Apeel Changing Its Formula: What’s In It Now

I have an Apeel update that you really have to hear about.

I don’t have anything personal against the founder of Apeel. I just don’t want to eat his toxic preservative on my food, and I don’t want YOU to have to, either.

So let’s start with the fact that you and I aren’t the customer, for Apeel. So we can’t starve this product out by just not buying it, too easily. We have to tell the COMPANIES who put it on our food, not to!

Per FTC guidelines, please assume links on this newsletter may be affiliate links that benefit us, though if so, the price is not marked up. Thank you for supporting our mission.

We don’t directly buy the synthetic coating that involves a lot of trans fats, chemicals they’re keep trying to pass off as natural--

--and they are saying they’ve changed their formula since filing their FDA GRAS statement where they disclosed 5 heavy metals and 2 solvents:

But they’ve posted a statement on their website, and I have to share parts of it with you, to show how they continue to try to pass off a toxic product we don’t want on our food, as some kind of innocuous product.

So they can keep getting companies to coat their produce in it. And so that we shut up and stop complaining to those companies reselling Apeel-coated produce, and the companies behind the scenes dipping fruits and vegetables in it!

They’re saying the FDA document they filed, showing 5 heavy metals and 2 solvents, is “outdated.” And then they go on to brag that they use CITRIC ACID. I’ll get back to that in a minute. You should know what citric acid is.

But I looked up the FDA’s response to Apeel requisition to update their GRAS (Generally Regarded as Safe) filing. It calls MDAS, the substance starting with grapeseed, that is mostly monoglyceride and diglyceride fats, as a “drug.”

The FDA statement says that due to the fact that Apeel admits its “drug” is in a “proof of concept” phase, and not “commercializing” it, it isn’t approved unless it meets some kind of exception.

Let me show you what citric acid is, since they say that’s what they’re using, as if consumers should be happy with this.

Their excuse for calling it by a name that implies it’s made out of orange peel or something—it’s not made of any citrus, by the way—is that a similar molecular compound does exist in orange and lemon peels.

However, citric acid that is in tons of your processed food and soft drinks has no citrus in it.

It's actually made from BLACK MOLD.

Companies who use citric acid would really love for you NOT to figure out that black mold grown in a lab is a good preservative, so they call it, wait for it, “aspergillus niger.”

Now I took some Latin as a kid, and I know what the roots of both of those words mean, but I googled it just to be able to prove it to you.

Aspergillus niger is BLACK MOLD, but they’re hoping you just see that and accept that, having no idea what it is. 

Okay, going sideways for a minute, for the sake of your health -- it’s not exactly just Apeel using black mold AKA “citric acid” as a preservative.

If you eat processed food, or soft drinks, take a look at the ingredient list. You’re going to find citric acid.

Now when I first googled citric acid, it starts by highlighting that citric acid is naturally occurring in the peels of fruit.

Google results are heavily biased toward supplement and drug and chemical companies. They hope you don’t then keep reading past the highlighted bit, to learn that not only is it made from mold, with the peels of the cassava plant (kind of an African potato) as the substrate—

--I would imagine because it’s a throwaway product, so they can use potato peels as the starch super cheap--

--but, they ignore that it’s also made from black mold, well known to be super toxic to humans.

And, notice here how it kinda mentions at the very end that it can trigger allergies.

Recently. I rented an apartment in UT that I paid $2800 for, for 3 weeks, to visit my kids as it’s all four of their birthdays. Just a one-bedroom.

And I chose this one because they’re the ONLY ones who wrote back when I wrote them asking if they’d agree to NOT use toxic cleaning chemicals before we came.

I told them I cleaned houses to put myself through college and besides SoftScrub and Lysol in toilets, I used only water to clean. No Pledge for dusting; nothing in the water I washed floors with; no descaler in showers, that stuff is so deadly.

Anyway so now I’ve just identified myself as a pain-in-the-ass kind of tenant you may not want to even deal with.

And just ONE property manager wrote me back, saying they use two brands’ products that market themselves as being less toxic.

I’m sure their customers think the products are made of essential oils and lemon peels—but just wait, because—they’re not.

So even though I’ve looked at one of those two companies’ ingredient lists and was not impressed, long ago, that was as good as it was going to get. And I booked this place.

So I get here and within an hour, I had a slight headache and by bedtime half my face has broken out in a rash.

Usually my husband is the one with the chemical sensitivities, but I occasionally have them, too. I can’t even remember what YEAR I last had a headache.

So we’re looking at the binder about this place we’ve rented, and there’s a whole page about how they use such great cleaning products because they’re made with CITRIC ACID.

