In praise of the perfect fruit

Yeah, yeah, I know some of you will have seen that title and assumed that I was making some sort of satirical reference to some of our more flamboyant celebrities, but I really am talking about fresh produce. In this case, I am choosing to honour the humble apple. For the past week, I’ve been eating nothing but apples for lunch in an effort to lose weight (oh for those halcyon days last year when I was so depressed I lost all interest in food and people told me I was too thin) and it has occurred to me that I don’t appreciate them enough.

Now, aesthetically speaking, I know all about apples. I love painting them because they’re round and red and shiny, which means it is possible to depict them with a semblance of accuracy using my chosen medium, lipstick. I’ve lost count of how many I have depicted over the years (you can see examples here and here). I’ve never really been fond of eating them though, and I’ve always regarded apple in fruit salad as something of a cop out, the unexciting filler compensating for the bits of strawberry you’re really after. A bit like the peanuts in a bag of trail mix.

It turns out that they’re as useful as lunch as they are as still life subjects, especially when lunch is usually something you grab absentmindedly as you race from one meeting to the next.

For one thing, they’re portable. They’re ergonomically designed to fit conveniently into the palm of your hand. They don’t require much preparation besides being rinsed. Getting pineapple to a point where it can be eaten practically requires clearing half a day in your diary.

They’re not smelly, like bananas, which linger uncomfortably long after you’ve eaten them.

They don’t make a mess. Imagine trying to eat a mango while you’re driving on the M1.

They stay fresh without being kept in the fridge.

Unlike grapes, there are no pips to spit out, and unlike oranges or litchis, there’s no sticky juice to run everywhere.

You don’t have to peel them, like you do with naartjies.

Finally, and this is very important, they don’t come with horrible skin like — shudder — peaches. (I suffer from haptodysphoria; the thought of peach fuzz makes my toes curl, and not in a good way.)

Apples are the original fruit. They were first domesticated in the 10th century BC and their significance in Western culture is unparalleled. In the early days, they were horrible sour little things for the most part, not like the glamorous new varieties that come with names like “Fuji” and “Pink Lady” (in case you’re interested, Belgian production of a variety called Jonagold fell sharply in 2010). Apples represent 13% of global fruit production and more than 50% of the total crop is grown in China, where many farmers have switched from grain to fruit trees. Every year, around 46-million tonnes of apples are picked. Some of them are turned into apple sauce, others into juice or cider, still others into dried apple crisps with Miley Cyrus smiling out from the packet, like the ones I saw at Pick n Pay the other day.

I haven’t succeeded in losing much weight on my apples-for-lunch diet, but then again it would help if I didn’t eat ice-cream for supper. I’ll just have to invest in another 1,5kg pack from Fruit and Veg City, and keep crunching away until getting into my size 30 jeans is once again allowed by the physical laws of the known universe.