I suspect there’s a lot people don’t know about supermarket food that isn’t advertised. This is again from the US but would be surprised if not also applicable to the UK.
If you Google things people don’t know about supermarket food, you could lose your appetite. 
Pesticides can also be sprayed on produce after harvest and still be deemed organic if the pesticide is considered organic.
https://www.rd.com/list/things-you-never-knew-about-grocery-store-produce/
It is the same in The UK.
Ultimately it’s about seasonality, anyone who thinks that their bag of Cox’s have more or less come straight off the tree must be a little bit silly.
I think we have been told about it - I remember reading about this over a year ago.
In fact, isn’t there some links on this thread to The Sun tabloid newspaper reports about it, dating back to February 2022?
Although I must admit, I don’t read The Sun newspaper - I first read about it in The Grocer magazine, which I receive at the shop I work in.
I didn’t like the idea of the Apeel coating not being able to be washed off - as you say, no problem for fruit and veg you are going to peel before you eat anyway - but if I buy citrus fruit to grate for the zest, I don’t want an extra coating - that is why I buy lemons which are unwaxed and uncoated with anything else.
If citrus fruit already has a peel to protect the fruit from dehydration, why do they need to add another coating to it?
Citrus Fruits are already coated in Peel which make them last for a long time, so why give them an extra coat of mono-glycerides and di-glycerides? - and it it is still not clear to me if these are manufactured chemicals to the same structure as the natural chemicals in fruit peel or if they are derived from using the peel of one fruit to coat the surface of another fruit? -(and if it is made from fresh fruit, how is that “saving” food? )
I’ll avoid it if I ever see it it in the shops and it is labelled (which it should be!)
If I end up with surplus citrus fruit that may dry out or go bad before I can use it, I just cut it into slices or wedges or grate the zest and juice the fruit and freeze it to use for cooking, cocktails or garnishes.
I think it’s absolutely scandalous that food has to be transported half way around the world and has to be treated with various scientific procedures and chemicals in an attempt to make it look attractive, fresh, and sellable. We should only buy food grown and produced in this country.
In the western world we think we can have everything, and travel anywhere in the world with impunity, and then we preach about destroying the planet and creating pollution. We are all hypocrites and are the problem.
What gets right on my nerves is them trying to take me for a sucker
There’s the Apeel and Epipeel name, obviously intended to make us think apple peel and natural
And then we get told:
“ Plant-based protection for longer-lasting produce. Apeel keeps produce fresh for longer with the help of a little extra “peel”. ”
But course it’s not peel really, it’s a chemical product made of the bits of fruit and veg we don’t eat and the long term affects not known yet
And they’re trying to guilt us into accepting because it’s better for the environment and will reduce waste
But the real point of it is increasing their profits by keeping their product longer and being able to flog us the really old stuff, even if a lot of the goodness is long gone out of it
And they want to make it cheaper to export fresh stuff over long distances, because it won’t go off in transit
So instead of us to buying fresher, local produce that doesn’t have to be transported so far from here in the U.K. and the EU, they want us to be buying their stuff from thousands of miles away.
Much to the delight of the Brexiters and their hopes for deals with the US and other countries mikes away, and never mind the environment and our food quality
Yes, apples grown here may well have been stored a long time.They’d have to be, really, apples are a seasonal
My granny used store ours out in the cold shed, carefully packed so as not to touch each other and they’d stay good for months.
But they didn’t have to be transported by sea thousands of miles for a year or more
And I don’t want them putting anything on my food I can’t wash off
unless it seems inside without our knowledge…
We don’t grow enough to feed the whole country. So much that is grown is thrown away each day. Tragic.
The figures for food waste in the UK (and the world) are staggering … 
Producing food requires significant resources including land, energy and water. Globally, 25–30% of total food produced is lost or wasted, and food waste is estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to contribute 8-10% of total man-made greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. If food waste were a country, it would be the world’s third largest emitter after China and the USA.
- Great progress has been made in the UK, but food waste from households and businesses is still around 9.5 million tonnes (Mt) per year, 70% of which was intended to be consumed by people (30% being the ‘inedible’ parts).
- This had a value of over £19 billion a year, and would be associated with more than 25 Mt of GHG emissions.
- The food that could have been eaten (6.4 Mt) would make the equivalent of over 15 billion meals – enough to feed the entire UK population 3 meals a day for 11 weeks.
- There is no comparable estimate for food waste pre-farm gate in the UK, but WRAP has estimated food waste levels from primary production at 1.6 Mt.
I wonder how much of that is bread. They sell massive loaves, so many still on supermarket shelves at the end of a day. Who is going to eat half an open loaf? Olio?
Good guess:
Bread
One of the reasons bread is thrown away so frequently is that it’s kept in the fridge. At 5C, it goes stale very quickly.Potatoes
According to UK Harvest, Brits are wasting 4.4 million potatoes a day, but it’s a shame to waste such as versatile food!Milk
You can freeze skimmed and semi-skimmed milk in its plastic bottle - but make sure there’s space at the top as it will expand.Homemade meals
There’s nothing like a home-cooked meal, but sometimes we overestimate how many portions we’ll need and end up with more than we can eat!Fizzy drinks and juices/smoothies
Before fizzy drinks go flat, pour them into ice lolly moulds, allowing some space for expansion, and freeze.Chicken and other poultry
The equivalent of 86 million chickens are wasted each year, but there are hundreds of ways to use up leftover chicken.Bacon
Freeze bacon rasher by rasher, each separated by a layer of greaseproof paper. It will last for two to three months.Cakes
We find it hard to believe that people are throwing away cake, but apparently they do!Chips
If you went a little overboard on the chips while ordering your Friday night takeaway, the good news is that you can pop them in the freezer and reheat them another time.Bananas
Bananas are among the most wasted foods in the UK.
