Transparency

Two apples are not the same

Two apples are not the same. The differences are recorded in public, by named agencies, and you can look them up. That is a better thing to know than any verdict this page could hand you.

What this page will not do

It will not tell you whether your food is safe or dangerous. That question is genuinely unsettled at the levels usually measured, and a screen that answered it confidently would be selling you something.

If a child is reading this with you

Nothing here says food will hurt you. Food is not clean or dirty. Some apples have more of some things in them than others, people write it down, and you are allowed to go and read what they wrote.

What actually varies — 6 things, each one written down somewhere public

Which variety it is

established

A Honeycrisp and a Red Delicious are both apples and are not the same food. Varieties of one crop differ in sugar, acid, fibre and vitamin content, sometimes by a lot. Supermarket varieties were often selected for how well they ship and store rather than for what is in them.

Check it yourself: Look up two named apple varieties in FoodData Central and put the numbers side by side.

Record: USDA FoodData Central · public domain

That record cannot show: What is in the specific apple in your hand. It reports samples and averages. The spread between samples of one food is the interesting part and it is easy to miss when a single average gets quoted.

How ripe it was when it was picked

established

Produce that has to travel is picked before it is ripe so it survives the trip. Ripening on the plant and ripening in a container are not the same process and do not end in the same place.

Check it yourself: Taste the same fruit in season locally and out of season shipped. You do not need a laboratory for this one.

Record: USDA FoodData Central · public domain

How long ago it was picked

established

Some vitamins break down with time, light and warmth after harvest — vitamin C and folate most noticeably. A vegetable that spent two weeks in transit is not the same as one picked yesterday, even if both are the same variety.

Check it yourself: Frozen produce is usually frozen within hours of picking, which is why it often measures better than 'fresh' produce that travelled a long way. That surprises people and it is in the data.

Record: USDA FoodData Central · public domain

The soil and how it was grown

established

Soil mineral content, water and farming practice all affect what ends up in a plant. The size of that effect differs a lot by nutrient — minerals track the soil more closely than vitamins the plant makes itself.

Check it yourself: Harder to check yourself. This is the one on this list to hold most loosely, and it is why the entry says which nutrients it applies to rather than claiming it for all of them.

Record: USDA FoodData Central · public domain

What was sprayed on it

established

Pesticide residues are measured every year on food bought in actual shops, and the results are broken out by crop and by country of origin. Some crops carry residues far more often than others. This is a public record and almost nobody reads it.

Check it yourself: Open the PDP report for something you buy every week. The detection rates differ enormously between crops.

Record: USDA Pesticide Data Program · public domain

That record cannot show: Whether a residue at the measured level affects a person. It measures what is there. What that does to a body is a different question with a different and less settled answer.

What was put in during making

established

Additives are listed on the package by law. Which additives are permitted differs between countries — a substance allowed in one place can be restricted in another, which means two competent regulators read the same evidence and came to different conclusions.

Check it yourself: Compare the ingredient list of the same brand-name product bought in two countries. People post these side by side and the differences are real and checkable.

Record: FDA food additive and GRAS listings · public domain

That record cannot show: The full list of what is in the food supply. A manufacturer may conclude a substance is GRAS without notifying FDA at all, so the public list is a floor rather than a complete picture. That is a structural gap in the record, not a gap in this page.

Still argued — 2 questions, both sides given

Do pesticide residues at the levels usually measured on food affect a person's health?

Not in dispute

Residues are present, they are measured every year, the measurements are public, and legal tolerances exist and are set by the EPA. All of that is documented and checkable.

Typical residues are far below levels shown to cause harm, so the exposure is not a meaningful risk.

Tolerances are set with margins below levels where effects were observed in testing, and measured residues usually fall well under the tolerance.

The margins may not account for everything that matters.

Long-term low-dose exposure, mixtures of several substances at once, and effects during childhood development are harder to study than single-substance testing and are argued to be less well covered.

Because this is the question people actually have, and both confident answers to it are being sold to somebody. Knowing which parts are measured and which are argued is worth more than being handed either verdict.

Record: USDA Pesticide Data Program · public domain

Is fruit and veg less nutritious now than it was fifty years ago?

Not in dispute

Nutrient content varies by variety, soil, ripeness and storage. That much is settled and is the top half of this page.

There has been a real decline.

Comparisons of old and new food composition tables show lower values for several minerals in some crops.

The comparison does not support the conclusion.

The varieties grown changed over the same period, and so did the laboratory methods used to measure them. A difference between two tables can come from either without the food having changed.

It is repeated constantly as settled fact in both directions. The honest position is that the comparison is confounded, and saying so is more useful than picking a side.

Record: USDA FoodData Central · public domain

The records themselves — 5 of them, all public

USDA Pesticide Data Program
Annual testing of pesticide residues on food actually bought in shops. Thousands of samples a year, broken out by commodity and by country of origin.
How to use it: Find the commodity you buy. The report gives what was detected, how often, and at what level, against the legal tolerance.
Cannot show: Whether a residue at the measured level affects a person. It measures what is there. What that does to a body is a different question with a different and less settled answer.
EPA pesticide tolerances (40 CFR Part 180)
The maximum residue legally allowed on each food for each pesticide. Set per crop and per substance, in regulation.
How to use it: Look up the substance and the crop. The tolerance is the number the PDP results are measured against.
Cannot show: A tolerance is a legal ceiling arrived at through a regulatory process. It is not a line where harm begins, and reading it as one is the most common mistake made with this record.
USDA FoodData Central
Measured nutrient content of foods, including — and this is the part almost nobody uses — multiple entries for the same food with different values.
How to use it: Search a food and read more than the first result. Compare the entries for the same food and look at how far apart they are.
Cannot show: What is in the specific apple in your hand. It reports samples and averages. The spread between samples of one food is the interesting part and it is easy to miss when a single average gets quoted.
FDA food additive and GRAS listings
Substances permitted in food, and the notices manufacturers have filed claiming a substance is Generally Recognized As Safe.
How to use it: Read the ingredient list on the package, then look the unfamiliar names up here.
Cannot show: The full list of what is in the food supply. A manufacturer may conclude a substance is GRAS without notifying FDA at all, so the public list is a floor rather than a complete picture. That is a structural gap in the record, not a gap in this page.
Country of Origin Labeling (COOL)
Which country a covered food came from, on the label, by law — for produce, fish, and some meats and nuts.
How to use it: Read the sticker or the shelf label. Then look that country up in the PDP results, which break residues out by origin.
Cannot show: It does not cover everything, and it names a country rather than a farm. Two apples from one country can differ more from each other than from an imported one.

Nothing here says one country's food is better than another's. Country of origin is recorded and is worth knowing; a league table built out of it would be an assertion the records do not support, aimed at people rather than at a food system.

Allergies, a pregnancy, a condition, a medicine — those are questions for a doctor or a registered dietitian who can ask you things a screen cannot.