Although the stickers that get placed on fruits and vegetables won’t cause you any harm, it’s probably best to remove them before eating. PLU stickers, which stands for “Price Look Up,” serve an important function in grocery stores: they tell the clerk how much to charge for that item. In the United States, about half of fresh produce doesn’t arrive in packaging, so the sticker is the main source of information on what type of produce it is and how it was grown.
A Food and Drug Administration spokeswoman stated: “As these stickers are intended to be removed before consumption of produce, the FDA’s review does not include the exposure that would result from regular consumption of these labels. However, as these substances are of low toxicity, any exposure from the occasional, unintentional consumption of a sticker would not be expected to be a health concern.”
There are three main components to the sticker, according to Ed Treacy, vice president of supply chain and sustainability for the Produce Marketing Association (PMA), the organization that invented the produce sticker system decades ago. There’s the ink, there’s the substrate it’s printed on (typically plastic, plastic composite or paper) and there’s the adhesive, which makes it stick. “All three of those have to be safe for humans,” Treacy said.
Though the stickers are edible, they have no flavor and no nutritional value. And there is an environmental downside to not removing them before discarding skins, peels and other parts that you don’t eat: Produce stickers are not home compostable, so they won’t break down in the compost.
Source: nytimes.com
