I had never given much thought before today to the little stickers that are applied to fruit, until a reader submitted a poem to the newspaper.
The poet doesn’t like the stickers: “…every time I eat a piece of fruit, I must attend to its bothersome removal …”
I don’t eat much fruit, which is probably why I don’t feel strongly about the little stickers, but my curiosity was aroused.
This supplier makes a virtue of removing stickers: “de-stickered” is the technical term, apparently.
In America it seems the stickers have a particular purpose and they are edible, although someone in a forum reported hearing about a girl who got sick from eating one.
Some people collect fruit stickers and some people make art from them.
The poet has copped some flak from sticker sticklers, which goes to suggest people can be passionate about passionfruit and the like.
I haven’t been able to figure out if the stickers are applied by hand or machine, although I discovered one reference to a mechanical banana labeller.
I checked our small stash of apples in the kitchen and none of them had stickers. Juliet said that’s because they came in a bag; only individual fruit have labels so the checkout chicks can identify them.
That leads me to wonder about these new self-serve checkouts. What’s to stop someone ringing up the Pink Ladies as Royal Galas?
I know more about fruit stickers now, but I’m still a little confused about why they’re necessary.
We need fruit stickers so we know where the fruit comes from … whether it was imported or it is Australian grown, as most imported fruit is inferior quality.