I guess the people who run this place think that citric acid is like an orange peel in a bottle—I’m here to tell you: it's not—or they at least would like the tenants to believe they’ve cleaned the place with natural products that aren’t toxic to them.

So the apartment I’m staying in is bragging about citric acid being its cleaning products--and now so is Apeel … but wait, it gets worse:

John and I went the night we arrived, to my favorite family-owned chain of health food stores, only to find them selling citric acid in packages.

They’re selling it to people who shop there thinking they’re looking out for their health.

I raised my family shopping at those Good Earth stores, back when it was an amazing market for those trying to eat an organic, whole-food diet--

--almost all of that is gone, the Produce section is 5% of the store now, they’re selling 95% supplement pills and more-expensive, sometimes-organic junk food.

And even citric acid. Black mold in a bag. Ingredient listed? Citric acid.

(Listen, if it was made of orange peel, they’d put that on the ingredient list. Not citric acid! Also, if it was orange peel, it wouldn’t be a white synthetic crystalline substance, would it? I hope you start looking at your labels for citric acid now.)

So back to Apeel. They claim they’re no longer using solvents.

They very weirdly claim that “heavy metals are not added to our product.” Nobody has ever accused them of ADDING heavy metals.

Heavy metals, five of them, were in their FDA filing as being used in their manufacturing process. That makes it a substance that doesn’t have to be listed as an ingredient.

But then it gets weirder. They say: “In fact, we try to remove as many [heavy metals] as possible during the manufacturing process.” 

(I would love to know what brings heavy metals IN to their “manufacturing process,” that they claim they’re trying to remove.)

But, we still don’t know, as they’ve still not disclosed a complete ingredient list.

We just know about the trans fats, and the citric acid now—and, well, they say baking soda is in there. We don’t know what else.

Anyway, nothing about that makes sense, and it feels like wordsmithing and trying to appease the end user of the product, that’s us, when we have little say about what is used on our food.

In their statement on their website, they reiterate that their product is mostly plant-based monoglycerides and diglycerides. But the FDA letter in response to their re-filing (see References below) states that Apeel says this “drug” is in “proof of concept” phase.

I don’t care if it started from plants or animals or aliens, you guys–if it’s highly synthetic and trans fats (FDA calling MDAS a drug, and an untested on, at that)--if they’re preserved with black mold–

–I don’t want to eat it. I don’t want you to have to eat it, either.

And I still want full disclosure of what Apeel is made of. What makes grape seed become a drug called MDAS, that Apeel admits is in “proof of concept?”

The statement on the Apeel website says their product is tested for “purity,” which is a word that Pharma and Big Ag just love, because it gives people a warm, happy feeling of false security.

But what it means is: we test to keep stuff out of the product that isn’t supposed to be in the product.

It doesn’t mean that what’s supposed to be in the product isn’t toxic!

The good news is, it’s a very small minority of the produce you buy that is coated with Apeel. Let’s keep it that way, and let those who provide our food know we don’t want the Apeel preservative.

Some companies have heard from us and backed out of their partnership with Apeel Sciences. Costco for one. For now, at least. A massive global produce dealership in CA called Limoneira, too.

We have to make our voices heard. If we say nothing, that’s tacit permission for them to do whatever they want, with our food.

See the link below, so you can send a letter, with one click, to the executive decision makers at Walmart and at Houweling, a huge Dutch produce distributor, who’ve just announced they’re coating English cucumbers with Apeel, instead of covering them with the single-use plastic wrappers they currently use.

Send them the letter below, saying we won’t shop at Walmart if they do this, and asking them to let us know if they’ve changed their mind.

And I’ll also share with you a free wallet card we created, print both sides, of the stores who’ve stated they will not sell Apeel-coated produce.

And on the other side, the stores who say they do and will sell Apeel-coated produce. Along with the stores who just won’t answer any of us—which, of course, is rather suspect.

Or if you want us to ship you the printed and laminated two-sided wallet card and 14 other resources I think you’ll find highly valuable to shop and eat healthier:

We’ll ship them to you for a small charge.

Thank you for taking action to keep toxic preservative off our healthiest foods.

If you’d like to see this article in video form, here it is:

Thanks for following GreenSmoothieGirl, and for your support of this blog, almost the only place I publish where I have so far not been censored. Those of you who subscribe for $10/month are especially appreciated, and we know you’ll do so only if you find value here.

References:

1. Wallet card, stores using Apeel, and those who’ve vowed not to.

2. One-click letter campaign, to tell Walmart and Houweling that we don’t want English cucumbers coated in “MDAS” drug Apeel is making as a preservative.

3. FDA response to Apeel’s request for approval of MDAS, their “drug” to put on fruits and vegetables: https://www.fda.gov/media/180202/download