The 50 Mile Diet

Sticker Shock

Am I the only one exasperated by those stickers on all the fruit?

Yes, I understand why they put one on each and every item — they give the PLU code for cashiers, they tell you if they’re organic or not, they tell you country of origin… Yes, I understand that. But why do we need to have sticky stuff on all of our fruit? Is there really no better way to let store folks know what we’re buying? I suppose they are applied by a machine? Then there’s the depressing image of people putting them on the fruit by hand…

I mind it slightly less on bananas (the most abundantly stickered of all) because the sticker sits on the skin we don’t eat. But on other fruit, it sits directly on the skin, which we do eat. Sometimes, peeling the sticker off even removes some of the skin.

So buy your fruit at a farmer’s market or neighborhood farm stand. Your fruit will be sticker free.

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