Edible food coating Apeel doesn’t contain toxic ingredients; its ingredients are recognized as safe for use in foods

In late June 2024, claims spread on social media platforms that Apeel, an edible coating that protects fruits and vegetables from spoilage, contains toxins and “secret ingredients”.

Many posts, like this Facebook reel with over one million views, shared an excerpt of a 26 June 2024 video from One America News Network (OAN). In the excerpt, former OAN host Alison Steinberg told viewers to “not go near” foods with the label Apeel. She said that this product is manufactured using “ethyl acetate and heptane, both of which are hazardous chemicals known to seriously damage internal organs in the case of repeated exposure”. A video excerpt shared on Steinberg’s X (formerly Twitter) account received almost one and a half million views.

These posts rehash viral claims from April 2023 that questioned the safety of Apeel, alleging that the product contained heavy metals and other harmful chemicals. At the time, multiple fact-checking organizations found these claims to be false.

But the ingredients in Apeel aren’t secret or toxic and are accepted for use on foods in the U.S. and the European Union, as we will show below. In this review we will also analyze some common inaccurate and misleading claims about Apeel’s safety that have circulated online.

What is Apeel?

Apeel is an ultrathin, edible, plant-based coating for fruits and vegetables developed by the California-based company Apeel Sciences. According to the company, this coating helps reduce water loss and oxidation that are the main causes of spoilage. Thus, it keeps produce fresh for extended periods.

Apeel is made from monoglycerides and diglycerides, which are esters formed from glycerol and fatty acids extracted from grapeseed. It is distributed as a powder to be mixed with water and applied to food products before packaging. This technology is mainly used on particularly perishable foods, such as avocados and citrus fruits.

Many social media users claimed Apeel was created by Bill Gates and the World Economic Forum, both of whom are frequent targets of misinformation and conspiracy theories. However, this is inaccurate.

Apeel technology emerged as a way to reduce food waste by extending the food’s shelf life and protecting crops from pests. To implement this technology in developing countries with poor access to refrigeration, Apeel Sciences received funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2012 and in 2015.

Despite these early grants, a spokesperson for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and an Apeel’s representative told Reuters that Gates isn’t the founder or an active investor in Apeel. Therefore, Apeel isn’t Gates’ product.

In 2018, the World Economic Forum (WEF) named Apeel Sciences a Technology Pioneer, a title that recognizes innovations addressing social challenges. However, Apeel Sciences told AFP it has never received WEF funding.

Apeel ingredients are recognized as safe for use in foods

The monoglycerides and diglycerides in Apeel are naturally occurring in foods such as plant oils, fruit pulp, and some animal fats. They are also used as emulsifiers to prevent fat and water from separating in many processed food products such as ice cream, candy, dairy products, and sauces.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) includes mono- and diglycerides in the “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS) category. This category contains substances “generally recognized, among qualified experts, as having been adequately shown to be safe under the conditions of its intended use”.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) also allows the use of mono- and diglycerides as a food additive (E471). In a 2021 safety reevaluation, the agency concluded that “there is no reason for a safety concern when E 471 [is] used as [a] food additive”.

Walter Willett, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told Reuters that consuming monoglycerides and diglycerides isn’t concerning. “Our body makes these in large amounts as part of normal digestion,” he said. He added that the amounts used in Apeel’s coating are “small anyway”.

Although many, including Steinberg, claimed that Apeel’s coating can’t be washed off of fruits and vegetables, this information is outdated and currently inaccurate. Apeel is edible, which means it’s unnecessary to wash it off. But in response to public concerns, the company modified Apeel so that consumers can remove the coating by “rinsing the fruits and vegetables with water and gently scrubbing them using your hands or a soft brush”.

Apeel doesn’t contain solvents

OAN’s video claimed that Apeel’s manufacturing involved “hazardous” solvents, namely ethyl acetate and heptane, that can “seriously damage internal organs”. However, this claim is both inaccurate and misleading.

