Quick Tip: Fruit Stickers
May 27, 2008 at 8:04 am 15 comments
Besides being useful for craft projects, those little stickers that come on your fruit actually tell you something. Did you know that you can tell if a piece of fruit is organically grown by the numbers on the sticker? If it starts with a “9”…it’s organic. If it starts with a “4”, it’s not. If it starts with an “8”, it’s genetically modified. Now you know. 🙂
Photo credit: kiwehowen (Creative Commons release)
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Happy Foody 
1.
Kristen's Raw | May 27, 2008 at 9:42 am
That’s a fun picture 🙂
2.
Rachel | May 27, 2008 at 9:44 am
I think you might find that the non-organic stickers can start with any number although the most common one is 4 it’s actually how many digits are in the number that’s the give away. 4 for non-organic. 5 digits for organic and genetically modified with the number at the beginning indicating what type then. You can actually see several stickers in the photo you included starting with the number 3 but only containing 4 digits. They are non-organic stickers. 🙂
3.
Deanna Riccardelli | May 27, 2008 at 12:18 pm
So cool – we just started a fruit sticker cup. We took an old tea canister and we keep our stickers on that and the girls keep their pencils/pens in it. I am glad for the info on numbers…I didn’t know that.
4.
clbeyer | May 27, 2008 at 3:36 pm
What beautiful art!
Yesterday I was exasperated because my apples had a long “organic” label sticker wrapped entirely around them. Here I am, trying to cut down on food packaging, and then my apples have to come home with extra stickers. But at least now I can put my stickers to good use. Artwork for my kitchen!
5.
livelightly | May 27, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Rachel…you are right. There are several different numbers, but 4 and 9 are the most commonly seen. I’ve seen the number 3 on some lately, but not as often. I have read that it’s just an extension of conventional fruit numbers because they ran out of “4” numbers. Not sure if that’s true or not. Basically, it’s just important to look for the 9! 🙂
6.
Annie | May 27, 2008 at 4:03 pm
That’s good to know, especially about genetically modified fruit. Thanks!
7.
mamakim | May 27, 2008 at 11:19 pm
yep,our organic stickers grace a composition notebook. my kids even do it!
8.
Jennifer | May 28, 2008 at 12:52 am
Thanks for sharing the information on the fruit numbers. I never knew!
9.
Yardsnacker | May 28, 2008 at 3:20 am
Fun! I’ve got my vitamix plastered with little stickers! You can see it in my latest vid.
I will soon have enough stickers to cover my car with.
😀
10.
Rebecca | May 28, 2008 at 4:00 am
That’s fascinating! Plus, this post brought a smile to my face, because I collected fruit stickers when I was young…good memories. 🙂 Thanks, Sara!
11.
Gypsy | May 30, 2008 at 9:01 am
Oh, fruit stickers look so cool like this. The organic produce that we buy gets delivered from the farm so no stickers for us – iin fact I think here in New Zealand no organic stuff has a sticker – which is of course a really good thing! I could decorate the wall calendar with the stickers from the non organic stuff we buy – it would be fun. Love your blogs – I am just enjoying reading them so much I don’t know when I’ll get to update mine 🙂
12.
hihorosie | June 16, 2008 at 9:19 pm
Thank you for the info!
13.
Becky | March 12, 2009 at 2:36 pm
What a colorful variety- and variety of countries as well! I almost bought some fresh organic blueberries the other day, but the Ecuador label stared me down and I couldn’t do it. Instead I’ve been enjoying local apples all winter long. Mmm!
14.
levenstein | January 10, 2010 at 11:06 am
Wow, this is an interesting fact. I have collected about 700 fruit stickers that I put on the borders around my windows, door, and closet. Maybe I will go around and look at the numbers on each…
15.
dee | February 17, 2011 at 2:40 pm
what does the 3 as beginnig number mean??