This week on Real Time With Bill Maher, when speaking with Michael Pollan, Maher said oranges are picked green and then injected with dye, implying that the fruit is immature and that is the reason for so much acid. Anybody know if this is true?
[www.youtube.com]

kollie Wrote:
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> ..........Maher said oranges
> are picked green and then injected with dye,
> implying that the fruit is immature and that is
> the reason for so much acid. Anybody know if this
> is true?
I heard Bill Maher say that about 7:45 into the clip. He
was trying to be amusing, but serious at the same time. I believe he's
more 'into' Health than his guest.
I buy Organic Oranges, and there is a coating of some sort to make them
appear more orange, and probably to increase shelf-life too. The ones I
buy (Uncle Matt's Organic) are low-acid. I use them for juice....WY

Yes. Many/most of the oranges packaged for commercial sale here in Florida are injected with some sort of color. This is sometimes not the case when purchasing direct from a grower.

-David Z. Mason

WWW.RawFoodFarm.com

DZM,

What do you mean by "some sort of color?" Is it the inner flesh, or merely the peel? Can this possibly be cost effective, I mean, considering the labor that must be involved? Unless Florida is teeming with Oompa Loompas or something. And how can one possibly find out what this mystery solution is, short of sending the oranges to the lab? Good God, is nothing safe?!

An artificial color. Probably this one:

[en.wikipedia.org]

It's not supposed to penetrate to the fruit....but who knows? Cost effective? I suppose so...anything to get the fruit sold commercially. Is nothing safe? Heh..heh....not in my experience.

-In any event, most of my oranges...in season...are grabbed direct from the grove...so no worries about treatments.

Even so, eating is all about the spectrum baby. If a persons biggest concern is the dye in their oranges...they are doing pretty good!

-David Z. Mason

WWW.RawFoodFarm.com

disgusting

OMG
thanks for the link David.
Just thinking of all the cakes, over the years, I watched my mom make with the homemade goodness of some freshly grated orange rind (which contains an added carcinogen).
And I thought, fresh fruit was an unprocessed food, jokes on me. Well I guess in the end corporate America is going to win, and kill must of us.

well that just thouroughly annoys me now lol

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist

DZM,



Citrus Red 2, Citrus Red No. 2, C.I. Solvent Red 80, or C.I. 12156 is an artificial dye. As a food dye, it is permitted by Food and Drug Administration (FDA) since 1956 only for use in the United States on skin on some oranges.[1][2][3][4] While the dye is a carcinogen, it does not penetrate the orange peel into the pulp.

Damn. I mean . . . damn. Thanks for the link. I'm going to go stick my head in the oven.

Do they use this on the organic oranges too? If they say the dye doesn't go through into the fruit, it seems like that might be a loophole in the organic rules.

uggg if it applies to organic oranges too i swear im gonna join Tam in the oven !

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist

I was thinking that the packaging on organic processed foods, and even the little origin stickers on organic produce don't need to be organic themselves, because they aren't "part of the food". I would hope that they would consider the peel to be part of the food, but I'm not sure.

Not to worry, Tamukha, frances, and Jgunn! (This is a raw foods site, so please remove your lovely raw heads from the oven!)

According to the National Organic Program (NOP) 205.201, organic products must be produced and handled without the use of synthetic substances. Synthetic food dyes are prohibited by the NOP.

Also, the NOP states: "The handler of an organic handling operation must implement measures necessary to prevent the commingling of organic and nonorganic products and protect organic products from contact with prohibited substances". (205.272)

A "handler" is defined as "Any person engaged in the business of handling agricultural products",...ie all farm workers, processors, distributors, wholesalers, resalers, etc.

Organic foods are regulated from the field where they're grown, through all the handlers, to the seller, to you. It's illegal for anyone anywhere along the way to inject a food dye into any organic product and have that product be sold as "organic". Keep in mind that organic farmers/distributors/retailers want to retain the very best reputation for the purity of their product. This is why organic growers/handlers wanted these rules in the first place.

There are a few synthetic substances listed as exceptions that organic produce may legally be exposed to. These include relatively benign synthetic substances like hydrogen peroxide (sometimes used in retail store wetting sprays) and newspaper or other recycled paper without glossy or colored inks (sometimes used as packaging material).

And some organic products - like berries or dried fruit - are packaged in plastic.

As for the "organic" labels, when I was treasurer for Hawaii Organic Farmers Association (HOFA), we were required to distribute some kind of special label, but that's all I can remember. I couldn't find anything about it in the rules (but it might be there).

Here's a brief summary about the NOP from the Organic Trade Association: [www.ota.com]



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/03/2009 01:24AM by suncloud.

Thanks, suncloud, I feel much better now. I sometimes forget where the regulation begins and ends. Glad you are on top of this. Shan't Sylvia Plath myself over oranges!

I'm not thrilled about the artificial coloring on fruits either. But more than that, I even less thrilled with the chemicals used to kill pests. On the label of the bag of conventional oranges I just bought: thiabendazole and ortho-phenylphenol used as fungicides and coated with wax or resin to maintain freshness. After peeling peeling I always clean the knife before cutting the fruit to minimize the chemicals from the rind coming in contact with the part that I eat.

Wishing you vibrant health

tamukha:

<<Shan't Sylvia Plath myself over oranges!>>

her poems were extremely depressing
but they still had some light in them
underneath all the asphyxiating overtones