Apeel’s website explains that this claim is based on outdated documents from early GRAS applications filed with the FDA that no longer represent their current manufacturing process:

“Our current manufacturing process uses distillation (pressure and heat) to extract mono- and diglycerides to our specifications, and we test our products to ensure their purity. No solvents are used in our current manufacturing process, and are therefore not present in the final products.” [emphasis added]

Apeel’s 2019 GRAS notice submission to the FDA did mention the use of ethyl acetate or heptane to extract the glycerides from grapeseed oil. At high levels of exposure, ethyl acetate and heptane can be harmful and cause eye, respiratory tract, and skin irritation. However, the GRAS submission document also noted on page 16 that both these solvents are recognized as “safe and suitable for use in food” when used in accordance with good manufacturing practices.

Ethyl acetate is also naturally occurring in some foods and beverages. For example, it is the most common naturally occurring ester in wine, where it is present at concentrations up to 90 milligrams per liter.

Ethyl acetate and heptane aren’t actual ingredients but residual solvents used during certain manufacturing steps. These solvents are mostly removed during manufacturing, although traces of them can remain in the final product. Pages 16 and 17 of the document show the estimated maximum consumption levels of ethyl acetate and heptane from Apeel-coated fruits and vegetables. These are only around 10% of the maximum permitted daily exposure (50 milligrams per day) established by the FDA and the International Conference on Harmonization of Technical Requirements for Pharmaceuticals for Human Use (ICH).

Apeel doesn’t contain “secret” ingredients, toxic chemicals, or added heavy metals

Several posts (examples here and here) claimed that Apeel contains 99.34% of “secret” or “other” undisclosed ingredients. This exact figure appears in a 2019 registration of another product from Apeel Sciences named Organipeel with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Organipeel is a version of the Apeel coating intended to be used as a pesticide for organic food.

The product label notes that Organipeel contains 0.66% of citric acid as the active ingredient and 99.34% of “other ingredients”, which is probably the basis for the claim. Lead Stories explained that these “other ingredients” are baking soda and the monoglycerides and diglycerides that Apeel is primarily made of.

An EPA representative told Lead Stories that inactive ingredients “are not required to be identified in the ingredient statement on the pesticide label except when EPA determines that such inert ingredients may pose a hazard to man or the environment.” In other words, these “other ingredients” aren’t disclosed on the label because they are inactive ingredients.

Earlier claims questioning the safety of Apeel alleged the product contained toxic chemicals and added heavy metals. Both claims are false.

Some posts shared a safety data sheet allegedly showing that Apeel shouldn’t be ingested and caused “serious eye damage” and “allergic skin reactions”. But Associated Press, AFP, Full Fact, and many others found that the safety data sheet wasn’t for Apeel but for an unrelated household cleaning product sold in the U.K. bearing the same name. The virality of the claim led the manufacturer to add a warning in capital letters to the product’s site, stating the cleaning product “HAS NO RELATION TO APEEL SCIENCES AND SHOULD NOT BE USED TO PRESERVE FRUITS AND VEGETABLES”.

Other posts misinterpreted data from Apeel’s GRAS notice submission to the FDA by claiming the company intentionally introduced heavy metals into its product. Apeel Science denied this claim on its site: “[H]eavy metals are not added to our product. In fact, we try to remove as many as possible during the manufacturing process.”

Traces of heavy metals are common in crops, which absorb them from surrounding soil, air, and water. For this reason, regulatory agencies monitor the levels of heavy metals in foods and require manufacturers to minimize and test these levels in their products.

To comply with the regulation, Apeel Sciences tested the levels of heavy metals in the grapeseed oil used as the starting material for its coating. The results from these analyses on page 18 of the submission document showed that all the measurements are within the regulatory limits established by the FDA. These residues come from the grapes, not from the manufacturing process.

Conclusion

Viral posts claiming that Apeel, an edible plant-based coating that protects fruits and vegetables from spoiling, is unsafe to consume are inaccurate and misleading. Apeel doesn’t contain toxic ingredients. The product is made from glycerides extracted from grapeseed that are naturally present in certain foods and are recognized as a safe food additive in the U.S. and Europe.