Eating Homegrown Apples

[TV and credit cards]

I'm always amazed that people peel most fruits and vegetables. I understand for some things: citrus fruits, bananas. Peeling a carrot I have never understood, or an apple. That's the best part to me. Even a baked potato there's nothing left once I'm finished.

Potato skin is also where most of the poison is: http://www.food-info.net/uk/qa/qa-fp95.htm

Not an issue unless you're eating greened or sprouted potatoes. Keep them dry, cool, and in the dark.

But to not eat a potato skin. Eek! Whatever will I do with all the fixins?

 

[thebeave]

I've been eating produce that has been sprayed with pesticides for almost 55 years now. What bad health effects from eating this produce have I experienced so far, and what bad health effects can I expect in the future?

Also, plants produce their own natural pesticides, often at levels thousands of times greater than the dose of synthetic pesticides. Should I be worried about that?

It's the same with smoking. I smoked for years and years without any harm, so there can't be any harm in it, can there?

No, its not even close to the same thing. There is tons and tons of evidence that long term smoking is harmful. There is zero evidence that long term consumption of produce that has been sprayed with pesticides in a responsible way is harmful.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

My neighbor has an apple tree and we do get apples. But the squirrels get them. The bugs aren't the problem. I never get any figs from my figs trees. Squirrels and possums. We can't raise cherry tomatoes here. Squirrels. If a squirrel can't find a ripe cherry tomato, it will eat a green tomato.

 

[skepticalbip]

My neighbor has an apple tree and we do get apples. But the squirrels get them. The bugs aren't the problem. I never get any figs from my figs trees. Squirrels and possums. We can't raise cherry tomatoes here. Squirrels. If a squirrel can't find a ripe cherry tomato, it will eat a green tomato.

Same here. If someone, instead of bug spray, produced an effective squirrel spray or deer spray they would make a fortune.

I have three pear trees and six plum trees. They are always loaded with fruit but the squirrels always strip them before they get ripe. Maybe the answer is for me to find a good squirrel stew recipe. Since I can't eat home grown pears or plums perhaps I can eat home grown squirrels.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

My neighbor has an apple tree and we do get apples. But the squirrels get them. The bugs aren't the problem. I never get any figs from my figs trees. Squirrels and possums. We can't raise cherry tomatoes here. Squirrels. If a squirrel can't find a ripe cherry tomato, it will eat a green tomato.

Tomatoes are small enough you can protect them with chicken wire. If the squirrels can squeeze through that try hardware cloth.

 

[Rhea]

Same here. If someone, instead of bug spray, produced an effective squirrel spray or deer spray they would make a fortune.

I have three pear trees and six plum trees. They are always loaded with fruit but the squirrels always strip them before they get ripe. Maybe the answer is for me to find a good squirrel stew recipe. Since I can't eat home grown pears or plums perhaps I can eat home grown squirrels.

Or, if you don't feel like doing the work, get a good cat.
When we had a good hunting cat, we had zero chipmunks, zero squirrels.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

We have some neighborhood cats that hang out here. Our neighbor Bob has a trampoline where they like to sleep. Shady and clean. But obviously, they are not good hunters. I had a small fig tree that looked like it had a good crop of figs ripening. Not a one survived the posums and squirrels. Last week I stepped out the back door to roll the trashbins out to the curb and nearly stepped on a half grown possum. The cats obviously don't bother the young possums at all.

Young possums are not cute.

 

[tantric]

kinda weird - just before finding this, i wrote a text/rant that i'm considering putting on my farm's facebook page. i loathe facebook, and have no idea whatsoever as to what 'normal' people get upset about. here goes:

Organic versus Stainable

The simple truth is that organic food is a luxury item. When you eat an apple produce without pesticides, several other apples that got bugs where thrown away. The only rational way to reduce pesticide usage is to get over having an occasional worm in your corn. When you see that, it means no pesticides where used - toss the worm out, cut out the bad part and eat it. That what people who live on farms do.

On the other hand, the way that industrial agriculture uses pesticides and herbicides is a nightmare. Consider the herbicide in Roundup. Crops are genetically engineered to be resistant to it, then mass amounts are sprayed all over the field to kill weeds. Remember DDT? It was applied by the ton, everywhere, killing every insect it touched. It didn't degrade and ended up being concentrated in animals high on the food chain, where it caused severe problems.

