Does It Matter if I Eat the Stickers on Fruits and Vegetables? (Published 2021) (2024)

I keep finding myself biting into an apple or a peach, only to find I’ve eaten half the sticker the store put on there. Is there any harm in eating produce stickers?

While the stickers that get placed on fruits and vegetables won’t cause you any harm, it’s probably best to remove them before eating.

PLU stickers, which stands for “Price Look Up,” serve an important function in grocery stores: telling the clerk how much to charge for that item. In the United States, about half of fresh produce doesn’t arrive in packaging, so the sticker is the main source of information on what type of produce it is and how it was grown. (Stickers that start with the numbers 3 or 4 mean the item was grown conventionally, and those starting with 9 indicate the item was grown organically.)

“Because produce stickers have contact with food, the intended use of these stickers is the subject of premarket approval by the Food and Drug Administration, to ensure that any substances that may migrate to food from the use of the sticker is safe,” said a spokeswoman for the agency in an email. “As these stickers are intended to be removed before consumption of produce, the F.D.A.’s review does not include the exposure that would result from regular consumption of these labels. However, as these substances are of low toxicity, any exposure from the occasional, unintentional consumption of a sticker would not be expected to be a health concern.”