As I've mentioned in other threads, I grew up in the UP of Michigan. We had a small orchard with a few varieties of apples, plus a woods across the road from our house included the original location of the town, which burned the same summer as the Chicago Fire, so there were many orchards gone wild there, which produced apples, pears, cherries, and even grapes. Although I am well aware that grape vines aren't trees, the ones that existed grew onto trees, and one particularly large one that was growing onto a stand of three cedar trees produced grapes with the distinctive taste of cedar, which were not particularly tasty but we ate them anyhow. But that's not what I came here to talk about. As a child, I ate a lot of apples, even crabapples, which were an acquired taste, to be sure, but never did I feel sick after eating an apple. I liked apples. When I moved to Southern California at the age of eighteen, I bought some apples at the store, and after eating just two them, I had an uneasy feeling in my stomach. I didn't throw up or anything but it was that sort of a feeling. Thinking perhaps the problem was something specific with those apples, I have tried eating apples many times since, but with the same effect. I have tried several varieties of apples, but they make me feel slightly sick to the stomach. When I moved to Texas, I tried it again, and have done the same in Maine. Even eating apples directly from the tree, apples make me feel like I have eaten something that I shouldn't have eaten.
The apples we buy today are definitely not the ones we used to pick when we were kids! I have all but given them up, because, other than Macintosh, they come in two flavors now: tasteless and bad! My daughter has been researching heirloom apples online, and hopefully we will eventually have access to good ones again.
@Ken Anderson Do you think it's related to chemicals used in farming nowadays, or a sensitivity/allergy? I think much of our food these days isn't nearly as healthy as what we were used to in the past. Even homemade food doesn't taste the same, so I tend to think it's the chemicals used in the soil/fertilizer, although it could also be the seeds.
Wow, I can't believe I am reading this. Same thing as me. As I child I lived on a farm for the summers and in the fall ate apples, even crab apple like you (also crab apple jam & jelly), also green apples. We never got sick. As an adult I have to peal the apples and cook them into applesauce or apple pie, then I can eat them. This is the same with other things and I am sure it is like Diane says.....it IS the chemicals. I am sure of it because I am very sensitive to chemicals and weather. My body gets so sick. It is like a flu feeling.
I think that most of the apples that we get from the store are also waxed to make them shiny. So, besides being grown with the chemical pesticides and chemical fertilizers; they would also have whatever is in the waxy coating that they put on apples. I do not have any problems with eating them; but I think that they are definitely not as tasty as the fresh apples used to be when I was a kid. We lived in town; but it was on a large lot and there were all sorts of fruit trees, as well as other fruit. We had apples, pears, prunes, and apricot trees. Plus, my mom had raspberries, blackberries, and strawberries growing out in the yard, and there was a rhubarb patch out in the very back part of the yard , and also an old grape vine with concord grapes. I loved having a bowl of raspberries and cream (canned milk) for breakfast ! And the blackberries were just so huge and juicy, they were better than any other dessert could have been. We had so much that mom used to send me down the road with bowls of fruit for neighbors who she knew didn't have fruit trees. We lived in a very poor neighborhood, and those folks were always so thrilled to have their bowls of fruit; so I loved delivering them.
Apples still taste good to me, but they make me feel sick afterwards. Blackberries and raspberries, on the other hand, are nearly tasteless when obtained in a supermarket, but when I pick and eat the wild ones on my land, they are every bit as good as I remember them. Strawberries, although good from the market, are nowhere near as good as picked strawberries, or even those purchased from the farm.
@Ken Anderson, maybe your stomach has something in there. My husband has acid reflux and it had changed his eating habits. He used to feast on green leafy vegetables like water spinach, cabbage and native lettuce we call pechay, but not anymore because he would get that queasy stomach as if something is protesting inside his tummy. And you know what, he had developed nervous attack because of that. So we thought it was really something very serious until gastritis was discovered. His acid reflux was confirmed in 2012. By the way, I like reading your stories about your place. It's truly a good read about nature. More of it, I wish.