So it was banned, completely....which led to millions of people dying from malaria. DDT soaked mosquito nets, and DDT spray inside a home, on the walls, dramatically reduces cases of malaria, as mosquites almost always light on these surfices before biting. There is no harm to the environment from this usage. Using DDT like this is rational and sustainable, but not organic.

Sustainable agriculture aims to improve the land that is used, so that it may be used for farmland indefinitely, which harm to the local ecosystem. Old school farming is a war against nature, an attempt to erase a natural ecosystem and create a highly artificial system that is designed to maximize production. As an example, a while back I was trying to find a way to stop a particular pest from eating my roses. I studied the pest and found a pesticide that would kill without killing every other bug, and a time to apply it when it would be most effective. My father was curious, and said "Why don't you just use this, and kill all the damn bugs?" I thought about the tiny praying mantis I'd seen while sniffing out the pests...It's a different way of thinking. In sustainable agriculture, you guide and modify the ecosystem - guide it towards productivity. You NEVER win when you fight nature. So we don't - we incorporate it and use it.

Sustainable agriculture does use pesticides. We use them sparingly and very selectively, using scientific research to be sure we're not damaging the local ecosystem. Organic agriculture, for instance, uses copper as a fungicide, because copper is 'natural'. Copper is lethal to fungi, algae and snail, kind of like how mercury and arsenic are lethal to mammal, and it doesn't go away. Throw a penny in an aquarium full of algae and it all dies, forever, along with all the snails and the only way to get it out is to start over. I might use a copper spray, for instance, to control tomato blight, but I know when to use it and how much so it doesn't cause problems. Likewise, if my crops are infested with caterpillars, I might use a pesticide that kills only caterpillars (there is one), and apply it with a handsprayer only where needed. I might use chemicals to improve soil that has been tormented by decades of traditional farming, or I might use compost - which ever is best for the situation.

The result is food you can afford, grown in a way that is environmentally sound. There are no standards for sustainable food - creating such a huge, wasteful bureacracy would defeat the purpose. The people who grow food this way are highly skilled and educated professionals. The money, the investment, is in these people, in the beginning, rather than in expensive chemicals or wasteful processes.

For this to work, consumers need to be a part of it. Get over pretty, perfect vegetables. For every one you buy, others were grown and disgarded. Like thely plant has been selectively bred for appearance and shelf live for decades, rather than taste and nutritional value. Here, for instance, is a picture of an apple, directly from the tree. It's green and tart and better tasting than anything you can buy. It also has brown patches on its skin, from a harmless fungus. That's a good sign - it means the apple was produced in a functioning ecosystem, not in an artificial farm. Eating food like this is good for you, we'll talk about that later in the Hygiene Hypothesis.

i have a dog that is a mad squirrel assassin. i saw here chase one to a tree, leap up and ripe the poor thing's tail off. others she kills or trees and barks madly for someone to come and shoot it. then she buries them in the garden, as happy surprises for me the next time i plow. she spent the first year of her life in a crate and is crazy as a shit house rat, but a damn good dog.

 

[Under the Rose]

We have had a bumper crop of raspberries in the Yukon this year and not many pests to contend with. I share this space with a very good hunting cat who keeps squirrels and birds away from the house and this year there were none of the strange wasps that ate almost all my berries about three years ago. The nasty things would eat about 1/3 of eat berry rather than just taking a third of the crop. I was not sure whether they harbored any parasites of concern to humans so I just gave up on having any fruit that year. It was the only time I have ever encountered such a happening and so have not even contemplated if a useful form of intervention exists. Possibly row cover but the brambles would be a challenge as would the wind I am thinking.

 

[iolo]

It's the same with smoking. I smoked for years and years without any harm, so there can't be any harm in it, can there?

No, its not even close to the same thing. There is tons and tons of evidence that long term smoking is harmful. There is zero evidence that long term consumption of produce that has been sprayed with pesticides in a responsible way is harmful.

That is what the cigarette firms said while they were still able to supress the evidence. You like poison, eat poison, but get yourself other stores to buy it in.

 

[braces_for_impact]

Well, for me it would be buying a sprayer, buying a pesticide, mixing it up, getting out there and spraying the thing, getting a ladder or renting a cherry picker to spray the top 80% of the tree that I can't reach and wearing some sort of mask to avoid breathing it.

Much better to sit on the porch with a beer and watch the apples grow on their own.
To me, anyway.

