> It’s scary when even the fruit available is obviously full of hormones. We had a grapefruit for a while and it became an experiment to see if it would ever go bad. After four months we gave up and threw it away – but it still looked fresh.
"Full of hormones" is scary language. Plant hormones exist, but they are very different from animal hormones (which is what prefixless hormones normally refer to). They are indeed used in commercial farming to e.g. help cuttings grow new roots faster, or accelerate fruit ripening (e.g. ethylene is commonly used to ripen bananas). Ripeners are almost the opposite of preservatives, and plant hormones certainly don't explain a 4 month old fresh-looking grapefruit. Neither translates to "fruit full of hormones" in any meaningful sense and it certainly doesn't translate to anything negative. Animals are full of hormones all of the time: if you don't have hormones you die in pretty short order. Plants sans hormones doesn't fare much better.
I'm sorry that their agriculture products suck, but perhaps one can say that without making vague scientific-sounding scaremongering statements.
Well yes, the whole problem here is that we're discussing a Guardian 'article' as something that should somehow be taken serious. I mean, let's face it, The Guardian is like Breitbart, except from another corner on the ideological n-dimensional plane.
> It’s scary when even the fruit available is obviously full of hormones. We had a grapefruit for a while and it became an experiment to see if it would ever go bad. After four months we gave up and threw it away – but it still looked fresh.
"Full of hormones" is scary language. Plant hormones exist, but they are very different from animal hormones (which is what prefixless hormones normally refer to). They are indeed used in commercial farming to e.g. help cuttings grow new roots faster, or accelerate fruit ripening (e.g. ethylene is commonly used to ripen bananas). Ripeners are almost the opposite of preservatives, and plant hormones certainly don't explain a 4 month old fresh-looking grapefruit. Neither translates to "fruit full of hormones" in any meaningful sense and it certainly doesn't translate to anything negative. Animals are full of hormones all of the time: if you don't have hormones you die in pretty short order. Plants sans hormones doesn't fare much better.
I'm sorry that their agriculture products suck, but perhaps one can say that without making vague scientific-sounding scaremongering statements.