What is Apeel?

Larry A. Law

Have you heard of Apeel? It is being marketed as a newly developed, plant-based, protective coating that "helps the produce you love stay fresh for longer." It retains moisture within the produce and keeps oxygen out, which retards how fast the produce can naturally spoil. Apeel Sciences was founded with a $100,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (a red flag). Other red flag investors include the Rockefeller Foundation; the World Bank Group; Anne Wojcicki who is co-founder and CEO of the personal genomics company 23andMe; and Susan Wojcicki who used to be CEO of YouTube. Walmart, Costco, Kroger, Trader Joe's and other retailers currently sell Apeel-treated avocados, cucumbers, lemons, limes, oranges, organic apples, grapefruit, mandarins, and mangos with the Apeel protected sticker on them.

Supporting the White House's Bioengineering (GMO) Agenda

Apeel Science's founder, James Rogers, Ph.D., is a World Economic Forum (WEF) Young Global Leader. He supported the recent COVID lockdowns as a model for future climate change action (i.e., an advocate for mandating climate lockdowns). By May 2021, Apeel was already a $1.1 billion company. They found a timely ally in the Biden Administration's Bold Goals efforts to reduce agricultural waste and combat climate change. While reducing food waste and making fresh produce last longer are commendable goals, the question is, how is this being done? The devil is always in the details.

Edipeel

According to Apeel Sciences:

"Apeel adds a little extra peel on produce to slow the rate of water loss and oxidation ... That extra peel is completely edible, tasteless, and safe to eat. A variety of plant feedstocks can be used to create our formulations, and luckily these ingredients exist in peels, seeds and pulp of all fruits and vegetables ... We think of these materials as building blocks, restructuring them in a way that allows us to iterate on what nature created, making our solution into a coating that can be applied to produce. So, while nature is our foundation and inspiration, innovation and technology are how we apply these ingredients ..."

A Half-Truth is Still a Lie

The primary component of the coating is a mixture of monoacylglycerides derived from grapeseed. But a deeper dive filed in a Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) notice filed by Apeel in April 2016, further specifies the two primary components as 2,3-dihydroxypropyl palmitate and 1,3-dihydroxypropan-2-yl palmitate. If you recall, our Consumer Awareness Guide for vitamins and minerals lists a warning for the synthetic form of Vitamin A--palmitate. While the pharmaceutical industry, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) have no problems with synthetic forms of vitamins and inorganic forms of minerals, our Grass Roots Movement (GRM) highly recommends plant-based and living sources. Laboratory formulations actually prove harmful to human health—see our Wellness Journey Class. For those of us who want to eat real, whole food, this one point is a major reason not to ingest lab-grown, Apeel-covered fruit and vegetables. The FDA states in their 2016 GRAS Notice No. 648 that "monoacylglycerol derivatives are components of dietary fats commonly found in food and are also endogenously formed in the human body" but this is a half-truth which leaves out the synthetic structures of the underlying components used by Apeel Sciences.

Toxic Residues

In Part 3 of the 2019 GRAS notice, under Maximum Limit of Residues, you can see that grape seed oil, which makes up the basis of this product, contains residues of processing aids such as ethyl acetate, heptane, and palladium. It also has the heavy metals of arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury. The daily exposure limit is low for these ingredients but it should be concerning that the cumulative amount steadily increases every time the produce is eaten. These elements are not readily eliminated from the body but accumulate over time.

For those people thinking they will just peel the produce and eliminate the coating, the company states for the record that the coating is "not expected" to penetrate beyond the peel into the fruit. "Not expected?" This is reminiscent of how the COVID jabs were supposedly not going to migrate from the injection site and we all know that was a blatant lie. So, the company has no idea—they are simply guessing and hoping—there is no science to back up their claim. And if there is no science here, it is disconcerting to consider where else the science is likely lacking. 

Synthetic Biology

Apeel Sciences is listed as one of the best-funded synthetic biology (synbio) companies. In 2018, the Apeel founder told Food Navigator that his company would soon transition to using synthetic biology rather than extracting its ingredients from real food. In Apeel's GRAS notice, they stated that the "monoacylglycerides can be created by breaking down a triglyceride by removing two of its fatty acids or they can be manufactured synthetically."  So, it seems clear the company is forecasting that they plan to leave their "natural" roots and move into the bioengineering world of synthetic biology and lab-grown food (if they haven't already). 

Making Produce Last Longer Naturally

Moms Across America lists several tips on how to store fruits and vegetables longer without using synthetic biology. Freezing and drying fruit and vegetables works very well. Angie takes our organic grapes, puts them in a bowl covering them with water and soaks them with a couple of tablespoons of an organic apple cider vinegar (with mothering). She lets them soak for few minutes before rinsing and putting them in containers with a paper towel. They last much longer than normal that way. Remember that the best gauge for freshness of a fruit or vegetable is to inspect them visually. If they are sealed shut in a coating that delays the decay process, you won't be able to tell how long that produce has been sitting around. In addition, if the produce is coated before it is ripe, will it ever fully ripen? Many fruits and vegetables are currently picked and shipped before they are fully ripe. They ripen on the way to the grocery stores but that is one of the reasons so many of them are tasteless and don't have the a great texture. Will Apeel make this condition worse? If you discover something about this, let me know. I don't plan on conducting any personal experiments as Angie and I are choosing not to eat this lab-created/coated produce.