Sticky PLU numbers on fruit provide useful health information
_Featured_, Food Tuesday, July 10th, 2012
Monday, July 28, 2008 by: Heidi Stevenson
(NaturalNews) Who would have imagined that those irritating little labels stuck on fruit would provide helpful information? Their purpose isn’t, of course, to help the public. Nonetheless, the codes identify whether fruit is full of pesticides and grown with petroleum-based fertilizers or organic, and even when it’s genetically modified.
When those stickies first started appearing on fruit, it seemed a tad strange. As if the supermarkets were determined to add another level of frustration to already-stressed lives. The aggravation of pulling a label off a perfect fruit, the embodiment of nature’s bounty, only to have part of the peel come off too was… well, infuriating. And the fact that there was yet another code designed not to enlighten, but to obfuscate, to keep information from us simply added insult to injury.
Still, those disgustingly wasteful labels that end up in the landfills and take up your precious time to peel off do more than speed up the checkout process in the supermarket. They can help you avoid eating chemicals and genetically modified organisms.
The Labeling System
The codes are applied not only to fruit, but also to vegetables, herbs, and nuts, though labels are normally stuck only on fruit. They consist of four or five numbers. The system is quite simple. Fruit is divided into three classes: conventional, organic, and genetically modified.
Photo: inhabitat.com
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