"Doug Kanter" wrote in message
...

wrote in message
ups.com...
The best example is with red delicious apples purchased at your local
grocery store.
The apples have whitish areas/stains on the outside skin, and on red
apples the white stains are especially visible. It is difficult to
remove the stains even when trying to rub them off
under running water. When soaked in water for 10 mins the whitish areas
become even
more visible. I assume they are wax, and the type of wax used on apples
supposed to be
water soluble and easily removable and these stains one is NOT. I do
not want to eat apples with pesticides and other dirt under the wax.

These stains are on apples no matter where you buy them. Is there any
way to remove the wax quickly and reliably? Does it make sense to peel
each apple?


It's easy to remove. Get yourself a fingernail brush that you'll use just
for fruits & vegetables. Put a drop or two of dish soap on the brush and
scrub, then rinse (obviously). It won't hurt the apple, but it will remove
the wax. Besides seeing that it's gone, you'll notice that the skin
suddenly has an apple smell.

Dish liquids contain surfactants that are chosen principally as oil-in-water
emulsifiers. They are *not* wax solvents, and are only OK wettng agents. And
although when dissolved in water they have good wetting properties, their
surface and interfacial tensions are too high to form an aqueous "sheet" of
liquid on a paraffin wax surface, let alone polyethylene, which is easier to
wet than paraffin.

There is at least one product on the market that is formulated as a food
grade wetting agent rather than as an oil-in-water emulsifier. I've tested
one of them on red delicious apples and it worked quite well: Earth Friendly
Products 'Fruit & Vegetable Wash'. Ingredients: water, surfactant, citric
acid
http://www.ecos.com/

Obviously the manufacturer is very secretive about the name of the
surfactant used in the formulation. Certainly they did not invent that
surfactant either. I have some hunches about the possible surfactants that
it could be. I know quite a bit about them.