Fruit "Face Swap" Experts Teach You How to Identify 10 Harmful Fruits
Introduction: The fruits we buy today may look fresh, but they often taste strange. This is because many unscrupulous merchants use "tricks" on the fruits to keep them fresh, using chemicals to maintain their freshness. Long-term consumption can be harmful to the body. Below, Aimei.com teaches you how to identify 10 harmful fruits, so be careful when picking them.
When we pick fruits, the first thing we notice is their appearance. The more beautiful they look, the fresher people assume they are. In reality, many fruits are now secretly undergoing a "face swap." To preserve apples, industrial wax is used without hesitation. To ripen bananas, ethephon is used without hesitation. Excessive consumption of these chemicals can affect our health. Therefore, picking fruit is a skill in itself.
I. Waxed Apples
It's no secret that apples are waxed. Nutritionists say that the apple peel is more nutritious than the flesh and should be eaten more, but can you still eat the peel of a waxed apple? In fact, the state allows for waxing fruit surfaces for preservation. The apple peel itself contains wax, which is edible wax used in processing. Its main components are natural shellac and carnauba wax, both of which are edible and harmless to the body. However, many unscrupulous merchants, to save costs, use industrial wax instead of edible wax. Industrial wax contains mercury and lead, which may be harmful to the human body.
How to identify:
When picking waxed fruit, you can rub the surface with your hand or a tissue. If a faint red layer comes off, it is very likely industrial wax. Quality inspection department staff say that it is difficult to distinguish between edible wax and industrial wax with the naked eye. Fruit should be washed with salt water before eating, or simply peeled.
II. Ripened Bananas
Ripening is an indispensable part of the banana industry, widely used worldwide for a hundred years. The use of ripening agents within standard limits is harmless to the human body. Due to the long-distance transportation of bananas, they must be picked unripe. Bunches of bananas cut from the tree have difficulty ripening on their own. Without ethephon, most bananas would rot. Therefore, normal ripening of bananas does not produce substances harmful to the human body, but excessive use is harmful to health.
How to identify:
First, the peel of ripened bananas generally does not have the sign of a fully ripe banana—the "plum blossom spots." Therefore, when picking bananas, bananas with "plum blossom spots" are relatively safe.
Second, bananas ripened with chemicals will smell of chemicals.
In addition, naturally ripened bananas ripen evenly; not only does the peel turn yellow, but the center is also soft. Ripened bananas, however, have a hard center.
III. Dyed Oranges
Oranges on the market are exceptionally vibrant and tempting. When you encounter such oranges, be careful, as they may have been dyed. Some vendors inject dye into the orange peel to make the color more beautiful and the appearance better, and then apply some wax to the peel to make it look fresh, but such oranges will bleed color. Some vendors even wash and dry oranges with mold spots, then wax and color them. In this way, an orange that was once moldy and dull becomes red and shiny in an instant.
How to identify:
First, dyed oranges look particularly red and vibrant. Upon close inspection, you can find red spots on the lenticels of the peel, and some oranges even have red residue on their surface.
Second, wipe the orange surface with a wet tissue. If the tissue turns red, the orange may have been dyed. An undyed orange will only show a faint yellow after wiping.
In addition, for severely dyed oranges, the navel will also turn red. For undyed oranges, the navel is white and green. Finally, dyed oranges feel sticky to the touch, while undyed oranges feel more natural.
IV. Exploding Watermelons
Fully grown watermelons on the vine burst open before they are ripe, some shattering into pieces, others blooming like a flower. Some melon farmers and experts point out that the cause of the bursting melons is the use of expanding agents. When used according to standards, expanding agents are non-toxic, but if abused in large doses for profit, there are potential risks.
How to identify:
First, from the outside, a normal watermelon should be round or oval with a smooth, even surface. Watermelons treated with hormones may have uneven absorption, leading to misshapen fruits, such as asymmetry, a sunken middle, or enlarged ends. Watermelons pollinated by hand will have a much thinner rind than those treated with expanding agents.
Additionally, after cutting open the watermelon, although the flesh of a watermelon treated with expanding agents is red, the seeds remain white. Also, because the watermelon rind has a waxy layer, pesticides often penetrate and remain in it. When buying watermelons, try to avoid those with cuts or cracks.
V. Hormone Strawberries
Some farmers, in pursuit of exorbitant profits, indiscriminately use expanding agents multiple times during cultivation. The main component of expanding agents is a stimulant for cell division, which promotes cell division and volume enlargement in the fruit to increase yield, making some strawberries very large, colorful, and even strangely shaped. Expanding agents fall into the category of pesticides. Their excessive use affects fruit quality. If consumers consume strawberries with high residues of expanding agents, it can cause significant damage to their health, especially for kidney patients, who should avoid excessive consumption.
How to identify:
First, look at the variety. Large strawberries are often conical; if the shape is too strange, be cautious.
Second, hormone strawberries have uneven coloring and poor luster, and at the base of the stem, the color is distinctly green and red.
