The Truth About Seedless Fruits and Why They Are an Evil In Disguise
Seedless fruits have revolutionized the world of supermarket shelves. They’re great for the lunchbox, and for many people, they’re also an essential part of their diet.
Around the world, seedless fruits are increasingly popular among consumers due to their convenience.
Humanity has been striving for standardization for decades, which extends to consumer goods such as fruits and vegetables, within the framework of a profit-oriented marketing logic dictated by the corporations that dominate the market.
These companies want us to believe that the consumer wants standardization, but their campaigns make us not want to buy something that looks a little different from the other goods on the shelf.
Farmers have historically grown many seedless fruits because they were easier to sell and ship. Still, we must consider their impact on health, biodiversity, and our food system when deciding whether they are beneficial.
What is the truth about seedless fruits?
While this commodity makes fruits more commercially valuable, it also poses a major threat: the genetic variability of many plants that require seeds as a critical element of their evolution.
Homogenized fruits entirely depend on human action in the plant’s reproductive process, exposing it to many pathogens.
The pros and cons of seedless fruits
There are many reasons why people want to eat more seedless fruits. They may wish to avoid seeds for dietary reasons or because they do not like the texture of some seeds.
The grower may benefit from the fact that in watermelons, for example, the absence of seeds, which are necessary for the production of the plant hormone ethylene, prolongs the life of the fruit because that specific hormone is known to promote ripening.
Consumers who enjoy eating fresh fruit often want to buy seedless or peeled fruit because it is easier to eat. Hence, when we talk about the pros of seedless, it all comes down to a commodity.
On the other hand, there are a few downsides to these types of goods.
Thus, there are more cons than pros when discussing seedless fruits.
1. Seedless means pricey.
Any process that relies on human intervention has financial drawbacks. For one thing, these fruits tend to be more expensive than their seeded counterparts. Thus, a seedless watermelon will cost you more than the regular variety.
2. They have to be propagated by cloning.
One might think that seedless fruits grow naturally, but that would be wrong. These fruits, also called “parthenocarpic” or “parthenogenetic,” cannot regenerate by producing seeds. This means that they must be propagated by cloning.
Unfortunately, cloning is highly inefficient and leads to a loss of genetic diversity.
Cloning is asexual reproduction, which means that no fertilization of an egg is necessary to reproduce another organism. This process is not natural because it’s forced and not part of the life cycle of these plants.
The process involves taking one or more cuttings from the parent plant and then replanting them in the soil, where they will grow into new plants with similar characteristics to their parents. Thus they are nothing more than clones.
The problem with this method is that it’s costly compared to other methods for growing fruit trees — not only does it take more time than planting seeds, but there are also risks involved when attempting to clone plants because cloners need access to healthy specimens for them to thrive!
3. They have fewer vitamins and minerals.
A downside of eating peeled or seedless fruit is that those elements contain many nutrients and fiber.
Seedless fruits are not as healthy. They have fewer vitamins and minerals. They also contain less fiber, which means they’re digested more quickly by your body.
Moreover, the lack of seeds means that these fruits have fewer antioxidants, phytonutrients (plant-based nutrients), and anti-inflammatory properties.
4. They reduce the biodiversity of fruits.
It’s not just the fact that there are no seeds, though. Even if a seedless fruit were to be planted, it would not reproduce naturally because all of its offspring are clones of their parent plants.
This means that the fruit is genetically identical, making them vulnerable to diseases and pests due to their lack of genetic diversity.
On top of this, when you buy bananas or any other seedless fruits from the supermarket or grocery store, they’re often shipped from other countries — often halfway across the world — since they cannot be grown locally in some places where they’re favored.
Shipping these fruits over vast distances puts an enormous strain on our planet’s resources and the environment by using more fossil fuels than necessary.
This further contributes to global warming because the production of such products requires so much energy per kilogram compared to traditional varieties such as pears or apples, which have seeds and therefore need less fuel-intensive production methods because of the natural diversity within the population of each species.
Concluding remarks
Fruit is a healthy and nutritious food we should include in our diet. But some types of fruit are healthier than others.
You might think that seedless fruits would be the perfect source of nutrients in the future. However, without seeds, seedless fruits can’t regenerate themselves.
To have fruits that can only be propagated by cloning, thus sterile and impotent to germinate a new crop of their own, means the plants are always on the verge of extinction — so while it might seem like a good idea at first glance, you’re missing out by going seedless.
I hope this article has shed some light on the pros and cons of seedless fruit. It’s an interesting topic that many people don’t think about, but it’s important to know what you are eating.
The sustainability of our food sources is a critical issue. This is a topic we cannot afford to ignore. If we fail to take action now, future generations will have to pay for it later.
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Rui Alves is a distinguished author, international book judge, and publisher. He runs Alchemy Publications and serves as editor-in-chief for Engage, Rock n’ Heavy, Beloved, Zenite, and Babel.
