Fun fact: in the United States you can request this same sort of receipt. It’s slightly different, but all you have to do is request it, and they can show you exactly how many brown people they shot, or godless communists they’ve brought democracy to with your taxes!
They’d ripen faster in open air too. This whole packaging fruit trend is just stupid.
Unless it’s for accessibility. There are some niche prepackaged fruits specifically for people with arthritis and other mobility issues that actually can’t reasonably peel fruit, but these aren’t even peeled so obviously it’s not for that.
I’m not sure if that’s true as afaik bananas release some sort of heavier than air gas that causes both themselves and lots of other produce to ripen faster. The more airflow the less banana gas.
One thing that shocked me about living in Asia was the amount of plastic and individually wrapped fruit...sometimes double or triple-packaged.
You will even occasionally buy a pack of Oreos and inside the package, each Oreo is individually wrapped. I don't know why it's so normal to use so much plastic.
This was in Singapore btw - the country that's supposed to be 'green' by 2030.
When Singapore announced it would be getting rid of one-use plastic bags, there was a huge uproar. My colleagues at the time would ask how they are supposed to carry groceries back home. When I mentioned they can bring a reusable bag, they were like "It's so much trouble to carry bags to the store when they can just provide them!"
Of course, not everyone had this mentality, but the people against this new policy pretty much said the same word for word.
Not to mention, there are ZERO composting programs in Singapore. Maybe you can find one mom-and-pop shop that has a compost box where you can bring your waste, but again - most people don't drive, and bringing your trash on public transport definitely won't fly.
I hope they reach the green goal by 2030, but they have a LOT of work to do in the next 6.5 years...
I normally find there are plenty of green and yellow bananas. Grab a few of each and just eat them in slightly non-optimal ripeness. I don’t think you can really gauge a bananas ripeness down to the day anyway.
I wonder if they might actually be combining them from different deliveries. IE, they grab an average ripeness one from the Monday delivery, an average ripeness one from the Tuesday delivery etc and by the time the last delivery is added the first one is about ready to eat.
You can do the same in some stores. They put out some ripe and some unripe. Just grab a couple of each. And don’t fall for the guilt of breaking up bunches. You are allowed to do that. You don’t have to buy the whole bunch. Unless you go to a store that unnecessarily puts then in plastic containers/wraps.
And you can still rinse the banana off to get rid of any germs from inside the store if that’s the fear. It won’t damage it. But do it when you are ready to eat it otherwise if you use mild soap it can reduce the life of the banana by making the skin less protective.
Only because I like to avoid getting herbicides and pesticides on my hands which then might touch the banana flesh when pulling out the last part. I don’t use soap, but some do. I rinse all of my fruits and veggies when possible even if I remove the peel.
Yeah, but over time the damage builds up. Some of the currently popular pesticides are linked to both chromosome damage and neurological degeneration which are both cumulative.
Sure the chances of that alone causing cancer or something like Parkinson’s disease are very low. But there are lots of things around us that have similar effects. Off gassing plastics on new furniture and clothing, heavy metals in water and food, certain diseases like COVID, radiation for airplane rides and x-rays, etc. Each on of those are minuscule alone, even over a lifetime, but together they can cause issues. So things that are easily avoidable, may as well avoid. Pesticides and herbicides are mostly water soluable, so a little water can reduce the exposure significantly. And a lot of products that have peels that most people don’t eat and aren’t in the ground, so they don’t get dirty, don’t get rinsed by the growers. Some grocery stores do rinse them to make them more presentable, but not all.
Still you’re right that the only way to get toxic exposure that alone could cause cancer, Parkinson’s, etc., is if you work in the fields and aren’t given a mask. Especially if they are spraying while people are out picking. And with grocers often rinsing them, it’s not necessary.
It does also reduce your likelihood of catching COVID or other diseases from people who don’t know how to wash their hands, which we found from COVID is disturbingly common for an educated country. But again, that risk is very low.
I just feel the effort is minimal, and the possible reward is high enough that it’s worth it for me. It’s of course also a privilege of living in a place where clean water is plentiful.
Just like me trying to avoid sweeteners for decades now because I suspect they might turn out to be bad for you (and noone has ever tried to suggest they are actively good for you…) If it turns out you’re wrong, you’ve lost very little, if it turns out you’re right then there’s no way to retroactively undo the harm.
I have a fairly sensitive sense of taste and if I eat an unwashed fruit with a rind and manage to touch the actual fruit without washing my hands after touching the rind, I can often taste a bitter chemical flavour that otherwise isn’t there. How harmful those chemicals may be and how exposed I’d be without directly transfering them to the food or to my mouth (or eyes or whatever) I’m unsure (and, tbh, while I always wash oranges and stuff, I often eat bananas unwashed as there’s no need for the outside to come into direct or indirect contact with the actual fruit itself.) I’d still prefer to just not eat whatever it is if I can trivially avoid it (both for possible safety reasons and just not having my food taste like bitter chemicals reasons.)
This package makes me angry. Bananas are already perfectly packed by nature, how fucked up does one have to be in the head to think it would be a good idea to put them in a **one time use ** plastic package?!
That’s literally the first thing I thought of while looking at that picture. There’s no good reason for this. Bananas serve many purposes from green to yellow to black. Moreover, that “one per day” gimmick won’t even give you the same ripeness.
One thing to note about this breakdown is that it wasn’t legislated with good intention but it was implemented in a very malicious compliance way that completely counteracted the original intention.
This receipt was legislated by the conservative party in Australia under Tony Abbott, the surface level intention was to “show where people’s tax dollars are spent”. However the underlying intention was to show welfare spending as a huge category that totally eclipsed all other spending in order to demonize welfare, particularly unemployment welfare. In order to build public support for rolling back that spending.
However when the letter was implemented, the welfare category was further broken down as you see here, completely working against the narrative that the government at the time was trying to spin (that unemployment welfare particularly was a huge drain on society).
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