Well, that's a first. Argumentum ad drink beer. I can get down with that!

You'd actually be surprised how well this particular argument works.

 

[Toni]

When we have a large harvest, I take the excess down to the food bank. At first I was worried that they might be put off by the look of my never-sprayed apples. But I was pleased as punch that they had a healthy organic attitude and loved the apples as-is.

I don't have much of a problem with bugs inside them, for us it's more of a need to wash them with scrubbing because they get a bit of a black patina from the moisture, but it washes right off. So once washed, they might be a little bumpy on the skin from scars of early-season bugs, but there are no blemishes inside - and are fine with the skin on.

On a strong year we donate several hundred pounds of apples (600 pounds, one year, and that was _after_ making over 100 gallons of cider!), a sparse year might be just a bushel or two.

I agree that America went through a time of mincing their way through fresh food afraid of skins and blemishes and that I'm glad to see a trend back away from that. Yeah, like peeling carrots, WTF.

One of my best friends always peeled carrots--not to get rid of the bumps and uglies but because her mother and grandmother insisted it was necessary to rid the carrot of a skin that had been bathed in pesticides.

 

[tantric]

When we have a large harvest, I take the excess down to the food bank. At first I was worried that they might be put off by the look of my never-sprayed apples. But I was pleased as punch that they had a healthy organic attitude and loved the apples as-is.

I don't have much of a problem with bugs inside them, for us it's more of a need to wash them with scrubbing because they get a bit of a black patina from the moisture, but it washes right off. So once washed, they might be a little bumpy on the skin from scars of early-season bugs, but there are no blemishes inside - and are fine with the skin on.

On a strong year we donate several hundred pounds of apples (600 pounds, one year, and that was _after_ making over 100 gallons of cider!), a sparse year might be just a bushel or two.

I agree that America went through a time of mincing their way through fresh food afraid of skins and blemishes and that I'm glad to see a trend back away from that. Yeah, like peeling carrots, WTF.

One of my best friends always peeled carrots--not to get rid of the bumps and uglies but because her mother and grandmother insisted it was necessary to rid the carrot of a skin that had been bathed in pesticides.

superstition - they wash off, of course. if you want sterile food, the best and safest way is gamma irradiation, done with caesium-137 recovered from spent nuclear fuel rods. of course, the poor veggie is then defenseless and will sprout mold and melt down when it is exposed to normal conditions.

 

[thebeave]

No, its not even close to the same thing. There is tons and tons of evidence that long term smoking is harmful. There is zero evidence that long term consumption of produce that has been sprayed with pesticides in a responsible way is harmful.

That is what the cigarette firms said while they were still able to supress the evidence. You like poison, eat poison, but get yourself other stores to buy it in.

So, you think there's a mass conspiracy going on to suppress evidence that pesticide residue on produce is harmful? That's a new one. That's up there with the faked moon landing conspiracy. And why aren't you concerned about consuming the pesticides that the plant produces (see skepticalbip's article above). That is just as much a "poison" (actually more so) than the synthetic pesticides sprayed on the fruit. Maybe you should just avoid eating plants altogether. I recommend a nice bowl of pea gravel, with purified water to help wash it down.

 

[iolo]

That is what the cigarette firms said while they were still able to supress the evidence. You like poison, eat poison, but get yourself other stores to buy it in.

So, you think there's a mass conspiracy going on to suppress evidence that pesticide residue on produce is harmful? That's a new one. That's up there with the faked moon landing conspiracy. And why aren't you concerned about consuming the pesticides that the plant produces (see skepticalbip's article above). That is just as much a "poison" (actually more so) than the synthetic pesticides sprayed on the fruit. Maybe you should just avoid eating plants altogether. I recommend a nice bowl of pea gravel, with purified water to help wash it down.

Hardly. Look, for instance, into what is happening to fish in the rivers as a result of pollution, and very evidently big firms have no plans to stop poisoning us for profit. Since I grow my own stuff, its not a problem for me: I and my family all have one head each!

 

[thebeave]

So, you think there's a mass conspiracy going on to suppress evidence that pesticide residue on produce is harmful? That's a new one. That's up there with the faked moon landing conspiracy. And why aren't you concerned about consuming the pesticides that the plant produces (see skepticalbip's article above). That is just as much a "poison" (actually more so) than the synthetic pesticides sprayed on the fruit. Maybe you should just avoid eating plants altogether. I recommend a nice bowl of pea gravel, with purified water to help wash it down.