GH includes tips for saving food in their article but I’ve cut them out to avoid an overlong post.
Seemingly, kitchen “basics” are no longer provided by parents or by those in loco parentis … 
most of these tips are impractical. Who is going to put bits of greaseproof paper between bacon in a freezer, if they do then find it in a year and think… hmm bin time. Everyone would need a chest freezer.
I like to keep potatoes in the salad section of the fridge. They last for months then.
Nobody aside from a 1970s suburban full time housewife will pour fizzy drinks into ice lolly moulds.
Nigella revealed there is one savoury ingredient she always keeps on-hand to make a quick and tasty meal.
“I always have bacon in the fridge but I also keep rashers frozen in twins - pairs of rashers - so I’m always near a bacon sandwich,” she confessed.
IIRC, she showed us those frozen rashers in her freezer during her first or second series of her TV show … 
You store potatoes in the fridge for months …
Very good post post Maree (I’ll have to stop agreeing with you all the time or we will have people talking) However,one of the reasons I voted for Brexit was that I mistakenly hoped we could free ourselves of the shackles and red tape necessary to our membership of the EU.
I worked for a small engineering company who suddenly had to find extra staff for calibration and certification, and also provide evidence that our materials were sourced from a bonafide company, who had also to be certified to supply raw materials to us.
25% of staff were now in a non productive position and the company could not afford to keep so many people who weren’t involved with manufacturing. We were all made redundant and the company closed. The components I produced are all made in Europe and America now. I’ve seen this happen so many times, and is the reason why there are very few engineering establishments in South Yorkshire any more.
But I digress…I’d hoped to see England stand on it’s own two feet and start producing crops that we need, but are currently buying from abroad. I’d hoped to see new life injected into our industries, manufacturing and fishing, creating proper jobs and filling our shops with ‘British Made’ products instead of ‘made in China’ ones. We have cast our net too far globally, and we could never hope to compete against far eastern labour. We have priced ourselves out of the global market, and still we strike for more pay, which only puts our prices up even further.
Food waste is a modern phenomena, because supermarkets sell such large amounts of products we save money buying in bulk and the cost of food is not a priority as in days gone by. We buy far more food than we need, and the good old fridge and freezer will keep stuff edible for eternity. My parents shopped most days for the fresh stuff that came into the shops direct from the farm up the road. No need for fridges and freezers in those days, a pint of milk was supped within a day, and another would appear on the step for tomorrow. We live in a throwaway world…A quid for a loaf from Tesco, if it goes mouldy you can chuck it out. Most people waste a couple of quid a week on lottery tickets, and block up the customer service desk at Tesco most days…They don’t care about a quid for a loaf, especially when you can get a filling meal from KFC or Macdonalds for less than the price of a smartphone subscription. And after all, which is most important?
If there had ever been the political will to do those things you hoped for from your Brexit, then they could all have been done just as easily while we were members of the EU
It wasn’t EU membership, regulations or philosophy that stopped them, it was lack of will to do it from our successive governments, under pressure from vested interests, the wealthy and big corporations and powerful people and countries
Of course, none of that changed after Brexit so what you hoped for was never, ever really on the cards or a realistic proposition
I’m sorry, but I think like most Brexiters, you looked at what you thought was wrong with our country and just constructed a fantasy Brexit in your head that would solve everything
And the snake oil salesmen like Farage and Johnson egged you on and lied to you to encourage you to believe your fantasies were possibilities, because it suited their own private agendas and career prospects
The Brexit people thought they could have and thought would solve all our woes was always just cloud cuckooland and propaganda.
And our woes weren’t caused by being in the EU, in fact, being in the EU alleviated them
Not everyone wastes food, or has the means to do so. You are forgetting the poor at the bottom of the pile
I belong to a couple of budget food groups, revolving around people trying to feed themselves for 50p or £1 a day
They don’t get to go to McDonalds or buy lottery tickets, they do go hungry.
A cheap loaf of bread has to last a week, mouldy or not
Often there isn’t any money for electricity for the freezer and fridge
They use powdered milk because it’s cheaper and lasts longer, haunt the reduced sections in supermarkets, rely on Olio and the foodbanks and To Good to Go
It’s a very different, harsh world for many
And these are the very people who can’t afford to choose healthy
They’ll end up buying whatever cheap, poor quality, chlorine washed, hormone stuffed, chemical coated cheap imported food from miles away that we get landed by our governments butt licking attempts to secure trade deals to replace the excellent ones we had with the EU that the Brexiters threw away 
yes they are less likely to sprout in the fridge. They last for months. Sweet potatoes can last for months in a cupboard, sometimes they sprout. I did plant one last year and it had the loveliest foliage, but on uprooting no new potatoes worth speaking of.
I guess before we had supermarket shops to tell us about best before dates people used to keep a store of potatoes in their (cold) cellars over winter.
I know potatoes last in cellars but long-lasting potatoes in fridges sounds like a miracle.
Mine rarely last a week … 
If I put store potatoes in the veg drawer if my fridge, they keep well for up to a month or so before they start sprouting - which is good because even a small bag of potatoes lasts me for weeks.
I find that “New potatoes” keep even longer than “old potatoes”
Don’t be tight with the mint, potatoes have feelings too…they need to be complemented.
I’m advised that potatoes kept in the fridge for up to four weeks become sweeter and darker (as the starches turn to sugar) … does that happen to yours?
