The fruit gets sweeter and sweeter? Rumors
From “sweet watermelon” to “sugar strawberry”: a rumoured explosive path
At the beginning of each summer, a series of “fruit creeps” appeared on the social platform: “the watermelon is so sweet that it must be sweet” and “the strawberries are so red that they make a potion”. The schematics tend to cut out the juicy fruit, accompanied by a syringe with a "sweet" in it, with a great visual impact. Behind the 100,000+ transmission of such posts is a well-established “fear marketing” template: throw out anomalies and then contract professional terminology, and finally give an apparently simple solution — “buying organic” “buying imports”。
However, the rumours cannot be sustained if we ask a few questions about “how to fight with sweetness”. First, sweetener (sodium cyclohexylaminosulfonate) is a water soluble sweetener, which spreads with water within 24 hours of injection; second, the needle hole destroys the fruit tissue, leaving brown or moldy, and is extremely perishable during transport. For fruit farmers, the cost of needleing each fruit is much higher than natural maturity, and this economic bill is clear。
Ii. Why are the fruits getting sweeter? A “triple carriage” for breeding, planting and post-mining techniques
Cultivation: writing sugar in genes
Wang zhiqiang, a researcher at the zhengzhou school of fruit trees of the chinese academy of agricultural sciences, presented a set of data: the average solubility solids (commonly known as sugar) in the country were 8. 5 per cent in 1990 and the dominant varieties reached 11-13 per cent in 2023. “this is not magic, but rather the result of 30 consecutive years of cross-fertilization.” in the “kyohin” series, for example, researchers used high sugar fatherhood to mix with anti-morbid motherland, and then 8-10 generations of self-purification to obtain new varieties of sweet and fissure-resistant fruit. The same story happened on sun-sun rose grapes, red strawberries, soft seed pomegranates。
Cultivation: precision agriculture “calculates” every mouth
In a tomato greenhouse in shandong, the sensor monitors light, temperature, co2 concentrations in real time, and the integrated water fertilizer system adjusts the ratio of potassium nitrogen phosphorus to the plant's growth stage. Technician li tai peng said: “the tomato chromosomal chromium ratio is 1. 2:1 and the sugar acid ratio is the most coordinated.” in addition, watermelon solubility solids can increase by 0. 2 percentage points each increase in the temperature difference between day and night, which is why the gwags in xinjiang, ningxia are particularly sweet。
Post-mining: cold chains are not "food magic" but "favorite locks"
Many mistakenly thought that fruit would be sweeter by a “crete”, whereas modern cold chains were the heroes behind it. In the case of mango, which is reduced to 12°c and 85% humidity within 48 hours of harvesting, it inhibits starch enzyme activity, allowing sufficient time for fruit to be ripe for transport and natural rise in sugar. On the contrary, mangoes without cold chains tend to lose water due to high temperatures, and the sweetness is reduced significantly。
Iii. The truth in laboratories: sweetness testing “zero tolerance”
The beijing food safety monitoring and risk assessment centre examined 1650 batches of fruit in 2023, none of which were detected by sweets, sodium sugar and ansemi. The technicians explained that the test-out of the liquid chromatography-mass spectrometer was limited to 0. 01 mg/kg, “equivalent to finding a salt in a standard pool”. More importantly, our standards for the use of food additives (gb 2760-2014) clearly stipulate that sweeteners should not be used for fresh fruit. In addition to being fined more than $100,000, illegal additions may also constitute a crime of producing and selling toxic and harmful foods, with no pay for the fruit farmers。
Iv. Why are rumours endless? Double reading of psychology and communication
The food school of the chinese university of agriculture had done an experiment: displaying the same strawberries to two groups of consumers. Group a had been told, “it was sweetening”, and group b had been told, “it was natural maturity”. As a result, group a's acceptance of sweets declined by 40 per cent, even describing normal fruit as “chemical”. This confirms the “anti-placebo effect” — the negative implication distorts real perceptions。
At the dissemination level, rumours often take advantage of the public's anxiety about food security to complete the fissure in the guise of a “good warning”. By contrast, scientific rumours require reading long texts and understanding professional terms, and are naturally at a disadvantage. So, the eccentricity of fruit injections is always spread faster than the molecular mechanisms of sugar。
V. The three “equipment course” for customs
1. Labeling: the type name of the species, the sugar zone, such as “8424 watermelon sugar melons of 11%”, which is the characteristic of the species and is not added。
Taste: the sweetness of natural sugary fruits is layered, and the latter is fragranced with micro-acid or fruity spices; the artificial sweetener has a “single” and the latter is short。
3. Leave evidence: if the fruit is suspected of being unusually sweet, call 12315 for inspection and the market regulator will issue a report within seven working days。
Vi. Context: let science win rumors that we need you and me to turn
The growing sweetness of fruit is a microcosm of advances in agricultural science and technology and a result of the combined efforts of breeders, fruit farmers and logistics. Instead of being held by a rumour of "sweetness," go into the orchard and look at the fruit of the branch with a bug-proof bag and a two-dimensional code -- from flowering to maturity, every step has been recorded. The next time you meet a “fruit needle” post, you might want to transfer the article to someone around you, so that the sound of science overwhelms rumours. After all, what really deserves to be “hit” is the rumour itself。
