Apples should be kept in the fridge now – but what about oranges and bananas?

Is there anything more disappointing than biting into an apple, only to find it has gone all fluffy and soft? It happens all the time – and now we know why. According to a government initiative on food labelling, it is because we are not storing our Pink Lady apples in the fridge.

As part of a drive to reduce annual household food waste in the UK by 350,000 tonnes, labelling is changing. In future, it will include, among other things, a “little blue fridge” icon for foods that keep for longer in the fridge, including apples and oranges. Can this be right? Well, yes – but it’s a matter of timing. Here’s a guide to when to let fruit chill.

Apples

There is so much anxiety around apples already: they are a year old when they reach the shops; there are no seasons any more; what happened to British varieties? If we must accept our preference for rock-hard, crunchy fruit, keeping them at 4C prolongs life by up to two weeks.

Oranges

Assuming they are ripe when you buy them (they’re one of the few products for which supermarkets don’t expect us to do the work), it is best to put oranges in the fridge, and not just because no one wants warm orange juice. Once ripe, they start to lose their vitamin C, a process that is slower when cold.

Soft fruit

Using a very unscientific sample – my kitchen – I find these have a 30-minute enjoyment window between unripe tastelessness and mould-covered slime. Strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and melons should be kept out until they smell good, then put in the chiller to maintain freshness long enough to whip up a meringue.

Bananas

Bananas only taste of something once they are ripe and going brown, but their natural gases provide a useful ripening service for other fruits, so keep them in the bowl, next to that rock-hard avocado. If you are not going to eat them in time, put them in the freezer and make a cake or smoothie another day.

Tomatoes

The head of food preservation for AEG once told me that we arrange our fridges wrongly – meat should be where the salad drawers are, and fruit and veg should be placed on the top shelf. So there you go – but please don’t ever put tomatoes in the fridge unless you want to eat something resembling a sliced Comic Relief nose. The cold distorts the flavour and texture – keep them out at all costs.