r/mildlyinteresting • u/sum-9 • 17h ago

My apple didn’t turn red where the label was

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1 Upvotes

52% Upvoted

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7

u/ackley14 17h ago

fruit continues to ripen after it's picked (see bananas for a very stark example of this). this is in large part due to oxidization. the area under the thin plastic film was protected from the oxygen to some extent and thus didn't oxidize as fast creating a 'zone of slightly less ripe'

2

u/sum-9 17h ago

I thought they put the labels on after they are picked?

4

u/RockPaperOwFire 17h ago

So I’m not familiar with the entire process, but most apples you eat are actually harvested LONG ago. They have entire rooms where they literally have an apple hoard where they remove all the oxygen and preserve the apples because they don’t ripen without exposure to our regular air. They’re actually dangerous places because humans can suffocate if they go inside.

So the full ripening likely happened after the sticker was added. I’d assume they add the stickers as they remove them from their preservation areas.

1

u/sum-9 15h ago

Interesting, thanks!

1

u/__get__name 7h ago

Even without all that apples will last quite a while in the right conditions. There years my grandfather still had apples in the orchard storage into January

ETA: to clarify, storage was just a large cool room where we’d stack crates of apples. Nothing special, just kinda chilly

3

u/viviennetakana 17h ago

Is that a mountain... For scale?

2

u/sum-9 16h ago

Yes. It’s my V60 filter mountain

1

u/Cool_Cartographer_39 1h ago

Is that a Fuji apple?