How old do you think the apples you buy in a supermarket are?
I thought it was common knowledge that this so called ‘fresh’ produce is sometimes up to a year old from being picked to being purchased. Judging by the shocked look on some of my clients faces this week when I asked if they knew this, I decided that this information was not as widely known and hence here’s my topic for this week’s newsletter.
It’s true. Apples can be up to a year old when you buy them from the supermarket. Apples are picked when slightly unripe, treated with a chemical called 1-methylcyclopropene, waxed, boxed and stacked in pallets in cold storage warehouses for an average of nine to twelve months.
So, your apples are a year old. What’s so bad about it?
Aside from the obvious taste and texture difference to fresh apples, the main worry is the demise of the NUTRIENTS.
If you’ve trained with me before you will know that I am passionate about getting enough nutrients into the diets of my clients. We generally have 70% less nutrients in our soil than we did a hundred years ago and that’s BEFORE we’ve even thought about the following:
- apples picked when unripe have not had the time for the nutrients to develop in full
- apples stored in specialised cold storage warehouses are often stored in nitrogen which kills a lot of nutrients
- commercially farmed soils grow apples that on average have been sprayed 16 times with 47 different pesticides and fungicides
- apples are often genetically modified to make them look perfect
What does this mean for you consuming these apples?
Aside from the harmful chemical crap storm that these apples are subjected to, the presence of a high number of toxins also doesn’t bode well for our waistlines. As excess toxins are stored in fat as our body’s way of protecting itself from the toxins damaging our cells, so more toxins = more fat = unhappy and unhealthy you!