Nonvegan fruit??!!
Posted by momofcaitlin on Jan 12, 2010 · Member since Jun 2002 · 588 posts
We are visiting my mother, and she bought my daughter a box of clementines which she loves. She ate the last one today, and when I was throwing away the dectorative wooden box, I saw that they were coated in shellac!! Yuck. Shoot me if you want to, but I didn't become vegan over compassion for insects, but the idea of fruit coated in squished bugs is . . . nasty to say the least. Is this commonly done? I know they wax and dye fruit routinely without having to label it as such, but how common is shellac used? Just wondering.
I did a quick Google search (I am supposed to be working) and found that most fruit is coated in one of many synthetic "waxes" which are shinier and preserve fruit better than shellac and that coatings with a white look to them are probably shellac. (I know I've eaten lots of apples like that. Yuck!) I'm not sure about organic standards either. I try to buy organic, but it isn't widely available to me and is out of my budget many times. It seems to me that smashes bugs would be more organic than synthetic coating, but what do I know. Yuck!
They don't wax fruit here, thank goodness...they sometimes put oranges in sulphur smoke to artificially make them perfect-bright-orange, but that's all.