the deceit of fruit.

i just ate an orange.

i shouldn't have been able to eat that orange; i bought it 2 weeks ago. but it was actually still underripe. i washed it, peeled it, and then had to wash my hands again because they were covered with wax.

as far as i can tell, most apples and citrus fruit sold in u.s. supermarkets is waxed.

i remember the first time a british friend went shopping with me. he exclaimed at the size and shininess of the apples. i said, "oh, they're covered in wax."

the fruit gets waxed for 2 reasons. 1) to keep it looking nice. wax seals the pores in the skin and smooths it out, making the fruit look shiny, uniform, and therefore attractive. and 2) to keep it from spoiling (or as in the case of my orange, from even getting ripe). because fruit is picked so far away from its selling location, it gets waxed to prevent air from carrying molds and bacteria into the fruit and spoiling it.

1) is the one that bothers me more. i can understand needing to wax fruit because it needs to be shipped from florida or california or washington to the other side of the country. but waxing the fruit changes the perception of what fruit should look like. we only see huge, over-irrigated, underripe, shiny, gleaming fruit. i have no idea what a non-industrial-farmed orange looks like. i do know what real apples are supposed to look like because we had 2 apple trees in our backyard when i was a kid.

but our food is as carefully curated for appearance as works of art in a museum. not only is this weird, but it makes us even more ignorant of what we eat, what we put in our bodies. the huge, waxed orange moves me just a little further from one reality into another one where appearance is carefully controlled and manufactured.

hm.

oh, and happy new year.