@Ken Anderson I just watched this documentary this weekend about GMO's It was called Genetic Roulette and one of the things they said which stayed with me, is that some of the herbicides they use on some of the crops these days cause small openings to occur in the digestive track which leads to leaky gut. When your gut leaks you suddenly get allergic or sick from the things you used to eat that were fine. Now I know from your posts that you are a pretty home spun fellow and eat natural, all the more reason anything that is slightly different would effect you. I bet if you did a full detox and only did organic stuff for awhile you might find you can take the organic apples. Just curious does apple sauce make your stomach hurt? Anyway if I was to take this GMO stuff to heart, and I do, it gets so that there are so many things that you will no longer eat. there was a point where things got hectic and we tried some of the stuff we used to eat and we got sick pretty fast. The food is definitely not like it used to be , in fact if one reads labels you can tell some of it is not even food.
There is no telling what is in the food we eat today. I know the labels tell us what is in the food but it seems to be more synthic than real food. Fresh apples have been sprayed with chemicals and shipped from one place to another and made to last longer during the shipping. I drink aloe vera jucie to help keep my stomach when it gets upset from eating.
You are right, we don't know what's the composition of the food we eat now. Take for instance the eggs, I have noticed that it has very soft shells now and the taste is much different than before. One time I bought a pack of organic eggs and I remembered how eggs used to taste. That means the ordinary eggs may be full of chemicals. With fruits, there seemed not much of those synthetics but with vegetables, teh cucumbers don't taste that good anymore and the lettuce as well. There is this lettuce that they call 30 days which is harvested within 30 days after planting, presumably with the chemical fertilizers they use.
Anectodotal Account From Washington State a copule decades AGO: They were psraying apples on the tree with toxins. A consumber watchdog type group warned people about this nationwide. (partly because it made so many people sick, and partly just because they knew it was happening daily and most peopole did not know. The sickness industry (corporations, pharmacy, etc) BROUGHT LAWSUITS and WON. Now , since then, it is by FEDERAL LAW illegal for the watchdog gropus or individuals to broadcast what poinsons are being sprayed on the apples, UNLESS they pay $5,000,000.00 (at the time) for studies to prove it. Now-a-dasy, even food labelled "organic" has as many as ten or twenty poinsons sparyied on it in the field, legally, and ten or twenty more IF any pests or fungus appears on the food. WITHOUT LABELLING it. (no warning at all). Also, for as little as $50. although hopefully (one might think) , at least $500., the inspectioins can be bought off and bypassed and labelled "organic" no matter what was seen or done to the foods. Thus, a resurgence in using acv apple cider vinegar, as a fruit and vegetable soak for twenty minutes to detoxify the food from both known and also unknown agencies. (just a tablespponful of vinegar in a glass or stainless steel bowl filled with cold tap or bottled water to soak the food in including banans, lettuc, appppls, benes, graps, let us, cab age , and so on --- then drip or pat dry) .
The part that confounds me is your reaction to apples that are picked right off of the tree, not commercially grown. Assuming they have not been sprayed, treated or genetically modified, the only remaining variable is you. There are some things on the web about apples and upset stomach, but I imagine you've read those. How do other high-fructose foods (especially berries) set with you? I wonder if peeling an apple then eating it might narrow down the causal issue (meaning it's something on the apple and not the apple itself.)
fwiw, I started peeling apples, yams (sweet potatoes), bananas, (haha), white potatoes, not grapes (too difficult), carrots(mostly surface visible dirt), pears, when I found out what could be on their outer skins, AND it seems definitely they do taste better then (peeled), whether cooked or baked or raw.
I had just the opposite problem as a child. Raw apples gave me indigestion something fierce but I could eat the peel without problems. Somewhere in young adulthood, I stopped having problems digesting uncooked apples.