I saw some cherries at a Walmart and bought them so that I could preserve them in vodka and sugar for use in cocktails. This generally takes six months. But after two weeks, I can see that the cherries in the liquid are white. That has never happened to me before. Usually, the cherries get darker over time. So it looks like the Walmart cherries were dyed. I have a new bag of cherries, from the local grocery store, and I'm going to start over again. I'm glad the dye came off so quickly, because the cherry season is short, and if it had taken four-to-six weeks for the dye to come off, I would have had to wait for the South American cherries to arrive in December before I could get a new bag of cherries.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:marishino (sp?) ones are bleached and then dyed and very bad for you. yuck!

but i've never heard that for fresh ones. i've picked real cherries fresh off a tree that have red juice!

Oh yes, stay the hell away from maraschino cherries. My mom dyed them for a living. She said the bleach was so concentrated that one drop burns a hole in their shoes instantly. And never ever eat the ones in Japan. They prefer a certain shade of red that's particularly toxic.

Op's friend obviously heard about this and assumed it was for regular cherries. I would chalk it up to a bit of a disconnect on her part and leave it at that.

Anonymous wrote:People are so disconnected from the production of their food and science in general.

And unfortunately the production of food has veered more toward factory production than nature.

People are so disconnected from the production of their food and science in general.

Does anyone else ever nibble their orange peels? The FDA assumes not but I do on occasion.

^^ yes! And yes, bees ending up making red honey. And the Mafia is in the story.


https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/23/the-maraschino-moguls-secret-life

But I agree, (red) cherries are red all by themselves. And I like the explanation that a reaction to red dye could also be a reaction to cherries--whatever chemical (natural!) responsible for the color could be derived from cherries or could even be synthesized (or a very similar molecule) and have the same effect.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous



Oranges are often painted to be orange all over, instead of the natural mottled green-orange. But that's just the surface. I confess I don't quite see how you could evenly dye the flesh of an entire fruit... much less millions of small individual ones.

No

Surprise! (was to me too)
https://www.cookinglight.com/news/are-oranges-dyed#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20FDA%2C%20oranges,The%20other%20way%20Red%20No.

I remember a New Yorker article about a plant in Brooklyn maybe? where I seem to remember they made maraschino cherries for years and there was some big complicated business involving red dyes and water supplies, I think bees may have gotten involved. It was an old family business and a lot of stuff got really crazy, and it was all about red syrup.

Daughter of cherry farmers and have spent many hours raising, picking and packing cherries - Fresh cherries are NOT dyed. As a PP mentioned, there are many many different types of cherries and the color, sugar content and firmness differs significantly, as does when they ripen. While most consumers only think of red or yellow cherries, there are actually 100s of different types of cherries. Red cherries can range from lighter crimson (Sweetheart) to deep scarlet almost black (Bing, Van, Skeena to name a few). And then there are the yellow/white cherries, the most common in the U.S. are Rainers. My favorites are Skeenas, but they tend to be a later cherry - my family doesn’t pick ours until mid to late July. You will also likely notice that cherries in the market now are lighter red, that is because they are picked too early, in my opinion, to respond to consumer demand and not based on clear measures of cherry readiness - sugars and pressure in the fruit. The absolute best cherry is one picked directly off the tree on the day it is perfectly ripe (and yes red juice will run down your hand if you are lucky!). Of course for commercial products it is always a balance, as you must pick the cherry when it has enough sugar but the pressure isn’t too high so it will be damaged in shipment.

Anonymous wrote:Oranges are often painted to be orange all over, instead of the natural mottled green-orange. But that's just the surface. I confess I don't quite see how you could evenly dye the flesh of an entire fruit... much less millions of small individual ones.

LOL! Funny! I feel bad for pears! Nobody thinks they are worth dyeing! Apple get the best colors, and pears nothing.

Tart cherries have lighter red color.

She was pranking you.

Anonymous wrote:In CA and literally saw a cherry tree today and thought “I didn’t realize how very dark the fruit gets”. It was a really deep, dark red - not a bright cocktail cherry red.

There are different kinds of cherries: some are dark, some are yellow and pinkish, some are nearly black.

In CA and literally saw a cherry tree today and thought “I didn’t realize how very dark the fruit gets”. It was a really deep, dark red - not a bright cocktail cherry red.

Grew up with cherry tree in yard. They get way darker naturally if left on the tree than what you get in the store and the juice STAAAINS. And they are the BEST fruit when ripe. Enjoy!

Anonymous wrote:I just have been sick with sore throat burning sinuses and itching ears. One day I had pizza it gave me heart burn so I took a antacid and got sick again so I looked at ingredients and it had red dye . So I stopped eating anything with red dye. So today I got fresh cherries and I felt it come back immediately!! So I think they put red dye on fresh cherries too.it takes about 24 hour for it to clear up.

I will not argue that you got sick after eating cherries. But I do think the next step in your logic trail is problematic. Instead of assuming that the cherries are dyed which is why you go sick maybe look into what the ingredients are in the red dye. Maybe the red dye is made with some component that occurs naturally in nature, like the red cherry skins. So you could be allergic to the red cherries and therefore are allergic to the red dye.