weak metabolism and detoxification ability.
At present, all plant growth regulators used in accordance with national standards are theoretically harmless to humans and animals; however, these plant regulators have only been on the market for a few years and have not undergone long-term safety verification. It’s okay to eat it now, but no one knows what harm it will do to the body if you eat it for a lifetime. In reality, the national inspection standards are not yet complete. Some fruit vendors do not test the residual amount of plant hormones when purchasing fruits from fruit farmers or production bases. Agricultural inspection departments in some areas turn a blind eye to this. A small number of fruit farmers and vendors use plant hormones such as ethephon in violation of regulations. They use as much as they want without specific standards. This will cause safety hazards to hormone fruits.
Reference
- 什麼叫不使用農藥種植？ (What is planting without pesticides?)
- 有機農藥介紹 - 6個關鍵問題，認識真有機。(Introduction to organic pesticides - 6 key questions to understand true organic.)
- What are plant growth regulators? Hong Kong Food Safety Center (植物生長調節劑是什麼？香港食物安全中心)
