To All,
After I remove a sticker from a fruit or vegetable, traditionally I would affix the sticker to my weekly trash bag. At the end of the week the bag would be decorated with a row of sporty stickers along the edge, and, as I carried it to the curb, it would occur to me that I was throwing away a piece of found art. This traditional behavior changed in late September when I bought a pomelo (reported on in the e-mail of 19 October 2014). Its sticker was so large, gaudy, and informative that I decided to keep it for purposes of study and admiration. This sticker instructs one on how to select and prepare a pomelo as well as describing the nutrients it contained and why you would enjoy it. To preserve this sticker I stuck it onto a piece of paper, and since then I have put most of my fruit and vegetable stickers on this paper. Some don't make it either because they are inadvertently destroyed when removed from the fruit or because I don't want to pollute the paper with too many stickers from one fruit, e.g., bananas. After two and a half months, this
paper is now filled with stickers, and this piece is named, "Sticker Shock." The pomelo sticker is in the upper left corner.
No art work is an island. See the Chiquita Banana e-mail of 8 Nov 2014 for a discussion of the history of Chiquita stickers, parodies, and a web site that allows you to make your own custom stickers.
The numbers on the fruit stickers are Price Look-Up (PLU) numbers. In brief, the numbers on these stickers identify the type of fruit or vegetable. The idea is that this allows the cashier in a grocery store to know exactly what to charge. There are three main principles.
- The last four digits identify the fruit or vegetable. For most stickers, there are only four digits, but some have five.
- If there are five digits and the first digit is an 8, this indicates a genetically-modified organism (GMO). I don't think I have seen any of these.
- If there are five digits and the first digit is a 9, this indicates organically grown. Several of these are pictured above. The one easiest to see is three rows from the bottom and two columns from the right edge; it has bar code in the center and is blue beneath and yellow above and to each side. The number is 93016, which indicates an organic Concorde pear.
If you are wondering what fruit or vegetable a PLU refers to, you can go to http://www.plucodes.com/search_wizard.aspx?s=1. If you want all the details, you will want to read the International Federation for Produce Standards, "Produce PLU Codes: A Users' Guide--2012," which you can find at http://plucodes.com/docs/Users_Guide_July_2012_FINAL.pdf. These PLU codes have been used since 1990, and efforts have been made and continue to be made to improve them. Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_look-up_code reports that:
Since 2006, the 4-digit code is often supplemented by a GS1 DataBar Stacked Omnidirectional barcode.[8]Various new technologies are under consideration, including etching using lasers and printing or "tattooing" using ink made from substances such as the juice from blueberries
Numerous sites on the Internet are up in arms because, they claim, this system is voluntary and not enforced. They claim, for example, that producers of GMOs leave off the 8 with the purpose of hoodwinking the consumer. See the comments at http://www.drfranklipman.com/what-do-those-codes-on-stickers-of-fruits-and-some-veggies-mean/ and http://www.snopes.com/food/prepare/produce.asp.
The sticker below for a large red delicious apple shows that its PLU is 4016. (A regular red delicious apple is 4015.) You also see the bar code, which carries more information. The sticker is not edible but the adhesive is considered to be food grade.
Your party tip uses the capability of producing your own, custom stickers. Give each guest a piece of fruit with a sticker that pictures your guest's face at a moment of peak satisfaction. Perhaps show a picture from a graduation, a wedding, a divorce, or at the finish line of the marathon. Alternatively, the sticker could picture the face of your guest's definitive, lifetime dog. Your guest will be able to take the sticker home and, once it is on the fridge, admire it forever since you have supplied it with glue that never comes off, not even with a chisel, thanks to modern materials science.
