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Is It Possible To Detect Chemicals in Your Grapefruit?


DonRocks

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I *never* buy non-organic produce. I have organic produce readily available, so why wouldn't I buy it?

Today, I went to Whole Foods, and bought some grapefruit, and the only ones they had were conventional - I'm not completely militant about buying organic, so I bought a few to have on hand ... at a buck a pop.

I just had one, and it was *terrible*. Not only was the moisture lacking, but it had a foreign bitterness to it that I can't explain away as being citric acid. I had about 25% of it, and hurled the rest in the garbage can, seething.

Okay, now, my palate is pretty finely tuned (it's obvious to me when they change the formula for the coating on Advil, for example), but I'm pretty sure the vast majority of people would think this grapefruit was just plain lousy.

So, maybe I just had a crummy grapefruit. Or, is it possible that I'm tasting chemicals? I hypothesize that water-filled fruits are the most disgusting of all to buy non-organic, since all that liquid is probably loaded with chemicals. I'm not sure how they measure concentrations (maybe parts-per-million?), but I am sure this grapefruit tasted like hell, and it wasn't rotten or moldy. 

Not for one second do I think that you can spray chemicals on trees and vines, and *not* have them penetrate succulent fruits - the water inside comes from *somewhere*, and that somewhere has almost certainly had contact with pesticides.

There's a saying in the wine world: "It's hard to be organic when your neighbor isn't," so I'm not completely naive when it comes to this - there's most likely a continuum of chemical concentration, as opposed to an on/off switch.

Any thoughts about this? Surely this has been written about many times before, but there's a lot of junk when I try to Google it.

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16 minutes ago, DonRocks said:

So, maybe I just had a crummy grapefruit. Or, is it possible that I'm tasting chemicals? I hypothesize that water-filled fruits are the most disgusting of all to buy non-organic, since all that liquid is probably loaded with chemicals. I'm not sure how they measure concentrations (maybe parts-per-million?), but I am sure this grapefruit tasted like hell, and it wasn't rotten or moldy. 

Not for one second do I think that you can spray chemicals on trees and vines, and *not* have them penetrate succulent fruits - the water inside comes from *somewhere*, and that somewhere has almost certainly had contact with pesticides.

There's a saying in the wine world: "It's hard to be organic when your neighbor isn't," so I'm not completely naive when it comes to this - there's most likely a continuum of chemical concentration, as opposed to an on/off switch.

Disclaimer:  I know very little about this and I'm not sure what my point is.

1)  I would guess that eating a non-organic grapefruit, orange, banana or kiwi is the least risky of all fruit-eating because you don't eat the part of the fruit that gets sprayed.

2)  You say "the water inside has to come from somewhere".   Doesn't the vast majority of it come from the roots via rain/irrigation?  There may be some absorption through the leaves, and runoff onto the ground from the sprayed tree, but it has to be a miniscule amount compared to what the tree absorbs from a rainfall.

3)  Regarding organic wine:  Sulfur and Copper are commonly sprayed on wine grapes.  Both are organic (they're elements after all), but you sure wouldn't want to sprinkle them on your breakfast cereal.  They are nasty and smelly and about as far away from "organic" as you can get (in most people's eyes), yet they are organic.

 

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40 minutes ago, Bart said:

1)  I would guess that eating a non-organic grapefruit, orange, banana or kiwi is the least risky of all fruit-eating because you don't eat the part of the fruit that gets sprayed.

Bart,

I think most of the "stuff" inside fruits gets there by traveling through the stems, stalks, and vascular network, and that chemicals do the same; I don't think the skin of the fruit serves as any sort of "protective barrier" from outside influences. It's similar to a baby being nourished inside a womb, and an expectant mother taking precautions with what she ingests.

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8 hours ago, Poivrot Farci said:

Grapefruit, like most, if not all citrus, are best from fall through spring and peak in winter.  Organic does not replace seasonality.

Touché. 
Anyway, this is one of them: Grapefruit.JPG

We may have talked about this before, but does anyone have a good reference to what's in season when? We should have that posted here, and if the work has already been done (which it undoubtedly has), I'd prefer to simply link to the original author's work, probably as its own thread.

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17 minutes ago, DonRocks said:

Bart,

I think most of the "stuff" inside fruits gets there by traveling through the stems, stalks, and vascular network, and that chemicals do the same; I don't think the skin of the fruit serves as any sort of "protective barrier" from outside influences. It's similar to a baby being nourished inside a womb, and an expectant mother taking precautions with what she ingests.

Yeah, but the pregnant woman who puts on sunscreen will still apply it to the baby after the birth when they go to the beach. ;)

There are some systemic chemicals that penetrate the "vascular network" of a tree and then there are others that just stay on the surface to keep the bugs away or control various rots and mildews.  I have no idea if either is required for citrus fruits however.  The amount and type of sprays needed also depends a lot on where you're growing.  It's relatively easy to grow organic / no-spray fruit in CA or WA, but damn near impossible in the humid, buggy east.

But I like Poiv Far's explanation better

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5 minutes ago, Bart said:

Yeah, but the pregnant woman who puts on sunscreen will still apply it to the baby after the birth when they go to the beach. ;)

That's because the fruit has been plucked. 

(How far do I carry this lame analogy?)

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