Hardly. Look, for instance, into what is happening to fish in the rivers as a result of pollution, and very evidently big firms have no plans to stop poisoning us for profit. Since I grow my own stuff, its not a problem for me: I and my family all have one head each!

So, now you've dropped the smoking strawman and are on to the polluted fish strawman. My work is done here, and I'm getting hungry. I think I'll have me a bowl of "poison" laden 100% natural fruit. Maybe I'll even wash it down with some *gulp* dihydrogen monoxide!

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

When we have a large harvest, I take the excess down to the food bank. At first I was worried that they might be put off by the look of my never-sprayed apples. But I was pleased as punch that they had a healthy organic attitude and loved the apples as-is.

I don't have much of a problem with bugs inside them, for us it's more of a need to wash them with scrubbing because they get a bit of a black patina from the moisture, but it washes right off. So once washed, they might be a little bumpy on the skin from scars of early-season bugs, but there are no blemishes inside - and are fine with the skin on.

On a strong year we donate several hundred pounds of apples (600 pounds, one year, and that was _after_ making over 100 gallons of cider!), a sparse year might be just a bushel or two.

I agree that America went through a time of mincing their way through fresh food afraid of skins and blemishes and that I'm glad to see a trend back away from that. Yeah, like peeling carrots, WTF.

You're lucky. The coddling moths and apple maggots seem to get every one of the apples. If I don't spray enough their eggs hatch on the apple instead of the spray killing the egg. I'd eat the worms and wouldn't care but while they munch on the apple they produce a lot of waste that is just plain inedible. And yes, surface blemishes shouldn't be important but lots of people think they can eat "pretty." They'd probably buy blemished apples for the right price.

 

[iolo]

Hardly. Look, for instance, into what is happening to fish in the rivers as a result of pollution, and very evidently big firms have no plans to stop poisoning us for profit. Since I grow my own stuff, its not a problem for me: I and my family all have one head each!

So, now you've dropped the smoking strawman and are on to the polluted fish strawman. My work is done here, and I'm getting hungry. I think I'll have me a bowl of "poison" laden 100% natural fruit. Maybe I'll even wash it down with some *gulp* dihydrogen monoxide!

I'm afraid I don't play with silly metaphors, just say what I think. Your sort believed the tobacco companies, and you believe those who are poisoning us. I think perhaps that your sort of person doesn't get much out of debate, and that we might as well stop.

 

[DrZoidberg]

If you don't do a lot of spraying, which I do not, your apples will be buggy. I'll do a few sprayings with something very safe but nothing like commercially grown apples are exposed to. So I found that the trick to enjoying these homegrown apples is to not peel them. Just quarter them and cut out the core, which usually has the rot, and eat the apple pieces, skin and all.

My grandmother when she was preparing apples for canning would always complain about the apples being buggy. But she was peeling them, which wasted a lot of apple. Thinking back it was really wasteful to peel those apples, but that was how it was done, even though you're removing lots of nutrition. So I take a few of my buggy apples to work and enjoy them just the same.

I've got to believe that peeling apples is a modern thing that became possible when apples were domesticated and got bigger. It's really kinda dumb to peel an apple just to can it or to make a pie or to make sauce.

The sprays do nothing to the taste. Nor health. Just keep spraying.

The difference in taste between home grown apples and commercially grown apples is that commercially grown apples typically pick high-yielding strains. They also employ techniques to "stress" the apples to grow as much as possible. They make money by the weight. If you grow your own apples you're going to produce way more than you'll ever eat anyway, just from a single tree. So you don't have to give a shit about yields. You can go for nothing but taste and texture.

 

[tantric]

you can eat DDT. i've seen a video, by the mouthful. won't hurt you.

interesting, this year i tried heirloom tomatoes, several types. bout a month ago i gave up - i can't sell them profitably. i went back to clean up the patch, which is dense with weeds. damn me, those suckers are out competing the weeds. there are tomatoes everywhere, long after regular ones stopped and died and they taste fantastic. i have ones that are mottled green and red and beautiful, yellow ones, ones all crinkled like a pumpkin, brown ones, each type tastes different, sweet or acidic or strong or subtle and they are EVERYWHERE with no pesticide and no weeding and no fertilizer.