An “organic” version of Apeel, the mysterious fruit coating backed by Bill Gates and the World Economic Forum that makes out-of-date fruit appear fresh, is being used on Limoneira’s lemons.
Limoneira, one of the largest U.S. growers of lemons, including organic, doesn’t grow every lemon sold in the world, but CEO Harold Edwards’s goal is to “coat every lemon in the world with Apeel.” Limoneira signed an exclusive licensing relationship with Apeel Sciences on May 11.
The Organic Materials Review Institute (OMRI) says it never approved Organipeel as a fruit coating, only for post-harvest handling, so Limoneira’s use on organic lemons is out of compliance.
Tell Limoneira to quit Apeel!
At first blush, concerns about Apeel seemed like fake news. Fact checkers were quick to point out that the safety data sheet circulating the internet was for a different product with the same name, not for the edible food coating backed by Bill Gates and the World Economic Forum that was raising hackles on social media.
But, when members of the Organic Consumers Association alerted us to news that Apeel is being used in organic, we had to investigate.
How big of a food safety concern is Apeel?
Given everything else Bill Gates and the World Economic Forum expect us to swallow or inject, we can’t be too skeptical, but are the problems with Apeel on the same level as other food safety concerns?
Is it as important to avoid Apeel as it is to reject genetically engineered foods? Toxic pesticides? Factory-farmed animal products laced with livestock drugs, including mRNA vaccines? Edible insects? Lab-grown meat?
Our conclusion is that Apeel carries the same health problems as similar preservatives commonly used to extend the shelf-life of ultra-processed food. On that basis alone, our advice is to avoid Apeel.
We have additional concerns that Apeel is produced using synthetic biology, a new and extreme form of genetic engineering.
What is Apeel?
Apeel says its coating is composed entirely of monoglycerides and diglycerides.
According to Apeel’s GRAS notice submission to the FDA for Edipeel, the industrial process they use to extract monoacylglycerides from grape seed leaves residues of ethyl acetate, heptane, palladium, arsenic, lead, cadmium and mercury.
A European Food Safety Authority review of monoacylglycerides (E 471) notes that “the potential exposure to toxic elements resulting from the consumption of E 471 could be substantial.”
Another EFSA review warns of the possible presence of the carcinogen glycidol in monoacylglycerides.
Monoacylglycerides are among a number of environmental compounds that could be causing diabetes due to their capacity to increase insulin secretion in the absence of high blood sugar. (See “Diabetes: Have We Got It All Wrong?: Insulin hypersecretion and food additives: cause of obesity and diabetes?”)
Is Apeel synbio?
Apeel is frequently listed among the best-funded synbio companies.
In 2018, founder and CEO Dr. James Rogers told FoodNavigator that Apeel would soon use synthetic biology instead of extracting its ingredients from agricultural byproducts.
A 2019 post on the Apeel blog celebrated Jennifer Doudna, the inventor of CRISPR-mediated genome editing:
The world is rightfully excited about CRISPR. This groundbreaking technique not only enables scientists to add or remove genetic material with much greater precision but also much faster and cheaper than any previous method. Moreover, it works efficiently in virtually all cell types and organisms tested. This not only enables molecular biologists to do more complex genetic experiments but also provides a pathway towards true synthetic biology by design.
Doudna has been working for DARPA on “unwanted genome-editing” in other words, the use of CRISPR as a biological weapon.
What’s Apeel’s relationship with the World Economic Forum?
Not only has Apeel been supported by Bill Gates and the World Economic Forum, but founder and CEO Dr. James Rogers is a WEF Young Global Leader.
In April 2020, he wrote an article for the WEF celebrating the COVID lockdowns as good for the environment and a model for future action on climate change.
What’s the appeal of Apeel?
The Weston A. Price Foundation wrote an informative article about Apeel back in 2018, “Is Apeel Appealing?” that concluded:
Do our foods need to be traveling on boats for months at a time before sitting on shelves even longer? And what about the nutritional value of our foods? Will it be affected by Apeel and does that matter to us? Is Apeel’s “second skin” even appealing?