In addition, the "sesame seeds" on the surface of normal strawberries are golden yellow. If even these "seeds" are bright red, be on alert. Normal strawberries have bright red flesh with few hollows. Hormone strawberries can be easily broken open, their flesh is whitish, and they have more hollows.
Finally, normal strawberries are sweet with a uniform sweetness. Hormone strawberries taste bland and have no fragrance.
VI. Acid-Sprayed Lychees
Because lychees have a short shelf life, vendors often buy unripe or half-ripe lychees and soak them in diluted hydrochloric acid, or spray a dilute hydrochloric acid solution on their surface. The unripe peel becomes red and tender, appearing freshly picked, but it spoils easily. This solution is highly acidic and can cause peeling of the hands, blisters in the mouth, and even burns to the digestive tract. Some vendors also use sulfur fumigation, and sulfur dioxide can cause strong irritation to the eyes and throat, leading to dizziness, abdominal pain, diarrhea, and in severe cases, even cancer.
How to identify:
Consumers can use the methods of touching, smelling, weighing, and observing to identify them.
Touch: When picking acid-sprayed lychees, your hand will feel damp and hot, and may even feel like it's burning.
Smell: Naturally ripened lychees have a faint, natural lychee fragrance. "Made-up" lychees have no fragrance and may smell sour or even chemical.
Weigh: Acid-sprayed lychees are heavier than naturally ripened ones.
Look: Because fresh lychees have a short storage time, they generally need to be stored in a cold environment. If you see lychees casually placed in a box and covered with plastic, they are likely problematic.
VII. Lime-Treated Mangoes
The calcium oxide used by vendors, as reported in the media, reacts with water to release heat. This heat can increase the storage temperature of the mango and accelerate its ripening process. When eating mangoes, even if a small amount of lime gets on the peel, it will generally not affect the eater's health through washing and peeling, but excessive consumption can be harmful.
How to identify:
First, pick mangoes with a sunken stem end and a prominent, plump, and round area around it.
Second, since mangoes, especially their peels, contain allergens, people with allergies are advised not to eat them, or to eat them in small pieces after cutting.
VIII. Premature Grapes
Grapes on the market that are large and round but have a poor taste generally have ripening agents and expanding agents added. Ripening agents, known as ethephon, can make grapes ripen prematurely, and expanding agents can make them grow larger. Among grape expanding agents, forchlorfenuron is most commonly used. Although ethephon is sprayed on the fruit's surface, because the grape skin is relatively thin, pesticides can easily penetrate into the flesh. These grapes have uneven color, low sugar content, little juice, and a bland taste. Long-term consumption is harmful to the human body.
How to identify:
Consumers can distinguish them by appearance and taste.
First, you can find out the normal ripening period for the grape variety. When buying, if every grape is very dark and has a high luster, they are likely ripened with chemicals. Conversely, if you can distinguish between ripe and unripe grapes on a bunch, it means the bunch was not chemically ripened. Also, naturally ripened grapes have a thin white powder on their skin that rubs off easily.
In terms of taste, chemically ripened grapes are not sweet, while naturally ripened grapes are sweet and smooth, with a fresher color on the stem.
IX. Acid-Soaked Peaches
Water peaches are soaked in industrial citric acid for "preservation," making them bright red and not easy to rot. This chemical residue can damage the nervous system, induce allergic diseases, and even cause cancer. Semi-ripe crisp peaches are treated with alum, sweeteners, and alcohol to make them crisp and sweet. The main component of alum is aluminum sulfate, and long-term consumption can lead to bone hyperplasia, memory loss, dementia, decreased skin elasticity, and increased wrinkles. White peaches fumigated with sulfur will also have sulfur dioxide residues.
How to identify:
To assess the quality of a peach, first consider its variety, origin, and time of market arrival, then make a specific judgment. To distinguish whether a peach has been "bathed in chemicals," look mainly at the color: a ripe peach is typically yellow or pink, while an unripe one is light green. Peaches soaked in industrial citric acid have an unnaturally bright red color. Normal peaches will start to rot and mold in two or three days, while treated peaches will remain glossy for several days.
X. Bleached Pears
Pears that look fresh, yellow, and smooth suddenly lose their skin after a while. After washing them, they all become soft, and even the washing water turns yellow. These pears are treated with expanding agents and growth hormones to ripen them prematurely, and then bleached and colored with bleaching powder and coloring agents (like lemon yellow). The treated pears have little juice, a bland taste, and sometimes an off or rotten smell. These "toxic" pears have a short shelf life and spoil easily.
How to identify:
Inferior pears have misshapen forms, a significant number of deformed fruits, no stems, uneven and small sizes, rough and unclean surfaces with many scratches, cuts, bruises, and scars. They may have disease spots or insect bite wounds, and tree rubs, water rust, or dry scars that cover 1/3 to 1/2 of the fruit's surface. The flesh is coarse and of poor quality, with large and numerous stone cells, little juice, a bland or overly sour taste, and some may have bitter or astringent flavors. Very inferior pears may also have a rotten smell.