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a woman on instagram photographed the labels on lidl's lemons and limes last week and the whole thing went off. peel unfit for consumption. underneath it, the list. imazalil, fludioxonil, azoxystrobin, thiabendazole, plus the wax. 10,500 comments, most of them furious at lidl. lidl has since said the unfit for consumption line was a mistake and they are taking it off. the chemical list stays. which is the part that gets me, because the chemicals were never the news. they go on citrus after picking so it does not rot on the way over, and they have done for decades. usda tested tangerines in 2019 and found imazalil on more than 95% of them. 1360 grapefruit samples between 2015 and 2017, 82% imazalil, 72% thiabendazole. that is not lidl. that is the fruit aisle. on imazalil, epa has had it down as a likely human carcinogen since 1999, off liver and thyroid tumours in rodents. worth knowing. also worth knowing that a hazard classification is not a measurement of what a slice of lemon in your water does to you, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something. where it actually matters is the peel. that is where it goes on and that is where it stays, and rinsing does not do much. the legal limit is written against the whole fruit, so the bit you grate into a cake is the concentrated bit. if you zest, organic is the only thing that changes it. if you are drinking the juice, relax. so lidl printed what everyone else quietly does, got 10,500 angry comments for it, and is now deleting the one line that was useful. good job everyone.