Ultimately, the arrival of Apeel in the marketplace can serve to remind us of the many reasons to eat local, traditional, organic, biodynamic and chemical-free foods.
That’s the most important take-away. Nowhere does anyone claim that Apeel does anything to maintain nutrient density.
Even with refrigeration, every day post-harvest is a loss. Most produce loses 30 percent of nutrients three days after harvest.
Get the best nutrition by eating straight from the garden or farmers’ market. You’ll have no need for Apeel!
What’s Apeel doing in organic?
An Apeel patent claims that, “In some preferred embodiments, the coatings are made from the same chemical feedstocks that are naturally found in the plant cuticle, (e.g., hydroxy and/or dihydroxy palmitic acids, and/or hydroxy or epoxy oleic and stearic acids) and can thus be organic and all-natural.”
Presumably, Limoniera’s organic lemons are coated with the organic version of Apeel, known as Organipeel.
Our assumption is that Organipeel doesn’t carry the same health risks as non-organic Apeel, but we can’t be sure.
According to its EPA registration, Organipeel is 0.66 percent citric acid, a non-organic substance that’s allowed in organic as long as it isn’t synthetic.
Apeel doesn’t disclose what’s in the other 99.34 percent of Organipeel.
Organipeel isn’t OMRI Listed® for use as a fruit coating. If it were, it would need to contain only organically produced agricultural ingredients and non-organic ingredients on the USDA National List of non-organic ingredients allowed in organic.
Organipeel is being used illegally as a fruit coating, when it is actually OMRI Listed® as a post-harvest handling material.
Organipeel could never get approved as a fruit coating, since non-organic ingredients aren’t supposed to be used in organic if their primary use is as a preservative.
TAKE ACTION: Tell Limoneira to quit Apeel!
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I’m concerned about Limoniera’s use and licensing of Apeel, a fruit coating that makes out-of-date produce appear fresh.
Apeel says its coating is composed entirely of monoglycerides and diglycerides.
According to Apeel’s GRAS notice submission to the FDA for Edipeel, the industrial process they use to extract monoacylglycerides from grape seed leaves residues of ethyl acetate, heptane, palladium, arsenic, lead, cadmium and mercury.
A European Food Safety Authority review of monoacylglycerides (E 471) notes that “the potential exposure to toxic elements resulting from the consumption of E 471 could be substantial.”
Another EFSA review warns of the possible presence of the carcinogen glycidol in monoacylglycerides.
Monoacylglycerides are among a number of environmental compounds that could be causing diabetes due to their capacity to increase insulin secretion in the absence of high blood sugar. (See “Diabetes: Have We Got It All Wrong?: Insulin hypersecretion and food additives: cause of obesity and diabetes?”)
I am most concerned about Limoniera’s use and licensing of Apeel for use on organic lemons.
Coating organic produce with Organipeel is a violation of organic standards, which exclude substances whose primary use is as a preservative.
What’s in Organipeel is a secret.
According to its EPA registration, Organipeel’s active ingredient is citric acid, a non-organic ingredient that is approved for use in USDA Organic, as long as it isn’t synthetic.
But citric acid is only 0.66 percent of the formulation and the other 99.34 percent isn’t disclosed.
How can it be made entirely with allowed substances?
After consumers reached out to the Organic Materials Review Institute about this because Organipeel is OMRI listed, OMRI released a public statement that made clear that Organipeel is not approved for use as a fruit coating and suggested that the use of Organipeel as a fruit coating is a violation of organic standards.
“An OMRI Listed® product, if applied with a use on the product label that does not match the OMRI Listed certificate, could be out of USDA organic compliance,” the statement read.
Sounds to me like Limoniera’s use of Organipeel on organic lemons is out of compliance.
Limoniera should quit Apeel.